ellipz

 Limoncello is an Italian Lemon Liqueur mainly produced around the coast of Amalfi.  It is made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar.  It’s bright yellow in color and sweet with a very lemon flavor.

Limoncello is cheap and easy to produce requiring only sugar, water, lemon rind, alcohol, and some time to mature. Homemade limoncello can be made from vodka, but stronger alcohol is better at extracting all the oil flavors from the lemon peel.

Limoncello is traditionally served chilled as an after dinner digestivo. This tradition can be found in many other parts of Italy, not just the Amalfi coast.

Limoncello Recipe

Ingredients:

• 10 lemons
• 1 750 ml bottle of vodka
• 2.5 cups sugar
• 3.5 cups water

Wash the lemons thoroughly.  If possible, use a vegetable cleaner to help eliminate any wax or pesticide residue that may still exist on the lemons.  Use a vegetable peeler to peel thin strips of lemon peel leaving as much of the pith on the lemon as possible.  The pith will impart a very bitter flavor to the limoncello.

Place the peels in a pitcher or wide mouthed bottle about 2 quarts in size.  Note that in the picture above, a bottle is used that isn’t ideal.  Glass or ceramic is the preferred medium here.  Cover the container and let sit for a week as to allow all the lemon oils to seep into the vodka.  As the days go by, you will notice that the lemon rinds begin to loose their color and become white.

Once the week has gone by, dissolve the sugar in the water over medium heat.  Let cool to room temperature.  Strain the vodka and lemon mixture into the simple syrup and discard the peels. 

Refrigerate and enjoy.

So, I’m not sure if there are any gold diggers out there, but after a lifetime (well, 15 some odd years) of working myself to the bone, and countless dates where I’m picking up the tab, I started thinking that the term “gold digger” is not as horrible as it sounds.

Lets face the facts folks:  Life is expensive.  Between the fancy cars, clothes, shoes, and ring-tones, we are living at like the highest cost of living ever!  And most of us have come to the conclusion that building wealth, or working our way to it, is a difficult and arduous task.  The alternative is to meet (or marry) a person who would be considered “well off” or who has a “high net worth” and isn’t afraid to share it.

Now sure, this might sound ‘unspeakable’ but its a trend.  How many women do you see falling for the struggling musician anymore?  NO WAY Girlfriend, I’ll take the well educated banker who’s dad’s dad was a banker and has the words “the third” in his name.  Granted, the starving artist is more romantic, he’ll probably gaze into your eyes, and tell you how much his heart is touched by your beauty, but he’ll be saying this over a romantic mcMeal.  On the other hand, Mr. BigBucks may like to dip his oil stick into other cars now and again, but who cares?  Retail therapy is completely under-rated!

So where can we look for a classy, high net worth guy?  I am not sure (yet), but I have found this interesting website - Its an online dating forum for “high net worth” individuals.  I’m giving it a kick at the can and will report back on it.  In the mean-time, check it out for yourself - its free to join, so please join and message me your thoughts!

Check it out at:  http://millionairedollardate.com

I will report on this in a later post!

Bee.bee

Installing the Seagate Barracuda ST315005N1A1AS in a Dell Precision 670.

For those of you that have been following the series of articles I have written, you may remember that my current computer is a Dell Precision 670. It has dual Xenon 3.0 GHZ cpu’s with 3 GB of RAM.  It currently has 3 hard drives, an 80 GB fast SATA Western Digital Raptor for a boot drive, a second Samsung Spinpoint SATA F1 HD103UJ terabyte drive and a third Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB HD.  Both 1 TB drives are about 90% full with mainly home movies, photographs and music.  The computer is my movie and photograph editor and acts as a media server for the rest of the house.  All the photographs, Music and video are accessible anywhere in the house on Hi-Def Televisions, computers and laptops. Based on the above, I have needed some additional storage space for a while.  I also just purchased a Hi-Def camcorder of which I will review soon.  The old movie clips took vast amounts of space, but that appears minimal compared to the files that the Hi-Def camcorder creates!

I was not looking forward to spending any more time on the PC even though I needed the space. I was stalling. several weeks ago while downloading a song, the PC locked up.  Over the last 5 years, it had locked up twice.  This was a very rare occurrence.  I rebooted, and it refused to fully boot.  It got stuck trying to load Windows.  I tried disk repair, nothing. I tried the windows repair, nothing.  I tried the in-place upgrade, nothing. I tried reinstalling Windows, and it refused.  It would continually get stuck at the same place during the install.  As if, there was something wrong at a particular spot on the drive. I didn’t know for sure, but I needed more space, so I decided to purchase a drive.  The drive I decided on was the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB ST315005N1A1AS.

