Info Freaking

We all know we should exercise (it’s good for our weight, mood, cognitive functioning and overall health) but when it actually comes to it, we all come up with the same lame excuse: “I don’t have the time.”

When we think about exercising, we usually think about going to the gym or having to run around the block. Few people would come up with an effective physical activity that would not require a lot of their additional time.
However, there are things we can do to introduce regular physical activity into our everyday regime without being taken away from everything else that we already do. These things will not require us to join a gym.

Here are some tips to help you build in a little more exercise into your daily routine with the minimum amount of fuss and disruption.

• Cut down the amount of time you spend watching television
• When watching TV, take periodic breaks. For every 30 minutes you spend sitting in front of the television or typing on the computer, get up and walk around the room.
• Keep a set of barbells next to the television and do curls during commercial breaks.  Having the barbells there will be a constant reminder to add some exercise.
• Get off of your chair whenever possible, both at home and at work.
• Stand up while on the telephone, in a bus, waiting room
• Use any opportunity to be active during your day by using the upstairs bathroom, parking at the edge of the car park, walking to the local post office, skipping the escalator at the mall, etc
• Skip the car as often as possible. When running to the carry out down the street or to your friend’s house, leave the car at home, and decide to walk.
• Take a walk during your lunch break. After having lunch, instead of spending the rest of your free time talking to your co-workers, go for a walk even if it is for five minutes, it still counts as exercise.
• Instead of calling your co-worker with a question, you better walk across the office to ask the question in person and of course update on the gossip you missed at lunch.
• Work out while in the shower; add some squats or dead lifts while waiting for your conditioner to take effect.
• Try replacing an after-work drink with your friends with a long walk where you can catch up with each other.
• Turn your household chores into an exercise class. Turn up the music and tackle them with vigour.

To be even more successful

I’m sure you could sneak in additional 20 to 30 minutes for a specific activity like walking, swimming or gardening. It doesn’t have to be 30 minutes all at once. Scientific evidence shows you get the same health benefits from breaking 30 minutes up into three 10-minute or two 15-minute intervals throughout the day. However, if you don’t do that activity for at least 10 minutes at a time, it won’t help you meet the recommendation for 30 minutes of moderately intense physical activity.

To stay motivated and keep on track

Encourage the whole family to get active by making it part of your social activities. Take a trip to the park instead of the cinema, or go dancing with friends rather than spending a night in the pub.

Keep a record of your exercise habits to check that you’re not slipping back into the old habits.
Don’t let a minor lapse from your exercise plan to turn into a major one.
Be positive.

As you probably know mod_deflate is Apache module which can be used to compress server’s output so you can benefit in lower bandwidth consumption and faster web page load time. Client-server connection time is also shorter so in some cases this might lead to lower overall memory/cpu consumption.
However there are drawbacks as well. Compression is cpu intensive process so it could slow down your server. It’s always specific situation creator of your decision whether to go with mod_deflate or not. Most people experienced significant benefits and you may give it a try to see if it fits your case.

Setup is quite simple. You can compile mod_deflate into the Apache or you can load it using following directive inside httpd.conf (Apache main configuration file):

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so

Then in the same file you may put these lines:

<Directory “/path_to_htdocs”>
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css application/x-javascript
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php
       BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
       BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
       BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
       Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</Directory>

Above directives instruct web server to compress specific media types and to compress only if client browser supports compression. Most modern web browsers do support compression. Anyway there are few exeptions, so they are excluded.

Finally if you don’t want to compress some web pages for whatever reason you can do it by adding following directive:

SetEnvIf Referer URL no-gzip

where URL is actual web address of the page or directory you don’t want Apache to compress.
When you’re done with configuration don’t forget to restart your web server.
Good luck!

The most of us already know what OTC drugs are and what they supposed to be. Basically, in comparison to prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs have to be used primarily for treatment of conditions which don’t need direct medical expert supervision. During last two decades, some prescription drugs switched to over-the-counter, since these have been used safely for years, such as Aspirin, Benadryl or Ibuprofen. However, a few OTC drugs have been withdrawn from market because of ingredients which caused serious allergic reactions, such as phenylpropanolamine (PPA) used in some cold and cough remedies. A while ago, FDA switched PPA back to prescription drugs, but in Europe the drug was completely withdrawn from the market.

