Archive for January 2010
Exercise Bikes – What’s on The Market
January 11, 2010, 5:26 pmThere are available two types of exercise bikes. The upright bike is stationary and it resembles a typical road bike. Added stress is put on the joints because the pedals are positioned below the rider. The pedals of the recumbent bike are out in front of the rider so that pedaling is more natural and less stressful on the hips and knees and the seat resembles a chair.
There are other styles of bikes available as well. There are double action upright exercise bikes that have moveable handlebars or arm handles. Your arms as well as your legs are used on this bike. This bike will provide you with aerobic activity and upper body toning. Some variety can be found with resistance bikes also.
The resistance on Direct tension bikes can be adjusted manually. An exercise bike with flywheels has a cycling very much like regular biking. The resistance of air resistance bikes get it by pedaling against the airflow of a fan blade.
Out of all resistance exercise bikes, the magnetic frictionless resistance bikes are the most sophisticated. Resistance bikes are the most advanced resistance bikes. A greater variety of workout levels can be had on this bikes.
The feedback mechanisms show the following readouts: speed, time, distance, total calories and fat burned, program mode, resistance levels, pulse, heart rate, and work out level (RPM, watts, METS, mpms, and mph/kph). Your needs and wants will determine the bike you choose buy. Your choice of bikes will also depend on the type of workout you want.
You will get a great cardio workout that focuses on the quadriceps. On a recumbent bike you are seated in a reclining position. Your legs are out in front of you and your back is supported by the seat. The hamstrings and the glutes are given a workout. A recumbent bike is much easier on your lower back.
Upright bikes could come with handlebars the move back and forth in a rowing like motion. This motion will work your arms, your chest, your abs and your back muscles. These bikes will give you a terrific cardiovascular workout as well as a calorie burning experience.
Your size should be matched to the bike. Exercise bikes can be easily adjusted for almost any body type. Exercise bikes are used by people for a variety of reasons. In the off season, cyclists often use them to maintain their level of fitness. Because many people feel embarrassed about exercising in front of people they use them at home.
To promote healing and the regaining of the use of knee and hip joints, physical therapy programs also use exercise bikes. They are also used by some cardiac rehabilitation programs to improve endurance and greater cardiac health.
If you go to Wal-mart, Sears, or sports stores and if you look online you will be able to buy an exercise bike. When buying them from a store its much easier to get a bike that matches your space your budget, and your body size. You might not always get what you want when getting online.
The bike may be bigger or smaller and without the exact specs than what you ordered. Ordering online has another issue, the taking delivery of your order. In most cases the delivery company will leave it at your door and you will have to bring it in and put it together.
Unless you contract with someone to do the entire process including setting it up, this is also true of buying it in a store. Service contracts can be purchased in stores like Sears, in case there is a problem. Regardless of your reasons for buying an exercise bike it will only work if you use it.
As with any exercise program check with your doctor and make sure that you are healthy enough to exercise. Your endurance will improve if you start out slow. Be healthy, have fun, and be safe.
—admin | Comments Off
(posted in the Templates Tips category)
Ebay’s Weirdest Items
January 10, 2010, 6:42 amIndeed, E-bay is today’s most sought-after shopping portal in the Internet. It has created in itself a worldwide phenomenon that people get inflicted with. The joy and the thrill of bidding online create a certain diagrammatic representation of life’s drama.
Consequently, due to its underlying nature, the success of E-bay can be well attributed to its wide range of market reach. Hence, a lot of people are going in or out of the arena with a number of diverse products at hand.
Because of its diversity, people all over the world resort to e-bay to sell just about anything, from the basic necessities to computer techies, and even weird stuffs.
The most common case of weird auctions on E-bay was about virginity being on sale. There were about a dozen of auctions that put one’s virginity on the limelight. There was even one auction that sold for $10,000,000 with 17 bidders at the most. Though, there was no clear implication if the report was true enough.
Next, there were cases of auctioned letters from a serial killer being sold at 1500 pounds each.
Then, there was one auction about a man who is selling his “fully functioning” kidneys. The reported bid amount was $5.7 million. There was no way to verify the truth, but reports said that the sale did not push through.
There is much other weird stuff like one night stand with someone’s wife, ghost in a jar, ghost cane, and air guitar, which were all sold, just for the heck of getting a sale on E-bay.