The motherboard only supports two SATA drives so I purchased an additional SATA controller card to control the additional drives some time ago.  Luckily, the PC can hold 2 additional drives.  The PCI-X SATA II controller card I purchased is the Syba SD-PCXSA2-2E2R which I highly recommend.  The Syba card is running the two terabyte drives and the WD raptor is connected directly to the SATA controller on the motherboard. The plan was to make the boot drive a secondary drive.  Hopefully I would be able to access the contents that way and then make the new drive the boot drive.

Unlike prior drives, I purchased the Seagate ST315005N1A1AS in a consumer kit.  It came with the drive, software, a SATA cable, a power cable and mounting screws.  The Seagate ST315005N1A1AS drive is a SATA II drive that I had intended to install onto a SATA controller.  So these were the steps:

1. Install the jumper onto the drive to disable SATA II operation

2. I opened the PC

3. Move the existing drive to the other free SATA cable

4. Plugged in the drive

5. Turned on the PC and entered the CMOS to make sure it would boot from the DVD drive first

6. Restarted the PC and booted from the Windows install disk

7. Told the MS Windows installer to partition the drive and format the drive. This took over an hour! I used a single partition and allocated it to Windows

8. Completed the Windows installation which took several more hours

9. Installed software that I use on a daily basis

That was it.  

The computer boots up faster than I ever thought it could.  The 7500 RPM Seagate 1.5 TB drive is much faster than the 80 GB Western Digital Raptor I had prior.  It does not seem that there is a price to pay by running the drive in SATA mode vs SATA II mode.  The computer is amazingly fast.  As a bonus, all my files are available to me on the that Western Digital Hard Drive.  No critical data was lost!

Great drive!  Highly recommended! 

You can see the other related entries at:

Home video transfer - Terabyte Hard Drive

I was on a recent trip to Chicago for work related reasons, If you have never been to Chicago, you should visit. Chicago is one of the wonderful cities in the US.  There is much to do and eat.  Chicago has some really amazing restaurants, beautiful parks and museums.  I have been staying at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers which sits on the waterfront.  I found myself with a little time on my hands.  It turns out that the Chicago History Museum has a tour on Chicago Line Cruises at North Pier Docks in Ogden Slip.  The tour is 90 minutes long and runs through the Chicago River.  The ticket center is about 1 block from the hotel and adult tickets are about $40.  The tour covers over 40 buildings along with the history of the city and history of those buildings.  It is very interesting and provides a great overview of the fantastic Chicago skyline.  $40 is a little pricy, but it is a good tour.  The address of the Chicago History Museum tour on Chicago Line Cruises at North Pier Docks in Ogden Slip:

465 North McClurg Court

Chicago IL

Some cell phone quality photos below:

Syria is the cross roads of three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe, and between the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Nile. Historically, the Silk Road led from China to Palmyra and then to Syria’s coastal ports on the Mediterranean. Because of this, Syria became a center of trade and a melting-pot of ideas, beliefs and talents.
During the Greek and Roman eras, Syria was a center for culture and politics.
Several Roman emperors were natives of Syria.

Damascus is the world’s oldest inhabited city. When walking around one is constantly reminded of this fact by the ancient architecture that surrounds you.

In Aleppo (the second largest city in Syria) a fantastic fortress rises from the center of the city where in the year 2,000 BC, Abraham is said to have milked his cow, giving the city its name.
The bazaar of Aleppo is one of the most beautiful in the East where you can still find vendors selling silk, scarves, perfumes, soaps, rugs and jewelry.
Aleppo’s unique location enabled it to be the link in trade between Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent and Egypt.
This unique position also made it the subject of invasions from the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans which all left their mark and influence on the city.
During the Ottoman period, Aleppo was an important center of trade with Turkey, France, England and Holland which also influenced the architecture which can be seen today.
Sam’an is 50 to 60 km outside of Aleppo.
It was named after the hermit Saint Simon (Sam’an) who was a shepherd from northern Syria who became a monk after a dream. Following Saint Simon’s death in 459, the Emperor had a cathedral built where the saint used to pray.
The cathedral had a column from which Saint Simon used to preach. The only part left of the column is the stone in the picture below. The cathedral was later damaged severely by an earthquake.
Maaloula is a village nearby Damascus where the houses are carved out of the mountain stone. Its inhabitants still speak Aramaic which was the language from the time of Jesus Christ.

