Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I want to say Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year to my readers.

But I also want to ask you to remember what we are celebrating at this time of the year. Nowadays all we get from the media and the shops is how much money we should spend and how doing so makes us look good.

Christmas is a time of Joy as we celebrate the coming of Jesus, but most people celebrate the coming of presents. I am not against giving of presents, this was to symbolise God giving His son as a present to us, but now I think it has got out of hand.

Recently someone said to me we should celebrate Easter more than Christmas. Of course, without Christmas there would be no Easter to celebrate. What he was saying was that Easter was when Jesus died for our sins and that we should think on that more.

I know many people will disagree with me and say that I am a party pooper but I say that parties are great. Jesus did not come to condemn the world but came that we might have life, and have it to the full. Let us enjoy every day and be happy every day thanking God.

If you don't know God, you have never prayed and just want to know if God does exist then ask him to reveal himself to you personally. 'Praying', is just talking, so talk to God as if He was sitting next to you. You don't need to use fancy words, just say what you think, ask Him to reveal Himself. If you are sincere and mean what you say then He will show himself.

How I hear some say, how do I see God. Look around you, this web site (these are my photos) is a fantastic to see what God can do, and does for us, just for our pleasure. Why else do we need such beautiful sunsets and sunrises, such colourful birds and flowers, don't you think God made them look so good so we can enjoy them?

Any way I don't want to start to bore you by starting to preach. If you want to know God, ask Him to come into your life, He will if you mean it.

If you want to discuss this with me further then send me an email.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a very special New Year and keep showing us all your wonderful weather photos.

Paxo.

Real life recycling !!

Hello,

Today we had double glazing fitted into our apartment. There were two windows, and the windows on the balcony.

The old windows were taken out and the new ones fitted.

Now for the recycling. The balcony was done first and the windows were made of steel frames. The were cut out after the glass was removed and most of the glass came out whole. I proceeded to take the glass and bits of frame down to the skips for the bin men to collect I did not put it into the skips as I thought someone else might be able to use it and so this meant they would not have to go into the skips to collect it. Within an hour the glass panes had been taken away.

Next the wooden frames of the old windows and the frames that made the opening windows were taken out and I put these down near the skips. The frames themselves had had to be broken up to be taken out but I thought if nothing else someone could use the old wood as fuel. The openers were complete with frames and glass panes.

As I was taking the openers down a man approached me and asked if he could have the openers as he could use them at his brothers house. As I was really only throwing them away I said of course he could have them. The large metal frames from the balcony were taken down last and by the time the evening had come everything had been taken away by someone who could use what I had thrown away.

This is very good recycling as there were no carbon emissions used to actually recycle the materials, they were just re used.

Get Camtasia Studio for £0.00

I just want to make sure you know about a special that
Camtasia Studios is running right now.

I'm not sure how long this is going to last, but right now
you can get a fully functional version of Camtasia Studio 3
for a whopping price of $0.00.

They are giving it away in the hopes that you will upgrade
to their latest version 5, but you can easily use the
version 3 software for just about all your needs and not
pay anything.

If you don't know what Camtasia Studio is, it allows you
to create videos of the actions on your computer screen and
share them with others. It comes in very useful if you
ever need to show people how to use a piece of software
online.

Even if you don't think you need this right now, GRAB IT
anyway. Your marketing may not be at a place where you
need it yet, but eventually you very well could need this
software. It would be a shame to let this go now and end
up having to pay $299 or more later.

By the way, I am in no way affiliated with Camtasia. This
is just information that I received that I am passing along
to you.

*********************************************
Here is how you can get the software:

1. Download Camtasia 3 from this
link:

2. Go here to request an activation key
here

3. Install it right away and enter the activation key
**********************************************

Just thought I would pass this on to you all.

Non working Goodmans GNav10 Satelite Navigation

Click on image for larger view.


For those of you who have found this blog looking for ways to fix your non working Goodmans Gnav10 SAT NAV unit, you may have found the right place.

I was recently buying on Ebay and decided to look at someone's other auctions and came across an auction for the above SAT NAV unit priced at £11.00 plus £5.00 postage with the words "will not start" in the description and "sold as seen".

I thought about this and decided to bid the £11.00 and see if I could get it working.

My main thoughts were that it must have a rechargeable battery inside and maybe it has not been charged for a long time and it might be replaceable. Not ever having a SAT NAV unit in the past I did not know anything about them but would give it a go.

Time was up and yes I won the auction. I paid up and the unit arrived.

I tried to get it to go but no matter how I tried nothing would turn on. Plugging it into the mains I did not even get a charging LED to light up.

I have always been someone who like to know how things work, even as a child I used to take things to bits and my Dad would give me old radios etc. just so I did not dismantle his good ones.

