July 8, 2008

Beating the Photographer’s Block

Just like there's a writer’s block, the same goes for photographers as well. You know, you just don’t feel like picking up your camera and going out to take pictures. You've just lost your drive to do it. But don't worry! There are some easy ways to tackle your block and get back on your feet. Read on to learn how!

Take Your Mind for a Walk

There's nothing like some fresh air to get you energized to start the day on a good note. Sometimes just a mere 15 or 30 minute exercise can do wonders. It will help to get your blood rushing and your brain going. It also helps to be in a new environment. The feeling of expansiveness opens up your tired mind and gets your creative juices flowing. If you take your camera along, you never know what great shot may come along next!


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Challenge Yourself

You should challenge yourself to simply get out of your house and try to take three pictures within a half mile radius. What's the catch? Well, the pictures have to be unusual and interesting. The more off-beat, the better! When thrown into such a challenge, most people’s minds tend to start working almost immediately. From picking out of the ordinary subjects to experimenting with new camera angles to juggling with the exposure settings, you end up taking some great photos and at the same time, you feel inspired to keep going.

Go on Photo Walks

It's sometimes best to just gather two or three fellow photographers and go on a photo walk. Don’t pick the subject, just go with the flow. You never know what you can accomplish with such an open invitation. Another way to beat your block is to give yourself weekly assignments. You have to promise yourself you'll do it and just embrace whatever comes up. That will get you going!

Maintain a Visual Diary

Whenever you spot a great photograph, a great setting for a photograph or a great idea for a photo project, simply jot them down in a diary and refer back to them when you need an inspirational idea. Make it a ritual and you'll thank yourself later.

Flickr Your Way Through

Nothing beats the Internet when it comes to inspiring the photographer in you. Just visit www.flickr.com and browse through all of the photographs. You can do that in one of two ways: either browse through all of the categories or stick to your favorites (sports, people, wildlife, etc). Doing that will get your mind going and before you know it, your block will be beat. Happy shooting!

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Hibernation – The Positive Effects

Some of you may know about hibernation techniques in Windows, but let’s take a look at the positive effects of using hibernation in your computer's life. You might know that each hard drive has an optimal life of some thousands of hours and each time we restart our computers, the hard drive gets exhausted. The hard drive dies down a bit each time, because although the PC manufacturing industry has developed greatly, hard drives are still pure hardware parts, which means they do all of the physical work in our computers.

Hard drives consist of several layers. Some of the layers have sensors and data finders and upon restarting your computer, these layers are involved in checking the boot sectors and hard drive surfaces in order to find important necessary data to run all of your Windows files. This is exactly the process you see after your restart your computer each time. You certainly have seen that even in its best shape, it takes some seconds and in some cases, nearly a minute before you can see your desktop picture.

The harmful effects of continuous restarting of your computer is not only limited to the time it takes before your Windows programs load, but it’s the matter of continuous cooling and heating of the hard drive, the CPU (central processing unit) and the graphic card fan. The ups and downs of these parts make your computer's life shorter.

Now, hibernation has introduced a remedy and a short cut. Instead of completely turning off the computer and disconnecting the power, hibernation saves all of your current information on a hard disk. Upon restarting, the desktop and computer return to the exact phase they were in before you placed your computer into hibernation.

This basically means you are saving battery power and lengthening you hard drive's life, as well as, other physical parts that normally have cooling systems like graphic cards. If you compare the seconds it takes to hibernate and restart from hibernation to those of normal turning on/off, you’ll see hibernation is great for computer maintenance. Hibernation is specifically great for laptop users, because you can save your valuable battery power far more.

Think of hibernation as taking a fast snapshot of everything present on your desktop and then printing them in a matter of seconds. Please note that if you decide to use hibernation for the rest of your PC’s life, you can ensure that you have considerably added time to your hard drive and the battery life of your computer.

Of course, there are certain times when we just have to restart our computers normally, like after installing new software that requires restarting, but for other times, hibernation is the power and time saving friend.

I'm sure this situation has come up for you as well. For example, you are very busy browsing the Internet and have opened several pages and folders on your desktop. You're also listening to your favorite music when a sudden family matter requires you to leave home for a couple of hours. Now, what a headache! If you turn off your computer and then restart it later, you’ve lost all the work you have already completed. This is a time when hibernation comes in handy so you can save your work. It will also save you time down the road.

In case you don't already know how to hibernate your PC, here is a quick lesson.

If your keyboard has sleep button, you can assign a hibernation command to it by clicking on Start, Control Panel, Power Options and choosing the Advanced tab. overnight propecia (XP users have to go to Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance and then choose Power Options).

Once in the Advanced tab, look down to where it says “When I press the sleep button on my computer” and choose Hibernate from the pull down menu.

The other way you can go into hibernation is by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the Windows task manager. From the top menu, click on Shut Down and select Hibernate.

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Microsoft Silverlight

If you’re on the Web regularly, you have probably heard of Adobe Flash (or Macromedia Flash), Adobe Shockwave (or Macromedia Shockwave) and Microsoft Silverlight. Oh, you've never heard of Silverlight? Well, it’s Microsoft’s attempt to rival Adobe in its Flash and Shockwave playing fields. Who knew?!

So, what does that mean for you, the user? Basically, if you don't have Silverlight, you'll need to install it just like any other application. Yes, it will take up some of your hard drive space, but trust me, it's worth it!

Here's how to install Silverlight:

1.) First, head on over to this Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

2.) Select Install.

3.) You’ll then be prompted to run the .exe file, so go ahead and click Run.

4.) After a couple of questions, Silverlight will begin installing!

5.) When it's finished, you’ll need to restart your browser in order for Silverlight to start working.

That's it! Now, you need to make sure you clean out the rest of your hard drive regularly. Before Silverlight becomes a big thing, it’s acceptable to uninstall the program after you’ve used it and then easily install it again later. However, in the future, it might be just as practical to leave Silverlight on your hard drive, so you'll need to be sure you have enough room for it. Either way, I hope you enjoy over the counter propecia this one!

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Temporary E-mail Addresses

So, tell me, do you often stop and sign up for different things while you're browsing the Internet? You know, maybe there's a contest you'd like to win or a newsletter you might be interested in. Well, if you do, you know you usually have to give out your e-mail address in order to complete the process. But what if you don't want to give your e-mail address out to that many different Web sites? Is there anything else you can do? Of course there is and that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Let's check it out!

If you're always signing up for things online, I'm guessing you'd get some good use out of a temporary e-mail address. Am I right? Never even thought of that before? Didn't know those actually existed? Well, they do and they're actually very easy to get. There are several online services these days that can provide you with a temporary e-mail address when you need one. They're perfect for when you're registering original propecia for something and you only want to use the address once. It also helps cut down on any extra spam mail that may come through.

Like I said earlier, there are several online services that offer temporary e-mail addresses. Most of them work pretty much the same, but you'll just need to do some research and find the one that best suits your needs. A few of the top contenders are Mytrashmail, ExplodeMail, Mailinator, Temporaryinbox and Maileater. You can find any of those by searching for them on Google or whichever search engine you like to use. Once you find one that will work for you, just follow their directions and you'll have a new e-mail address in no time at all!

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