Hama is well known for its large waterwheels which date from the roman times.

Wherever you go in Syria, you can’t help but realize that you are in a very ancient and historically important place. You see it everywhere. There are live archaeological digs going on everywhere.

Every day, someone uncovers something that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years.
Your trip to Syria will be very exciting, get ready for an adventure!

Syria is one of the oldest continually inhabited places on earth. Syria is home to many of the world’s oldest civilizations dating back to the fourth millennium BC.
Agriculture first appeared in Syria thousands of years ago which made it possible for civilization, as we know it, to begin. Men began building houses and establishing settlements. They studied astronomy and began singing the earliest known songs. They were early painters and sculptors.
In ancient Syria people discovered metallurgy and began forming bronze and copper into tools that proved useful for domestic, military and aesthetic uses.
The kingdom of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) was where mankind’s first alphabet was formed.
At Ebla (Tel Merdikh) one of the largest and most comprehensive archives of the ancient world was found that covered matters of industry, diplomacy, trade, art and agriculture.
The first colored glass was invented in Syria 3,000 years ago. In the thirteenth century, two Italian brothers came to Syria to learn the skill of glass-blowing, which they took back to Venice, and started fashioning “Venetian” glass.

In 636 AD Muslim Arab tribes entered Syria and brought the Arabic language and Islam which are both used in Syria today.

Please see part 2 of this series to learn more about Syria including photographs.

I hope you have received some useful information about setting up a digital photo site of your own. I have covered a lot of material here and assumed a lot. I have assumed you are familiar with HTML and publishing information on the web. We covered setting up PayPal and PayLoadz. We also covered JAlbum, a great utility for automating the building of your stock photograph site whether you want to sell photos or give them away for free. You should now have enough information to create your own digital photography commerce site. Please be sure to check the sites of PayPal, PayLoadz and JAlbum for any additional documentation or help.

JAlbum does not automatically create the code for your buy buttons on your web pages, but you can easily modify a skin to add purchase buttons for all of your digital photos!

The only things that need to change in your Paypal code are the lines that contain the item name and item number. Everything else will stay the same. The change to the skin is pretty easy.
The steps are:
1. Install JAVA if its not currently installed on your computer. It can be found here.
2. Go to JAlbum and download and install JAlbum.
3. Spend some time looking over the skins and choose one you like. Screen shots are available for may of them in each skin directory. If you installed JAlbum on your C drive, the path most likely is “C:\Program Files\JAlbum”. The skins exist in the subdirectory called “skins”.
4. Make a backup copy of the skin you want to modify.
5. Make sure you have a valid PayPal Account and a PayLoadz account. If you need to signup its free. Click the following PayPal or PayLoadz for signup.
6. Assuming you want the purchase buttons to appear on the index page, open the file called “index.htt” in the skins directory. You can easily edit it using notepad.
7. Paste the above PayPal Code where ever you want the button to appear.
8. Change the two lines:

<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=stockphoto name> <input type=”hidden” name=”item_number” value=151-5147_IMG.JPG> To <input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=$fileName> <input type=”hidden” name=”item_number” value=$label> Note that $fileName and $label are internal variables that JAlbum uses to keep track of the photograph name and the photograph filename.9. Save the skin.
10. Run JAlbum and make sure you select your modified skin.If you had JAlbum automatically place the files on your website, test it! You can also test the files it created on your local computer by opening the pages in your web browser.  You can download a sample skin with the above changes by clicking the following button:

Up to this point, keeping everything we have discussed in mind, adding many digital photographs to your web site and PayLoadz is still a tedious and long process. Everything we have discussed is useful and necessary, but it would be great if we could somehow automate the process of creating and adding the html purchase button code into our web site. It would be even greater if we could just generate the html for all those stock photos on our web site automatically. If we could just setup some sort of template and have some program generate everything for us.
Well, there is an application freely available that can do this for us. Its called JAlbum.
JAlbum was written by David Ekholm, Datadosen of Sweden and is available as freeware. With JAlbum, you can create a directory on your computer and arrange all your stock photography in as many subdirectories as you like. Once you have it all organized, startup JAlbum. You then specify the directory of your images, where you want the modified images to appear and a template (skin) from the list of templates that come with JAlbum. It will then create a new directory with index images and html files to display the images along with larger slides of your images along with watermarks and html files to display them as well! It even places photo information and navigation controls that work! It can even be configured to automatically place all the files on your website via FTP!
Be sure to spend some time browsing through the JAlbum web site.