So.... it was off to find a small enough screwdriver to fit the tiny screws on the SAT NAV unit. Having taken the back off and had a look inside I could see a rechargeable battery. So another screw or two later to get at the battery I had it in my hand wondering where I could buy such a unit locally. At the time I was back in the UK, (I live in Romania at present) and staying with my sister. I knew my sister's boyfriend was into electronics so I asked him.

Next thing I knew he was taking the whole unit with him to test things out saying that there is often a bit of circuitry that cuts off the battery as the type that was in the unit could sometimes blow up ??

Two days later he brought it back switched on. (Never really asked exactly how he got it working?) The battery had half a charge in it according to him. Now it was working that was fine BUT......... it was not an easy matter to turn it on and this is the bit I think you are all looking for......... To turn it on I have now to go through the following procedure:

There are two on/off switches, a main switch and a button. Both these need to be in the off position, and I need to either plug it into the mains or the 12v car charger to give it power. The charger light comes on showing red, before this goes out I need to turn the main switch to the on position AND press the on button to start it up. Once it is turned on I can use it as a SAT NAV unit and did so. I found it working perfectly.

Now because I did not have much faith in myself I ordered one from China, via Ebay, new. On this one too I noticed two on/off switches. A main switch and a button to turn it on. I think the main switch it to protect the battery from discharging itself totally. So if you are not going to use your SAT NAV system very often I would advise you to switch the main switch off as well as just switching it off at the button.

I never did find a replacement battery but that was because I got mine working. Maybe someone somewhere does sell one, if so this may be another way of getting a dead unit back to life. To replace the battery is quite easy. Once you undo the four very small screws that hold the back on there is a battery holder held in with similar screws, (two I think) to stop the battery floating about and once this is undone it is just a matter of unplugging the battery and plugging in a new one and reversing the above procedure.

I hope this helps someone to get their unit back alive and if anyone ever finds someone selling replacement batteries for this make and model please let me know, I may buy a replacement.

JARS Christmas appeal

Hello again,

I just thought I would let you all know that JARS, the UK registered charity I work for is having a Christmas appeal.

We are going to give out parcels for Christmas to various needy people in the area of Romania where we live through a Romanian registered charity here in Radauti.

If you go to JARS web site you can follow the links to the appeal page to find out more information and if you wish to give to the appeal.

The web site will be updated after Christmas with pictures etc. showing the parcels being given out.

Thank you in advance to anyone who gives to this appeal.

House update

Hello again,

For those who have read the post earlier, we have decided not to go ahead with the house part built that I mentioned in the post. The main reason is that we found that because we would be having the bottom house the furthest away from the road we would be paying a lot of money to put in the utilities. Normally if other people had bought the top houses we would be only paying the amount from the last house. We would have had to pay between 5 and 10 thousand Euro just for the utilities to be put in.

We had seen another house in a village attached to our town of Radauti but it meant Sue, my wife was going to be stuck unless I took her as she won't drive and there was no public transport.


Just today we have sen another house that is not quite finished but has more items finished than the others we have looked at. This one is in the centre of Radauti and has all of the outside finished, (except the garden areas) electric installed and the windows and doors installed.

We are now wondering if this is the right house. We are at present a bit short money wise but know because we are here to do God's will He will supply all our needs and if this is the right house we will get the finance to finish it. We hope to use the house we get or His work so we continue to pray that He will show us where we are meant to live.

I will keep you all informed here as to our progress in the house hunting.

Ian.

How to make your computer more secure.

The main way that viruses etc. come into a computer are through the Internet. One way to stop viruses and mallware is to use secure software. The way I have done this on my computers is to use non Microsoft software.

Only my main computer runs Windows as an operating system and I have stopped using anything higher than 2000. (I like the desktop and the way 2000 works anyway.) My other two computers run various flavours of Linux.

On the Windows 2000 box I have opted for Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird. One reason for this takes me back a few years. I had already started using this software on my computer and I was asked to supply and install a computer system in the church building I attended. I was to install all the computers, including servers, laptops and desktop machines.

This was done and the two servers were set up with SME server, a variation of Linux specifically for servers. One was set as a web server and the other as a file and print server. One ran for over a year without a restart and the other was only restarted after an add-on was added.

The desktops were set up with Windows 2000 and all went well for about a month. I was then asked to have a look at the setup as the Internet had slowed to a crawl. I logged in and had a browse of the Internet. All seemed well for me so I said everything was OK and left them to continue.

After only about another week or two I was told the Internet was still slow and could I have another look. This time when I logged on and everything was OK I asked what they meant by slow. One guy told me he clicked on a page, went downstairs and made everyone a cup of coffee and on his return found the page was still loading, very slowly.

I got out some anti virus and anti mallware software and found the bandwidth was taken up with many trojan horses and mallware serving up adverts for undesirable stuff, stuff no one had asked for.

After running the "anti" software and cleared off everything that should not be there I then installed Thunderbird and Firefox. Some people wanted to use Outlook so I had to compromise. At least that is marginally better than Outlook Express. I even set the icons that pointed to Internet Explorer to point to Firefox.