But among all, the report about a 10-year old Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich that sold for $28,000 was the most sensationalized and the weirdest stuff ever sold on E-bay. The seller was an old woman from Miami, Florida.
According to MSNBC, (this means it’s for real) E-bay had deliberately post back the auction last November 2004 after it inadvertently pulled the auction out from the list, thinking it was just a hoax.
The GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, had won the auction. Executives of the company said that $28,000 was nothing compared to the privilege of getting to own this 10-year old half-bitten sandwich bearing the face of Virgin Mary.
Consequently, the fact that the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich was already 10 years old and still it did not bear any traces of mold. That made those who read and have seen the auction go “Huh?”
David Riewe is a Publisher and Online Marketer. Visit his eBay Blog to Discover 101 Ebay Auction Tips in this FREE ebook www.push-button-online-income.com/ebayblog
—admin | Comments Off
(posted in the Auctioneering category)
4 Quick, Easy Ways to Say No to People Who Take You for Gran
January 6, 2010, 3:10 am
No matter how wonderful you are sometimes other people will try to take advantage of your good nature. They will push you, get you to do more than your fair share and keep asking you to do even more.
And worst of all — often your efforts will be taken for granted. Unless you can say No, the situation will not change in fact it may get even more difficult.
That is unless you can say No to these unreasonable people because very often to win respect from people you have to sometimes say No.
Here are 4 great ways to stand up for yourself and say No:
1. Soften the No
Instead of shouting No at the person and creating an uncomfortable encounter you can instead soften the No by postponing your help.
For example –
- No, I am busy right now but I can help you in 40 minutes time
- No, I have other things to do at the moment
- Right now I do not have a free moment maybe later on
- I would love to help but not at this minute, try John
What you are doing is softening the No by saying not now rather than an outright No. This is a lot easier to do especially when dealing with people who intimidate you.
2. Negotiate
To deal with people who want your help but are slow to help you — negotiate! When they want something from you, you have the power – use it!
Say you are happy to help on one condition — that they help you immediately when you seek their help. They will usually agree because they have to! If they say No, again as above, postpone helping them if you can.
There are some people who view the world in terms of what is in it for them and the concerns of others are of secondary importance. With these people you are wasting your time talking about your needs.
For that reason you have to link your needs to their gains by negotiating – tell them they will get what they want IF you get what you want.
3. Say No When You Do Not Care About the Outcome
When you are flexing this new found ability to say No for the first time use every opportunity to get some practice e.g.
- In a restaurant, say no to the first table you are offered
- at home say No to coffee when everyone else says Yes, have tea
- In a store say yes to an offer of help but No to the product
What I mean is to say No when you are dealing with people whose approval is not that important to you. You will quickly learn through experience that it is not the end of the world if you say no and the other person is not pleased with you.
4. Say No to the Big Request and Yes to a Smaller One
Sometimes you are going to be asked to do more than your fair share. If you cannot avoid the job you may need to consider doing part of it.
A good way to handle these requests is to offer to do part of the job but not all of it. For example:
- I will clean 2 rooms if you do the other 3 rooms
- I can do 5 pages of the report as long as you give me the data
- If you start the project I will finish it
By standing up for yourself on small points you will gradually assert yourself more often on the big issues. The main thing is to get started today on winning back control of your interactions with anyone who pushes you too far.
Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because it is available for a limited time only at: http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/report.htm
—admin | Comments Off
(posted in the Eatables category)
How To Write A Homeschool Unit Study
January 5, 2010, 8:46 amRegardless of what methodology you normally use for your homeschool, unit studies can provide you with a nice break from the norm sometimes. They are especially nice whenever you’re trying to teach your child(ren) to think a little more about how the different parts of life actually fit together, and they can also give you a break whenever you’re faced with the doldrums.
So, how do you decide what subjects to persue whenever you’re ready to do a unit study? Well, take a look at your child and see what he/she is deeply interested in. Those are the subjects to pursue with your unit studies. Another way to decide what would make a great unit study is to look through your year’s studies and notice if there are any “holes” in subject matter that you think should be filled. Once you find that “hole,” you can find a unit study on that topic, and take a week or two to teach it. For instance, if your child finds black holes fascinating, but your science text book covers them in just a paragraph or two, then there is the perfect opportunity to do a unit study on astronomy.
Once you’ve figured out what you’d like to do a unit study on, all you need is a little time and creativity, and you can create your own unit studies. Assembling your own curriculum around one topic sounds difficult, but if this wasn’t the case, then educational companies such as “Teacher Created Materials” wouldn’t publish and sell as many great unit studies as they do.
