Saturday, January 31, 2009

Jessica Simpson Gains a Lot of Weight

Jessica Simpson Launches Her New Fragrance


Jessica Simpson is still looking as beautiful as ever although she has reportedly gained a lot of weight. According to viewers, she is giving tight jeans a bad name. Jessica's trainer and physical fitness expert went on to say that "we all gain weight" and that its natural. Well, lets hope Jessica doesn't grow obese and comes out shining in a slimmer form.

UFC 94 Results

Keep your finger crossed for the UFC 94 Results. The historic fight between St-Pierre and Penn 2 is about to begin tonight and the venue is the Sin City, Las Vegas. Their last fight was in March 2006 when St-Pierre won with a thin margin.
However, Penn seems to hold two UFC championships and its going to be a tough fight when he faces St-Pierre again tonight. St-Pierre and Penn are both matched well in the welterweight and light-welterweight categories.

Helen Fisher - Why Him Why Her

Why him Why her, a new book by Helen Fisher explores the connection between personality types and finding your partner or the one you love. Why him Why her takes several examples from all walks of life about various personality types and discusses why certain personalities suit us more than others. So far the quest for finding the right person has been random based on physical attributes such as looks or success. Why him Why her explores and entirely new horizon where it compares each trait of a person to come out with a set of possible matches with the potential partner. Why him Why her is a must read.

Bring Sean Home

Bring Sean Home is a site created by David Goldman who is fighting to get his son back to United States from Brazil. The boy, Sean Goldman was reportedly taken to Brazil by his mother Bruna who masterminded a plot to never return to United States back to David Goldman.

David Goldman has been fighting a hard battle against some very powerful and influential people in Brazil for the custody of his son. Although, Bruna has now passed away, David still has not been able to get his son's custody. David meanwhile has ventured on all legal routes possible without any result. Sean is currently in custody of his step father João Paulo Lins e Silva.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

You Will Never Win ..... With a Small Ego!

Have you ever thought why some people are successful at whatever they do, be it professionally or in the personal sphere? What is that they have to keep them progressing and moving ahead in life leaving everyone else behind? Be it your boss, the rich owner of a sports car, the big business tycoon with quarter after quarter of profits, the gold wining athlete, the supermodel on the ramp, your colleague who is promoted up the hierarchy, the famous artist, the prolific writer who goes big, the doctor with a successful private practice or the graduate student with high scores. Wherever you look around, you will find such examples from every walk of life. It doesn't stop at just the big achievements in life, but permeates much deeper into our daily lives. Have you ever thought why your lawn looks shabby compared to your neighbours manicured lawn with trimmed hedges and flower beds? Why you still drive the pinto when your friends have graduated to the luxury Sedan?

Your first reaction to such questions would be something like:- heck I still don't earn enough to get myself my dream Sedan and my neighbour has more time at hand to keep his stuff clean. So, you satisfy yourself with the self-comforting thought that you don't have time and think about your financial handicap which keeps you from progressing in life. You carry on with your self-styled life where you go to work, expecting a salary hike 6 months down the line, cower down in front of your boss because you really need that hike and let your life get into that loop where you have been so good at supressing your inner-self against the external stimulus which actually helps it grow and make you successful. This inner-self is your ego and your self-comforting thoughts are the defence mechanism against anything which pricks your ego. With this defence mechanism you are effectively killing your real you and the potential to be as successful as you please.

Big Bad Ego ... or Is it?

Here is the real scoop why your Big Ego is bad ... for your boss :). Consider this situation at work. Your boss asks you to do some task. According to you something else would solve it in a better way. You are the one in the driver's seat and working on the problem for a long time. Therefore, you can better judge and take a decision. But what do you do? Well, your brain resolves this pressure situation and gives you 2 choices. Confront your boss and tell him to buzz-off (politely) because you can solve it in a better way or you can accept what your boss says. The second choice is easier to swallow because you don't have to confront your boss and it brings you a step closer to your pay raise. What you don't realise is that subconciously you are suppressing your ego with this defence mechanism. But this craddle is so comfortable that you never want to walk. In other words you never want to boost your ego to break the barrier and go achieve something bigger. Part of the problem is fear. You fear confronting your superior (your boss) because you might loose the pay hike or the job itself.

Let's analyze what would have happened if you did actually confront your boss. Effectively what you are going to tell your boss is that "I am the One" who decides how to solve this problem. Once you do this, the ball now goes back to your boss and she has to take a decision whether to accept your offer or reject it. This is where your egos clash. If your boss accepts your offer and assuming you did your job well, then your ego will get a boost. What about the boss's ego? Well, nothing really. The catch is, such situations don't happen everytime your boss asks you to do something. If that was the case, her position would be redundant and everyone would do whatever they felt like. But there is a flip side to this. This ego boost makes you a wee bit stronger against your superior in the future. In fact, such small ego boosts actually can make you so strong that you would be able to take your own decisions and break the corporate barriers and go solo start a company or something.

Grow a Big Ego
Take a look at all the iconinc winner examples at the start of this article. The one thing common with all is they don't have bosses. They have competition and superiors, but not bosses. And their only risk in losing is nothing more than a failure in life. Its not their job or the pay hike. Successful people make smart decisions everyday throughout their lives. They never like to play at par but settle only for "Advantage Moi". They have a really "Big Ego" which fuels their success. This kind of ego does not grow overnight. It is conditioned into becoming what it is. Its made to face "ego clashes" everyday and win over them.

Take the example of a tennis player. Every gamepoint, setpoint and matchpoint win inflates the ego and confidence of the player which also translates to her winning the championship. Its just like hitting the ball back at your boss. The difference here is that its a tennis ball and the boss is the opponent.

