2010年11月23日星期二

Money Saving Tips and Tricks

People throw away hundreds of dollars a week without even realizing they are doing it. Lottery tickets, coffee, movie tickets, lunch or carwashes are all hidden factors. Not to mention all the money that is spent on outings on the weekend such as dinner, drinks or going out to a bar.
So if you are in need of paying off a debt and have no money to do it, you shouldn't worry because if you have enough money for eating out for lunch each day, you have enough money to put into savings. The following tricks can help make saving not only seem easier, but almost effortless.
One easy way to save money is to write a check to yourself as soon as you get paid so that money is automatically taken out when you cash the check. Then add this money to another account such as savings, or anything that will not be included in your total balance. This way, you will be saving a bunch of money but since you don't see it in your account balance, you won't be tempted to spend it.
You can also try saving bills as a twist to the classic change savings in a jar. Try putting any small bills you get into a jar (such as fives or tens) and soon you will have saved up a lot of money without realizing it.
You can also try making a family piggy bank. Have a piggy bank set up and make a rule that each family member has to put in one dollar a day. By one year you will have enough money saved up to pay for all you Christmas presents or take a vacation.
Another easy way to save money is by collecting the money that you save from grocery shopping by using coupons, or discounts. For example, after you get the bill most grocery stores will have printed out exactly how much you saved. Instead of pocketing that money, put it into savings. It’s just like shopping without the discount and still having enough money saved up to take a trip or pay off an outstanding debt!
As you can see there are many unique ways of saving money that can even seem fun. So instead of buying lunch with that ten dollar bill you just got in change, save it and take that trip you've been dying for.

2010年11月21日星期日

First Aid Kit—the Must Preparing Before You Go Traveling

First aid kit is a set of equipment and provisions that can be used in providing first aid. The content of first aid medical kit may vary depending upon the maker or you can say who has gathered the first aid medical kit. It can also be different depending upon the purpose.
Accident can occur any time and at any place. It is used to happen in most of the cases when we least expect it. Creating a personal first aid kit is a smart idea to cope up with the unexpected and uninvited situation as you never know when you are tangled in an unpleasant condition. So, it is better to furnish yourself with proper equipment and tools like a first aid medical kit.
There are more chances when you will have to face an emergency while you are traveling. Imagine if you face such a circumstance where there is no rescue around even within a mile radius where your car is parked. Having a first aid kit in the car is the best idea to deal with such a condition.
The first aid medical kit for the car may include a pair of scissors, bandages, rolls of bandage wrap, some pairs of vinyl gloves, an antiseptic lotion, sting wipes, pain reliever, pain killer medicine, hand lotion, ointment, surgical or medical tape, towel, a small flashlight, Alcohol prep pad and the most important one is the first aid booklet.
These first aid kits are easy to handle, store them in a safe place and out of the reach of small children in the car in order to ignore just any other incident. Always remember to remove the first aid kit from your bag or purse when entering airport or country building because scissors in a first aid kit can be deemed as weapon in the security check here.