In order to batch process the loading of digital photo information into PayLoadz, download this Excel file.

Once you load the file into Excel, you will notice that it has five columns: FilePath, Username, ItemName, ItemId and ItemPrice. Fill this spreadsheet and e-mail it to PayLoadz tech-support requesting (nicely) that they load this information into your account.
They are defined as follows:
FilePath = the absolute path to your stock photo files that will be downloaded by the user including the file name. Note that this is case sensitive! Case must match exactly!
Username = your PayLoadz username. This should be your e-mail address.
ItemName = the name of the item as it will appear on the download email messeage from PayLoadz sent to the customer.
ItemId = the Id number or catalog number of the item. It must be unique!
ItemPrice = the price to be charged for the item.

You probably have thousands of digital photographs and may now be wondering about the difficulty of typing all those filenames and paths accurately. Well, there is an easier way.
1. Setup your stock photographs on your computer in a directory structure that matches what you will setup on your web site. This can’t be exact because you have no drive letters on your web server (unless it is being hosted on Windows).
2. Start the Command Prompt from (in Windows xp) the menu “Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt”.
3. Change to the topmost directory of where only stock photos and directories of stock photographs are located. Some may refer to this as the “root” of your stock photo collection. In case you have forgotten, the command to change directories in DOS is “cd”. So, for instance, you need to change to the directory called “stock photos”. Simply enter “cd \stock photos”. If it is placed in something deeper then the top level, you may need something like “cd \photography\stock photos”. Finally, be sure that if you have multiple drives that you are on the correct drive.
4. Enter the command “dir /b /s /a-s > names.txt” and press the “Enter” key. When this completes, you will have a text file called “names.txt” that contains a listing of all your stock photo file names and their paths that you can import into Excel.
5. Import the file into Excel.
6. Use Excel’s find and replace feature to change the “c:” in all your paths to whatever you need to match what will be on your web site.
7. Fill in the rest of the spread sheet and save.
8. E-mail the spread sheet to PayLoadz tech-support at support@payloadz.com. Please be polite! They will e-mail you back when they have completed loading the data. This may take a do or so.

You are now ready to start selling!

As you were adding information about your stock photos into PayLoadz, the web page would create code for you to copy and paste into your HTML documents. If you paid close attention, you may have noticed a pattern.
Here is a typical piece of PayLoadz/PayPal generated code:

<form target=”paypal” action=“https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”> <input type=“hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_cart”> <input type=“hidden” name=”business” value=“emailaddress@mailhost.com”> <input type=“hidden” name=”item_name” value=stockphoto name> <input type=“hidden” name=”item_number” value=151-5147_IMG.JPG> <input type=”hidden” name=”amount” value=“9.99″> <input type=”hidden” name=”image_url” value=“”> <input type=”hidden”

Instead of copying and pasting for each of your stock photos, you could simply take the exact same code and paste it as many times as you like in your HTML documents. However, you will need to change 3 lines every time you paste this code.The first line that needs changing contains “name=”item_name” value=stockphoto name”. Simply change “stockphoto name” to the name for the stock photo file that you want to appear on the invoice.Second, change the line where “name=”item_number” value=151-5147_IMG.JPG” to the actual file name.Finally, you may need to change the price to match what was entered into PayLoadz. The price is in the line containing “name=”amount” value=”9.99″”.There is a fourth optional change here. You may decide that PayPal’s or PayLoadz standard “buy” buttons clash with the style and colors of your website. If so, you can change the button used by changing the line that contains “input type=”image” src=”../../res/x-click-but22.gif”, to the path and file name of the image you want to use. The example already has that change.How do these changes speed things up? This may seem like a difficult way of doing things, but after you read the next section on batch loading of PayLoadz information, you will see a need for this method. Also, in chapter 7, we will cover using a batch file utility to automate the process of preparing your images for your stock photo web site. In that section, we will cover how to modify things so that the utility will automatically place this code and make the required changes for you! This will save an incredible amount of your time!