There are 2 main drawbacks to designing your own unit studies. First of all, it takes time. If you’re a busy parent, this could be enough of a reason to take a trip to your nearest teachers’ supply store with your credit card in hand. Secondly, it may require access to a couple of grade-level subject books (ie science, language arts, or math) so that you know which skills are typically covered at a particular grade level. If you have a good library with an educational books department, then you may also have the perfect excuse to spend a long Saturday with a pocket full of change at the library with a stack of books. Another idea is that if you have a good set of Internet research skills, you can spend your Saturday tucked away at home.
Now that we see the drawbacks, what are the benefits of a unit study? You can teach whatever your heart desires. Plus, if you decide to create your own unit study, you’ll find that it is cheaper and more economical than tracking down a pre-made unit study. Furthermore, nobody knows your child as well as you do, and therefore nobody can prepare a unit study for your child as well as you can.
Whenever you’re creating your own unit study, you need to keep in mind that your unit study needs to cover all of the subjects that you’d normally teach, unless you plan to skip a specific subject and keep working through your regular curriculum for that subject. However, to create a complete unit study, you need to include the first 2 subjects from the following list and as many of the other subjectss as you can logically fit in there too. Now for the list:
(1.) Math – You need to create math problems at your child’s level. For instance, if you’re working with a young child on a unit study about baseball, then you can practice addition with bats and balls, write a story problem that talks about number of pitches thrown until the team reached the final out, etc. However, older children would need something that is more on their level. For instance, you may discuss the speed of the bat, distance the ball travels, or the number of hot dogs that individual team fans eat.
(2.) Language Arts – This area includes reading, comprehension, grammar and writing skills. While you don’t need to include every one of these items in every unit study that you write, you should have your child write something about the topic. A great suggestion here would be to have your child read a book about the topic then write a narrative telling you about what he/she read in the book.
(3.) Science – Sometimes a unit study lends itself quite easily to science, but other times you’ll find yourself having to work a little bit harder. For instance, a unit study on bugs will let you off the hook since the entire unit study is about science. However, if you are doing a unit study about ancient Egypt then you may need to take some time to look at the creations of the Egyptian engineers, study mummification, think about ancient medicine, or consider the tools that the Egyptians used to do their work.
(4.) Social Studies or Geography – This may be your main topic, but if it isn’t, then you’ll need to work some information into your topic. Some questions that can help you here include: Where was your topic first seen or invented? What culture surrounded the time or event? Where did this take place? You may also want to learn more about the people of that time period and place.
(5.) Art – Take time to draw, build, act, design or create. You could design a Roman mosaic, sketch an insect’s genetic makeup, build a temple from clay or LEGOs, create a tapestry to illustrate the unit that you’re studying (felt shapes work for quick tapestries when needlepoint takes way too long), or paint the flowers that you’re learning about.
(6.) Music – Sometimes music fits into a unit study nicely. For instance, you could always listen to some folk music while you explore the civil unrest of the 1960s. However, if you’re studying something more scientific, then you may need to work a little harder to fit music into that unit study.
(7.) History – Adding history to a unit study should be relatively easy, regardless of the topic. You could simply research when an event began or an item was invented or you could talk about the events and times that affected an item’s inventor.
(8.) Physical Education – Here again, you may need to be a bit creative. However, when you discover that physical education fits into your unit study, then you should definitely use it! For instance, if you’re studying the ancient Greeks, then you could run footraces like they did.
If you’re still not certain what to do for your very first unit study, try “following” your child(ren) around for a couple days and watch what they do. For instance, if your child spends all of his/her time engrossed in books, then think about a literature-based unit study (ie how books are made). On the other hand, your child may spend his/her time outside digging for rocks. Then why not do an archeology or rocks and minerals unit study?
Of course, there are some topics that you can use numerous times as your child(ren) grows older. These include:
(1.) Animals, horses, or mammals
(2.) Baseball, basketball, fencing, or sports in general
(3.) Cooking or catering (which may include business and economics information)
(4.) Kites
(5.) Flight
(6.) Transportation
(7.) Weather
(8.) Historical cultures (ie medieval history, ancient Egypt, etc.)