People with big egos are big achievers and they know that they want. Taking yourself higher is really in your hands and how you mould your ego. Try facing the world bravely and give your ego a boost.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Water Plants for your Personal Pond

There are many species of water plants which you can grow in your backyard pond or water garden. Many of these, like Water Lillies are flowering and provide color and variety to the pond. There are many species of water plants which are divided into 6 or 7 categories.

Floating Plants
These plants usually may or may not root at the bottom of the pond and their leaves float on the pond surface. Water Hyacinth is a good example of this type. Water Hyacinth also helps in keeping the pond clean of any algae.

Submerged Plants
These are species which survive entirely submerged under the water surface. They may root or may float rootless under the water.

Bog Plants
As the name suggests, they give a Bog like appearance to your pond and are usually grown on the periphery of the pond. Water Papyrus and Sweet Water Grass fall under this category. Bog plants grow densely and give a rough and rustic look to the pond.

Flowering Plants
These include Water Lily, Iris, Globe Flower, Marsh Marygold. Some of these flower during the night while others blossom during the day.

Wireless Electricity

Ever thought how clean and uncluttered things would be around the house without electric cables. Imagine the vacuum cleaner without the chord following you around the house. Your office desktop would be devoid of any electric cables and look clean and clear. In fact, there won't even be a need to have power points all over the house.

Well, all this is being made possible by a company called Powermat. Their technology works on the principle of magnetic induction where electricity in induced by a varying magnetic field.

E-Trade firm nets $1 million a day

Online currency trading firm Oanda's daily trade transactions amount to a huge $10 billion. Oanda charges 1/100th of a percent per transaction as brokerage taking its daily revenue to $1 million.

Users of Oanda's service bet on currency pairs like dollar-yen to rise or fall. Most bets are loosing bets but there are a few people who consistently rake in profits. According to Oanda, serviving in this business with razor thin profits is only possible by a technology enable solution which insures that a large volume of transactions take place through their service.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

£20 bn RBS bail-out package

RBS bail-out package stands at a staggering £20 bn which the UK government needs to borrow from public sector cash. RBS is also expected to raise around £10 bn to cushion its current financial situation.

2 Million Unemployed in UK

Unemployment rates have touched a record high in UK with about 2 million people reported unemployed according to statistics. The jump in the unemployment rate is the biggest quarter on quarter since the last recession in UK in 1991. The rate of unemployment rose to above 6% in 2008 November compared to 5.2% in 2007 November.

The rise in unemployment continued before the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and the economic downturn that followed indicating that there could be more bad news. Currently there seems to a high number of skilled unemployed workers and job redundancies figures of nearly 225,000 in the last three months.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Conficker Downadup Worm

The Conficker Downadup Worm is spreading like wild fire. According to Panda Security Software this worm has infected 6% of the scanned systems. Conficker Downadup Worm latched on to Windows system through an external USB drive or an MP3 Player. 

After infecting a system Conficker Downadup Worm starts a brute force attack on cracking passwords of internal networks. Like many other malwares it then uploads this data and may even download more malicious malwares.


Kelly Osbourne assaults journalist

Kelly Osbourne, daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne was arrested for allegedly assaulting a journalist. It seems the journalist, Zoe Griffin, wrote an article making fun of Kelly's boyfriend Luke Worrall. Zoe had insinuated in an article how Luke Worrall did not know what an earthquake was. 
Sharon Osbourne had a major issue with the article and slapped Zoe after confronting him in a nightclub.

PC sales in Asia-Pacific slow down

PC sales in Asia-Pacific have slowed down. Nearly 65% of PC sales come from China and India. The growth of sales in these markets have been the worst since 2001. What seems to be the cause are cheap low-end price systems and mini-notebooks which are driving the sales down. 

In the laptop business, HP seems to be the best performer followed closely by Dell, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba. 

Intel slashes quad-core prices

Intel has cut down its quad-core processor prices by as much as 40%.  The Q9650 series processor is now priced as $300 roughly. This cutback in prices is a result of arch rivals AMD amounting a pressure by reducing its processor prices. 

Sunday, January 18, 2009

YouTube on television

YouTube along with Sony and Nintendo has put YouTube on the television. A new website specifically designed for the television is online and available to users of Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii exclusively.

The new television website is a lot different from the internet version. On a typical website users navigate using text links or hotspots. On the television site, it becomes difficult to navigate using text links which would be hardly visible. To make the User Interface friendly, YouTube, Sony and Nintendo came up with large buttons and text that is visible.

Other features include an autoplay where all videos are played automatically in a loop giving the user a real television like experience.


Saturday, January 17, 2009

FDA recalls Peanut Butter

FDA has starting recalling peanut butter after reports of Salmonella poisoning in peanut butter products. Several people have already been infected with Salmonella Typhirium strain. Salmonella infection causes abdominal pains, fever, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

The infected peanut butter has been traced back to Peanut Corporation of America's (PCA) Blakely, Ga. facility. FDA has issued a list of several products which maybe using the infected peanut butter.
Following this several companies have recalled their products from the market. Kellogg has recalled its Austin and Keebler brands of products which may have used the infected butter.

FDA has advised consumers to refrain from using peanut butter products and dispose the infected products in a manner so that noone can eat them.

John Muir High School Trial

John Muir High School English teacher "Brandon Michael Landreth" stands trial on charges of murdering his ex-wife's boyfriend "Justo Cesar Morales" in Arcadia. Landreth had made several threats against Morales.
Morales was shot at when he answered a door call. According to witnesses the assailant then took off on a skateboard.
Landreth's friend Gerald Gracian and Landreth's wife Tania Landreth both confirmed that Landreth confessed to shooting Morales.