The procedure of regulation to put OTC drugs on market is very expensive and regulated by FDA. The labeling is regulated by FDA but the advertising of OTC products is regulated by Federal Trade Commission (FTC). From the other side, the advertising of prescription drugs is strictly regulated only by FDA, which is the main difference.

Browsing around the web I found an interesting FDA document which explains actual OTC regulation procedure. According to David Hilfiker, one of FDA’s Project Managers, and his Power Point presentation, the average American has to use over-the-counter drugs on daily basis?! Well, at least they HOPE we use them daily (screenshot below). What does it suppose to mean? OTC drugs for healthy living?

More information available at FDA, or in case you cannot load the page, use Google Cache.

Except for recording screen videos, Camtasia can also be used for advanced video editing. When starting Camtasia you can choose to record a screen video or to import media. Whatever you choose, in the end you will have to edit your screen or imported video. You can see how it looks like when you add/import a video to Camtasia, on the picture below.

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As you can see, our sample video is Hancock. When we added it, it appeared in Clip Bin section. After that we dragged & dropped it to video/audio timeline at the bottom (you can also do that by right clicking at the video and then click on “Add to timeline”).

When we add video to timeline a new window appears, which gives us option to choose the dimension of a video. After that we are all done and ready for video editing. The main tools are located on the left side of the screen, as shown on the picture below.

Here are the explanations for most often used tools.

Title clips – Allow you to add a graphic and/or text, introduce your video, to set chapters within your video or to end your video with a credit screen.

Voice narration – You can record voice narration just by itself or you can add voice narration to a project in Camtasia Studio.

Zoom-n-Pan – Allow you to zoom in to specific area of your video to focus viewer’s attention on an area or show specific details.

Callouts – Callouts are graphics that can be used to call out or to draw attention to an important process or detail in your video.

Transitions – Allow you to smoothly move from one clip or one video to the next. For example:  You can fade from one clip to another, or you can use transitions to demonstrate the passage of time, or even simply to make your video more professional.

Captions – Allow you to add captions that display the text even under the video or as an overlay during the video playback.

And finally the “Produce video as…” option. This option allows you to produce video in many different formats like SWF/FLV, WMV, AVI, MOV, M4V, MP3, RM, CAMV and GIF format. Within this step you can also add watermark to the video and choose the save location. Your video is now done and ready for watching.

Probably the most critical part of a home theater setup is the positioning of the speakers and subwoofer. There are many factors, such as the type and size of loudspeakers, room shape and size, and acoustics that definitely affect optimum HT system setup.
However, there are some general speaker position guidelines that can be followed as a starting point, and for most basic installations, they’re sufficient.

Position of Front Speakers

First, place the Front Center Speaker directly in front of the listening area, either above or below the TV screen.
After that, place the Left and Right Front speakers equidistant from the Front Center speaker, about a 30 degree angle from viewing (listening) place, i.e. couch, chair, etc.

Position of Rear Speakers

Left and Right Rear (Surround) Speakers should be placed to the left and right side, just to the side or slightly behind the listening position, which is about 90-110 degrees from the viewing (listening) position. These speakers can be elevated above the listener.

Position of Subwoofer

Place the Subwoofer in front, to the left or right of the television. Place it in corner of the room to get good bass. Also, as you move the subwoofer closer to a wall, the bass output will become stronger. The worst place for a subwoofer is in the middle of a room, so avoid doing that. Also, avoid rooms with concrete floors and walls if possible. If not, add studs and one layer of wallboard to the walls of the room to aid absorption.

On the picture below  Home Theater 5.1. System setup is presented with subwoofer placed in corner for best enhancement.

Home Theater 5.1. System setup

Note: The following example is provided for a typical square room. You may need to adjust your placement for other room shape and size, types of speakers, and additional acoustical factors.

Finally, once you’ve set up your Home Theater System, you have only one thing to do – to enjoy.