Your PayPal and PayLoadz setup is complete. You can now setup products that you want to sell. This setup occurs at the PayLoadz web site. Use the PayLoadz product creation process for all of the items that are downloadable in your inventory so that both PayLoadz and PayPal can process those items. As you add each item, PayLoadz creates HTML code that you copy and place in your html documents. Place this code wherever you want a customer to select the item As you enter these inventory items in the PayLoadz system make sure you give each product a unique name and a unique item number.
Note that if this rule is not followed, you will not be able to process orders properly.
Testing
After adding at least one product to PayLoadz and setting up the PayPal shopping cart, test selling that product to make sure you understand the process and to make sure it all works. Have someone order a stock photograph or two from your web site.
Once this is all completed and working, and you start adding quantities of photos. You will start to wonder how you will possibly add all your stock photography into PayLoadz during this life time.
Well, its not obvious, but there is an easier way that is covered in Part 6.

Five Simple Steps
1. Get a PayLoadz Account
Visit PayLoadz. If you don’t need storage for your originals and will be using your current web site, you can sign up for a free account by clicking on “New Users”. If you need storage for your stock photograph files you can sign up for one of the available pricing schemes.

2. Get a PayPal Account Visit the PayPal homepage at PayPal.com and sign up for an account. The account is free but there is a minor fee for every transaction. You will need to sign up for either a Business or a Premiere Account. A normal personal PayPal account will not work with PayLoadz. If you already have a Personal PayPal Account, you can easily upgrade to a Premiere or Business Account at the PayPal web site.

3. Set up your PayPal IPN Preferences.
The PayLoadz system works in conjunction with the PayPal payment service by “talking” to each other through a web address after payments are made. This is an optional feature found at the PayPal web site, it is free to use, just follow the steps below:
a. Log into your PayLoadz account.
b. Click on the “Account” tab and copy the IPN URL that is specified on that page.
c. Log into your PayPal account.
d. Go to your “Profile” page by clicking on the “Profile” tab.
e. Click on the “Instant Payment Notification” link.
f. Follow along and activate the IPN in the account.
When the instructions ask for a URL, paste your PayLoadz URL that you copied from the “Account” tab when you were in your PayLoadz account (step b).
At this point your IPN is now activated and your PayPal account is configured to use the PayLoadz system.

4. Configure your PayLoadz Profile using your email address that you used when setting up your PayPal account. The email address is the “Username” at the PayPal web site.

5. Finally, Login to PayPal (if you are not logged in at this point). Copy the shopping cart code that PayPal generated for your account. You need to place this code in a webpage on your web site. Once this step is complete, you should have a fully working shopping cart on your web site ready for your customers use.
Note, the above process is also described in the document titled “Selling Digital Goods” on the PayLoadz website.

Your web site should be setup in a manner where small (hopefully useless) images (thumbnails) are displayed so a prospective customer has an idea of the image contents. There must also be some mechanism where the user can view a larger image if they are interested in the stock photograph. This larger image is usually rendered useless because of a watermark or some other semi-destructive methodology.
The user adds items they wish to purchase to the shopping cart provided by PayPal. Once the user is satisfied and has purchased the items, you owe that person the full un-adultered file for that image. An ideal way would be for that user to be able to get to the purchased stock photograph with out bothering you with requests or shipping and without having the ability to take any other files you may have.
PayLoadz offers this service. Signup is free and there are no monthly fees as long as you don’t qualify for one of their paying accounts.
PayLoadz works with PayPal to provide you the ability to sell and deliver digital items from your own website in a secure manner without your intervention!
The following steps describe how PayPal and PayLoadz work together transparently to make your website a “self serve” stock photo service station.

1. The customer, while browsing your web site, clicks “Buy Now” links to add items to their shopping cart. The “Buy Now” links are generated by PayLoadz and the shopping cart by PayPal. You simply added the links to your HTML.
2. When the customer has completed shopping, they click on the “Check Out” button to pay. Again, this html code was generated by PayPal and you also simply added this to your HTML code.
3. The customer is prompted by PayPal to pay by either using their PayPal username and password or by just using a credit card. The user is also given the chance to create a PayPal account at his time.
4. Once the payment process is complete, PayPal notifies PayLoadz of the transaction and what was purchased. This process is completely invisible.
5. PayLoadz emails the customer a thank you note that also contains a link to your product. Note that this link is not related to your website in any way. It is encoded so that the location of your original file is completely secure. Also, PayLoadz sends a copy of this thank you note and links to you the merchant.
6. The customer clicks on the link to download the file.
7. You receive an e-mail from PayPal letting you know that payment was received.