2010年11月19日星期五

Top 6 Photography Tips to Make You an Artistic

Can we become a professional photographer? Sure, with the help of advanced digital cameras, you can do all the work. Just push the shutter button and great pictures appear. The better the digital camera, the better the picture prints.
But, it is not entirely true. In fact, you can take wonderful photos with a regular digital camera, or take bad digital shots with the most expensive SLR digital camera. It's not the camera that makes treasured images; it's actually the person taking the photos. You should also use one of the many affordable for your copies. Here are some tips for both point and shoot and SLR digital cameras to help you take professional looking photographs.
·White Balance Adjustment
Have you ever noticed that your shots sometimes have a "bluish" look to them? This is a common problem when taking outdoor photos. The white balance setting on most digital cameras will cause a below par snapshot. Changing your white balance setting to "cloudy" will enhance your images resulting in warmer digital photos with richer reds and yellows.
·Use Fill Flash Mode
Your digital camera's flash probably has various modes but the fill flash mode adds just enough flash to create professional looking portrait photos indoors and outdoors. Most point and shoot digital cameras with built-in flashes only have a range of 10 feet (or even less!), so make sure you don't stand too far away when using fill flash outdoors. An even better option would be an add-on camera flash.
·Use Close-Up Mode
Most of the photographs on our website are considered close-up/macro photos. Taking close-up/macro photos opens an entire new "mini world" to you and is plenty of fun to work on. When taking pictures in the close-up/macro mode of your camera, you should try to focus in on the most important aspect of your shot. You won't be disappointed.
·Shoot at a Higher Resolution
Shoot your pictures in the highest resolution setting that your digital camera allows. A higher resolution will enable you to print larger copies of your gems as gifts and such. Memory cards have gone down dramatically in price lately and would be a great investment.
·Turn Your Camera Around
We always seem to take photos horizontally but a vertical shot could enhance your photo. Take the same shot both vertically and horizontally and keep the better shot. You never know what you'll find on the other side.
·The Rule of Thirds
It is a natural instinct to position your subject dead center in your viewfinder and take the shot. This leads to a very boring photo. Try imagining that your viewfinder is divided into six equal blocks (like a tic-tac-toe game). And then, line up your subject along either the left or right line and close to the lower or upper line. The results will surprise you.
With those tips above, and of course a digital camera, you can definitely become a professional photographer.

2010年11月18日星期四

How to Tame Your Nightmare?

In the movie Inception, the skilled thief can sneak into people’s dream, and steal their secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. They can even plant idea into people’s mind, and make them believe it is a part of their dream.
Just like the fantastic imagination of this movie, an evolving field of sleep research believes that people can direct their own dreams, but this ability is limited. For example, people who often have nightmare can reverse the bad ending by another joyful dream. Waking dreamer--people who know what they dream—referred that they can fantasy flying in the dream.
According to Robert Stickgold, associate professor of psychiatry in Harvard Medical School, it is difficult but not impossible to control annoying personal problem in the dream. “If you ever thought about some emotional problems which you didn’t want to deal with before went to bed, you might have about 10%~20%’s chance to dream about them at night.” He said.
This theory matches with current understanding to the reason of dream. It was once said that dreams were repressed sexual impulses, or just random neurons discharging activities. But now people think that dreams are the mixture products of the subconscious processing, classification and storage of the emotional in the day.
“We brought questions into our dream after sleeping, and dealt with them at night,” said Rosalind Cartwright, the emeritus professor of neurology of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She has spelt nearly 50 years on sleeping and dreaming research. Her new publishing book, The Twenty-Four Hour Mind, explained that our thought attached to the unfinished emotional issue’s clues in the day. Then, in rapid eye movement sleep (most dreams happened in rapid eye movement period), it will evoke some memories of old relationships, and blended them together. “This is why dream is fantastic. It combines your new and old memories,” she said, “this connection is emotionally not logically.”
Usually, people will solve the negative emotion first, and when time is passing, the dream will become positive. But, nightmare will interrupt this process and wake dreamer up before fear is relieved. So the dream is repeated.
In Montefiore Medical Center, New York, Bronx, some projections are researched to cure nightmare patients and post-traumatic stress disorder patients. They use a solution that is so-called "Image rehearsal therapy" to change their recurring dreams. Patients are required to recall the details of the nightmare, writing new scripts, and imaging them several times in the day. For example, a patient always dreamed being surrounded by sharks repeatedly in nightmare. Then she thought they were dolphins, not sharks. After five courses’ rehearsal in this same scene, the nightmare disappeared. Another patient dreamed being shot, and then he imagined the gun as a laser pointer, and he had a lot fun with it. 
This method can help dreamer reverse the bad ending of nightmare, and finally change it to the funny and joyful ending as they imagined, then creates a new dream, or even stops nightmare.

2010年11月17日星期三