A few months later I asked how the Internet was getting on, to a response of "no problems since you sorted it".

That has shown me that this is the best road to go down to stop mallware and viruses. Of course you always need an anti virus programme installed to catch them.

Another little trick is to have images blocked as default in your email programme and if you need to look at them, you can load the images one at a time, and only from people you trust. If you don't know the person who has sent it, just delete it.

If you swap to Linux, then you get even less stuff coming through.

Our new house

Hello and welcome to a new part of my blog.

In this section I am going to record the ups and downs of building a new house. This is new to me and I had never thought I would do anything like this.

Since our move to Romania in December 2006 we have been looking for a house. At present we live in a two room apartment which we have had for a few years and has been great to use on our many visits from the UK to Romania bringing aid and resources to a charity we have been working with. It is still a great place but if we want friends to visit and stay there is not much room for them. Also with my love of motorcycles I don't have anywhere to keep one other than on the street below.

We have seen a house half built and were interested in buying it but we did not like the position. We have decided to buy the bottom plot and have a similar house built on that plot. If you go to our web site there are some pictures of the house we first saw.

We are at the stage of drawing up contracts with the builder for the work he will do and to buy the land and house.

When the house is basically built, (foundations, walls, roof etc.) then I will take over putting in windows and finishing off the inside. Even though I am basically a practical person there will be some things I will not be able to do. One thing that springs to mind is the fact that every time I have tried to plaster large areas I get the plaster on and then it falls off.

I am sure there will be problems along the way but also there will be the satisfaction and knowledge that I have built the house.

I will post back at different stages along the way though I don't expect much will happen in the next month.

See you next time.

An unbiased and detailed review of the only traffic exchange system that caters exclusively to blogs.

First, a little bit of ‘history’……..

Many blog owners have complained in the past, of being given an unfair deal when it comes to promoting their blogs on traffic exchange systems. The problem is, members of a traffic exchange have been ‘programmed’ to view websites only, as they surf for credits.

Because blogs were first regarded as online diaries meant merely for personal and social use, today, only a few truly realize its potential as a great marketing tool. So when most people surfing on a traffic exchange system come across a blog, they simply tend to ignore it.

One determined blog owner however, decided to do something about it. He loved using traffic exchange systems, and was convinced they were a great method for generating a steady stream of traffic. The million-dollar question then, was how to develop an effective way to promote his blog on a traffic exchange system.

That’s when it hit him! Why not build a traffic exchange system exclusively for blogs? That way, not only would there be less competition, (since it was going to be only for blog owners) but it would also offer a more targeted method to generate traffic. (blog owners are naturally interested in viewing similar blogs)

Nico De Baere was soon the proud webmaster of the first ever traffic exchange system on the Web that catered exclusively for blogs – free-blog-advertising.com. I’ve had the good fortune of reviewing it, and give below the low-down on all of its unique features and membership levels, for your benefit. Check it out!

The good, the bad and the ugly…….

First, the good: This is surely one traffic exchange system that really overdelivers on free membership alone. As for the paid versions, they’re simply mind-blowing! Here are some of the benefits you gain as a free member of free-blog-advertising.com:-

• 100 credits per month added automatically to your account. (unbelievable!)

• An amazing 4:3 auto surf ratio and a 2:1 manual surf ratio

• Link banners to your blog displays for greater impact (a totally awesome feature!)

**** Use their toolbar-ads exchange

I strongly feel this is the most outstanding feature of free-blog-advertising.com. In fact, it is so unique, you can’t find it being offered by any other traffic exchange system out there, that’s for sure. Members are encouraged to download their adware-free toolbar, and earn credits each time they open a new browser. The ads are displayed in the toolbar and refresh each time a new browser opens. A dropdown menu in the toolbar contains all the important FBA links for easier and faster navigation.

Now here’s what you stand to benefit when you upgrade as a Pro member:

• An amazing 3:2 auto surf ratio and a 1:1 manual surf ratio

• Email downline once a week

• Max 1 Waystation

And as a Gold member……

• 500 credits sign up bonus

• An awesome 2:1 auto surf ratio and a 1:1 manual surf ratio

• Email downline every 4 days

Nico De Baere also offers you an Elite FBA Membership where you get even more fabulous benefits:

• 750 credits sign up bonus

• Autosurf timer: 20 secs

• Email downline every 2 days

• And a lot more...

Special mention must also be made of the bonuses De Baere is offering, when you upgrade to the Elite membership package. It’s definitely not the run-of-the-mill bonus packs you find every webmaster offering these days for upgrading!

**** Plus, you’re given the option of grabbing a free blog that you can add to your existing blog network.

Now for the downside: Well, what can I say….I haven’t found any yet ! Really!

And the ugly: NONE (for now at least…!)

Well, there you have it ! An honest, in-depth review of the hottest and most sought-after traffic exchange system on the planet right now –

free-blog-advertising