Over time you have spent many years working at your hobby of photography. During this time you have built a collection of photos that you are proud of. You think people might want them or even pay you for them. If you only had a way to distribute or securely sell them using the Internet in order to reach the broadest audience possible.
There is a way that is simple and quick for the prospective customer, but it does require some setup on your part. Here is one way to get it done.
First, you need that web site.
Assuming you have one and are able to navigate and view photos, you need to work out how payment for your stock photographs is handled. Two services on the internet combined will give you this ability.
The first is PayPal. PayPal enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily, quickly and cheaply send and receive payments online. PayPal will give your website the ability to accept all major credit cards without having to go to each credit card vendor individually and establish merchant accounts. PayPal also allows payment from bank accounts and money transfers. Paypal requires no special software, credit checks or any financial requirements and signing up is free!
Once you have PayPal setup, you still have one problem to solve. PayPal does not offer a delivery mechanism for your stock photos. It assumes you will be shipping purchased items in the traditional manner. The problem here is that you will not be shipping in the traditional manner, you are delivering files.

This is the first post in a series that will show you how to setup a website for the sale of your photographs. This technique can be applied to any digital content you wish to sell.

There are basically two ways of making great digital photographs.
1. You conceptualize an idea and then take a photograph to match.
2. Have fun by taking your camera where ever you go keeping your eyes and mind open for any interesting shots that you might encounter.

Get to know your digital camera
More important then the type, brand or quality of your camera is the knowledge of what the camera is capable of under different conditions. You’ll be surprised with the results you can get from a low end camera. The most important thing is to spend time playing with your camera under varied conditions. It is important to remember that you no longer have the constraints or costs of film. Force yourself to overcome your traditional feelings to conserve film. Try taking a picture of the subject several times at different F-stop settings. Try it again at different speed settings. If the camera has bracketing abilities, learn how to set this feature and practice with it extensively. Pay special attention to any odd effects you notice appearing under particular conditions and settings. See if you can reproduce them. Take the same pictures in the morning, mid-day, afternoon and night time and see what happens and how you can make the photograph work. Try odd angles and views. Try points of view that you would normally never use. The most important issue here is to have fun! After spending time and understanding your camera, you will begin to notice an increase in quality and interest of your photographs. You will soon notice images that you and others would want to use.

Smaller Cameras
One of the advantages of cheaper smaller cameras is that you can take them with you virtually anywhere you go. If you are walking around and see something that might make an interesting shot, you can easily take out your not so bulky camera and compose a fantastic photograph with it. Also, people don’t tend to take a small camera seriously when seen in public. You don’t look like a professional and you don’t get noticed. This allows you to take advantage of photographic situations as they arise. Small cameras lend themselves to natural subjects and situations. Large professional looking SLR cameras make people nervous and uncomfortable. Security guards are also less likely to expel you from a building or scene if they think you are photographing personal images.

Archiving digital images
After several weeks or months of experimentation, you will probably end up with a large collection of images that take up quite a large amount of disk space. It’s time to figure out some sort of a backup solution. You can try writing the images to CD, but if your digital camera is capable of 3 or more mega-pixels, the CD solution may be time consuming and restricting. DVD-Writers have drastically dropped in price and can store 7 to 8 times the data CDs are capable of. You may consider a tape backup unit or even another hard disk drive to copy and backup data. Hard disk drives have dropped in price and are very hard to beat.

Show the world
If you think you are ready to share your images with the rest of the world, try some of the on-line Stock Photo Web sites. Many of them accept digital photos from other photographers. You might even be able to recoup some of your initial costs. Another option is to create your own web site or use one of the major photo sharing sites such as Flickr Photobucket or Webshots to expose your works to the rest of the world.

How do you know someone has swine flu?

When sneezing, they say “achoink” instead of ”achoo”.

Please post your favorite Swine Flu Joke!

What do Kung Fu Panda by Dreamworks and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra have in common?  Read on and find out!

This book by Chopra clearly lays out spiritual approaches to daily living which are distilled into seven simple principles which can be applied to all elements of personal life to evoke success. . He explains the laws of:

• pure potentiality
• giving
• karma
• least effort
• intention and desire
• detachment
• dharma

and includes suggestions on how to apply these fundamental, natural principles if one is truly searching for purpose and a satisfying life. The basic idea is that personal understanding and harmony promote fulfilling relationships and material abundance without extra effort.

