Thursday, July 31, 2008

Finding Web Hosting

Fine, so we all know that to get our business rolling in these modern times we need to have an outlet on the web. If you're not on the internet then you're not anywhere.

Excellent, but having established that point, how do you work out what sort of web hosting you need? Fortunately, the excellent lads here have done a lot of that work for you by providing a series of web hosting tutorials. Describing the different types of hosting that you can have, shared, multiple domains and so on.

That's not all they do though, there's much more than just that. For example, they rate the different hosting companies so that you can see who is in the top ten web hosts. Or more detailed information about FrontPage hosting. Or perhaps you'd be more interested in more depth in cPanel tutorials?

Whether you're just looking for basic information on what type of hosting is potentially available, or you need guidance to who are the best at the various types, or you need detailed guidance on technical issues, this site is a great resource.

Well worth checking out before you try to sign up to any web hosts.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Mitral Valves

You know what the mitral valve is, yes? It's that all important part that allows your heart to pump.....it closes when it's pumping and then opens to let more blood in to be pumped and so on. And it's working 40-100 times a minute every hour of your life so you can imagine that it's one of those parts of the body which might go wrong.

Now there's several ways of doing this, several different forms of mitral valve surgery. Not just the difference between the old style, of cracking open the chest and then then diving in with both hands, and the new which is minimally invasive by laparoscopy.

But further than that, in recent years there's been a change in what is actually done once the surgeon gets in there. It used to be that the basic thought was mitral valve replacement. Hey, it's going wrong so let's put a new one in.

Nowadays though there's a move to mitral valve repair: let's only replace it if we have to. The benefit of this appraoch (where it can be used) is that the patient (that's you or I= doesn't then have to take blood thinning drugs for the rest of their (our) lives.

Fewer drugs sounds good to me.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Visiting Australia

I'm pondering what I should do for my midlife crisis, something I know all too well is due sometimes soon. Getting a sportscar and toupee and chasing teenage cocktail waitresses, well, its just been so done, hasn't it?

So perhaps something a little different might be in order. Should I try and track down my Australian relatives? It's slightly odd, but gg grandmother emigrated *from* Australia in the 1860s. She'd gone there with her three sisters and brother under one of the Britiosh government schemes to populate the place and found she didn't like it. So she moved on.

But that of course means that there are the (possible) descendants of her siblings out there as distant cousins. Might be slightly fun to try and find them.

While I vaguely plan this (inbetween checking the ads for sports cars and teenage cocktail waitresses) I've been able to find an excellent site to help me plan my travel. Flights and international flights, of course. But more than that, Singapore Airlines flights (they do after all have the best service reputation of any long distance airline) as well as Jetstar for those internal to Australia flights.

I'm still not sure whether I'll actually go but checking up and dreaming about it sure is fun.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

ShopWiki for Toys

This is really rather a good idea, ShopWiki. We're all aware of the various price comparison sites but there's a problem with them. The rankings and the listings are determined usually by who pays the compilers of the site. So it's possible that you'll get directed to hte people who have paid the most to be recommended rather than who is offering the very best deal or selection.

ShopWiki.com operates rather differently: more like a search engine that a database. It cralws the net just like Google does and is thus able to find all of the people offering a particular item and then rank them according to what their offer is like.

Check out their classic toys section for example. They break the whole subject down into a series of sub units: retro toys for example. Umm, slightly disturbingly, the things I used to play with as a child are described as retro. Ahem.

Or perhaps you would prefer magic trick sets, or stuffed animals (yes, of course the have Pooh!).

They way they do it, by crawling the net, means you get to see all the very best offers: a tool well worth checking out.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Those Online Poker Sites

Yes, we all know there are huge numbers of poker sites out there, but which ones should you in fact be using? Assuming that you are in fact in the free parts of the world, where you are in fact allowed to spend your time as you wish that is.

Further, how do you find out which of the good sites actually cater to people who use Apple Macs? Ah, now, there I can help. What you you want is Mac Poker. It's an excellent little site devoted to pointing out the good places where you can indeed use a Mac to play your poker.

As an example, have a look at their review of Poker Stars. That gives you a very good taste of what they're all about. Grading the site in respect of things like customer service, real money traffic and so on.

Or perhaps this review of Poker Bonus will give you a further idea? That's the listing of which sites (along with the associated necessary codes to get them!) will offer you a bonus for signing up or depositing money. Or a similar listing for the online casino bonuses.

All in all it's a very useful and informative site about where you might want to pay poker on your Mac: who can argue with or complain about that, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Furnishing the Locker Room

I have to admit that it's not something we've had to deal with yet in this refurbishment of this new to us house: but it will arrive, we will get there at some point. Around and about the time the pool goes in, actually.

We're going to need to have some lockers: for the pool will be large enough that it won't be just us as the family that use it. That's very nice for us, of course, but it does mean that if we've got a lot of people using it then they'll need somewhere to keep their stuff while they do so.

So, what do you think? Should I be thinking about steel lockers? That does actually sound a little over the top, doesn't it? I mean we're not exactly in a school lockers situation here are we? They don't so much need to be secure as we just need to have somewhere to put things.

Maybe the gym lockers or even the simple plastic lockers would suffice?

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Finding the Best Digital Camera

If you're out there trying to find the best digital camera you've actually got something of a problem. For there are so many variations that it's not possible to say that one is the best. The best for whom? For what purposes? What's the best digital camera for you?

Now it is true, you can go to one of the review sites and you can trawl through all of the reviews and try to work it out. Takes a lot of time but it can be done. Or you can click through any of the links and go to a review site that does it rather differently. They start with a real case: take a person and work out what it is that they want to use a camera for. Then use experts to do the searching ffor that use and person, the results being written up as a recommendation.

So, for example, we might have the best travel digital camera, or the best wide angle digital camera, or the best ultra compact digital camera.

It's an excellent idea: instead of you having to wade through reams of information, allow the experts to apply their knowledge on your behalf.