The spark of a unit study is lit whenever your child(ren) mentions an interest. Whenever they do, you need to write it down somewhere. Keep a running list of interests and you’ll soon have more than you’ll know what to do with. However, even if your child only shows a deep interest in one or two topics, you should take time to explore those. You may discover that you’re able to create several unit studies based on the first one as new interests are developed.
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(posted in the Universe Of Tuition category)
Security: Referrer
January 5, 2010, 6:07 amIf you are a webmaster, you will find that one of the most valuable things you can use is the referrer. On the other hand, if you are a surfer, you may want to disable this feature as it can be a security risk and a violation of your privacy.
What is this referrer thingie? Well, all web servers have the capability to create log files and virtually all web masters (at least those who know what they are doing) use these logs to determine how their web site is doing. The log files contain one line for each hit to the web site. The format and contents of the line vary from server to server (and webmasters can specify they want more or less information), but in general it has an incredible amount of information about that one hit.
Some of the information gathered for each hit to a web site includes (among other things):
- The requested file (for example, index.html) – A status code indicating success or error (404 errors, for example) – The browser type being used by the surfer (this is the agent name, and it can also be the name of a search engine spider or a spam harvester). – The screen resolution of the surfer’s monitor – The date and time (locally to the server) of the hit – The TCP/IP address of the surfer (yes, every web page that you have ever looked at has your TCP/IP recorded in a web server log file somewhere). – The URL where the surfer came from
It’s this last statistic that causes some concern. Oh, there is a minor issue in that your TCP/IP address is stored in the server logs when you access a page, but this is not very important. You see, these logs do not tend to last very long as they get very large extremely quickly. Many (if not most) web sites purge these as soon as statistics are gathered. Conceivably, of course, this could be of concern if an investigation were performed … and these logs are looked at by webmasters for hacking attempts.
No, the important information is the referrer field. Why? Well, first there is the privacy question. If a webmaster knew your TCP/IP address (and he would have to know your address specifically, since this is the only thing relating you to the line in the log file – there is no name or email address stored there) he could get an idea of what you looked at before you came to his site. Thus, there is a remote chance that your privacy could be compromised … a very remote chance since this is virtually never done by any webmaster.
The second, and very critical problem is a real security risk. You see, many websites allow you to log into their sites to personalize your experience. These sites allow you to enter personal data such as credit card information, social security numbers and other items into their database. Generally cookies are used to identify you as you move from page to page through the web site. Cookies are by far the best and preferred way to do this – it’s called maintaining context. However, cookies are frowned upon my many surfers for various reasons (mostly blown out of proportion fears created by a press that feels it needs dangers and bad news to stay competitive).
Thus, some clever webmasters have come up with alternate ways to allow their web sites to know that “you are you” as you move around on their site. A very sloppy method consists of adding a username and password on to the end of each URL.
For example, suppose you log into a shopping site with a username and password like so:
URL: http://www.anyshoppingsite.com Username: innocent Password: naive
If you moved to a page called “toys.htm”, the URL might become:
http://www.anyshoppingsite.com?u=innocent?p=naive
You see the problem? Not yet? Okay, there is no problem as you move around from page to page within the shopping site. The problem results when you surf to another page outside of the shopping site.
What happens? Well, if you surfed to another site from the page above, that URL complete with the username and password would be added to the server log files. Guess what, your username and password just got recorded in plain text somewhere completely unexpected.
So what’s the problem really? Well, let’s say you went to your shopping site, logged in and made some purchases. To make it simple for you, your credit card numbers are stored on the site and you can retrieve them at any time after you are logged in. Everything seems safe because you need a username and password to get in.
Now, when you are finished shopping you are supposed to log out. This would remove the username and password from the referrer. However, you don’t do this and instead surf to another site. You leave your username and password in that webmasters log files. If that webmaster happens to check his log files he could get your username and password, log into your account and get your credit card numbers.
Are you alarmed yet?
Okay, how do you stop this from happening? It’s relatively easy, actually. You get a product called AdSubtract and install it on your computer. By default this product will remove the referrer field as you surf around. You are now protected.
Oh yes, one side effect is you cannot just surf to that shopping site, since the login information is removed by AdSubtract. Fortunately, AdSubtract allows you to configure exceptions. All you need to do is enter the “filters” section, add your shopping site and specify to not remove the referrer.
And that, my friends, is how you protect yourself from one of the internet’s biggest gaping security holes. I hope this has been of use to you.
—admin | Comments Off
(posted in the Security Management category)
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