This is an abridged edition of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success where Chopra offers his readers a life-altering perspective on the attainment of success. Based on natural laws that govern all of creation, this book shatters the myth that success is the result of hard work, exacting plans, or driving ambition.

This pocketbook edition distills the essence of Chopra’s teachings into seven simple, yet powerful principles that can easily be applied to create success in all areas of your life. Filled with timeless wisdom and practical steps you can apply right away, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success is a book you will want to read and refer to again and again.

The author Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned leader in the field of human potential. He is The New York Times best-selling author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and numerous books and audio programs that cover every aspect of mind, body, and spirit. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages, and he travels widely throughout the world promoting peace, health, and well-being.

This was a very interesting book in that it seems to run counter to everything you have ever been taught by parents, teachers and role models.  Deepak Chopra’s writing style is unlike anything I have ever encountered.  Dense streams of very intense flowering language.  One needs to concentrate on the text, but it is easily comprehensible.  This is a major switch from western thinking and will require effort to achieve.

This book is very much worth reading.  I recommend it.

How does this book relate to Kung Fu Panda by Dreamworks?

In the chapter titled “The Law of Least Effort”, Chopra declares:

“The past is history,

the future is a mystery,

and this moment is a gift.  

That is why this moment is called ‘the present’.”

So, in Kung Fu Panda, when the panda is very dejected, the turtle states:

“The past is history,

the future is a mystery,

and this moment is a gift.  

That is why this moment is called ‘the present’.”

So, who stated this before Chopra? Chopra certainly stated it before the turtle in Kung Fu Panda.

Book Review of “The Art of the Start: The Time Tested, Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything” by Guy Kawasaki

So, I have this idea for a start-up.  Everything I read mentions how some of the greatest ideas for business occurred during difficult economic times such as these. I have been searching for a great book on start-ups.  Something to help me turn my idea into action. I think I found it.  Something to help answer questions such as:

• What does it take to turn ideas into action?
• What are the elements of a perfect pitch?
• How do you win the war for talent?  (not that difficult during these tough economic times)
• How do you establish a brand without bucks?

Guy Kawasaki, former marketing guru of Apple Computer, provides the answers. The Art of the Start will give you the essential steps to launch great products, services, and companies, whether you are dreaming of starting the next Microsoft or a not-for-profit that’s going to change the world. It also shows managers how to unleash entrepreneurial thinking at established companies, helping them foster the creativity that their businesses need to stay ahead of the pack.

Kawasaki provides readers with his field-tested insider’s techniques for bootstrapping, branding, networking, recruiting, pitching, rainmaking, and, most important in this fickle consumer climate, building buzz. At Apple, Kawasaki helped turn ordinary customers into fanatics. As founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, he has tested his iconoclastic ideas on real- world start- ups. And as an irrepressible columnist for Forbes, he has honed his best thinking about The Art of the Start.

I found the book to be a quick read with enormous amounts of practical information for pitching your ideas.  Everything from hiring the right people, defining your positioning and building your brand, creating buzz and creating a community, putting together effective presentations with the 30,20,10 rule. This book covers it all. 

Broken down by chapter:

• Causation:
•   Chapter 1: The Art of Starting
• Articulation:
•   Chapter 2: The Art of Positioning
•   Chapter 3: The Art of Pitching
•   Chapter 4: The Art of Writing a Business Plan
• Activation
•   Chapter 5: The Art of Bootstrapping
•   Chapter 6: The Art of Recruiting
•   Chapter 7: The Art of Raising Capital
• Proliferation
•   Chapter 8: The Art of Partnering
•   Chapter 9: The Art of Branding
•   Chapter 10: The Art of Rainmaking
• Obligation
•   Chapter 11: The Art of Being a Mensch 

Highly recommended.  Don’t start-up without it.

My kids love these on Sunday morning!

Ingredients:

• 4 beaten eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• Non-stick spray

Utensils:

• 2 non-stick cupcake pans

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with a wisk until smooth
3. Spray the cooking spray over the cupcake pans
4. Fill each cup halfway
5. place into the oven

Cook for at least a half hour.  The popovers should be golden brown.

Take out of the oven and pierce each with a sharp knife to stop from collapsing.

Tear one open to reveal the large hole inside.  Fill with jelly or any other condiment.