It’s interesting how many of us adopt the mentality of  ”you’re a product of your environment” without even knowing it. Where we grow up, who we see and what we’re told by our parents from a young age tends to form a big part in our future selves. And because we don’t realise this early on or more specifically, don’t actually get taught it, we unconsciously fill our lives with physical possessions and other distractions which prevents us from truly looking inward to ourselves and finding out what makes us happy…well, until it’s too late.

I can’t speak for everyone but I think  ”what makes me happy?” could be quite a common question amongst middle aged and beyond people. And it’s fairly easy to understand this given we have media and advertising denoting how we should think and feel. Think about all the luxury vehicle advertisements, with open roads, lush green scenery and the ability go anywhere. What do these advertisements represent? Freedom. Now what about advertisements for make-up and skin cleansers, with model-like women. What do these advertisements represent? Insecurities about one’s image. But do you ever see advertisements on how to look deeply within yourself and find out what makes you happy without some sort of product or service? Of course not, there is no direct monetary gain in long-term happiness and fulfilment, only short-term bursts of artificial happiness, so you keep buying the newest and latest car, the most new “natural” make-up or swanky televisions.

So how does one find happiness and smile with joy every day? It’s certainly not easy and will take time but the rewards are great, more significant than any 55″ flat screen television or luxurious sports car will give you. Kate Kendall has done two graphs depicting the effects of both short-term and long-term happiness:

Short Term Happiness

Long Term Happiness

I think both of these graphs are fantastic examples of why it’s important to focus on happiness in the long-term as opposed to the short-term. If you’re finding your life to be up and down regularly, then maybe a look at your happiness is in order!

If you’re finding that happiness is what you’re seeking, I doubt that there is one magical recipe to finding it but I do know it starts and ends with you. So perhaps start quietly questioning your daily activities and ask, “do I enjoy this?”. If so, really think why as you may be able to find a commonality in other, new activities. If not, I suggest you firstly work out why and then possibly move towards ceasing it. The more activities, gestures and thoughts that increase your happiness will not only make you a better person but appreciate life as it truly is.

For me, I’ve only recently begun walking the path of happiness. Seeking it has been difficult I won’t lie but I know it’s what I need to do in order to be truly at peace with myself.

Keep searching, keep sharing and send love to everywhere because you’ll only be rewarded even more in time.

The Internet is all about connecting. It maybe with people you know and have travelled overseas or with people you’ve never met, whatever the case it helps bring us together. The Internet has evolved rapidly over the past 10 years, especially with the introduction of social media, with websites such as Facebook paving the way for a better experience, allowing us to connect and experience a whole new world – at once. We can chat to someone, see their photos and read their thoughts all in one place, 24 hours a day, 7 days at week. You can connect with anyone, whatever time, however you want!

I’ve been using computers from a young age and experienced the Internet in many flavours but it’s taken me time to adjust to social media, as I prefer interaction on a physical level too. But nevertheless, I’ve jumped back on the bandwagon and want to start pushing more tweets out, various insightful posts and funny pictures. So, if you want to contact me, see who I am or just want to fill the void – check out my profiles;

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

The Mater Mothers Hospital cares for over 2000 premature and seriously ill babies each year in their expanded Neonatal Critical Care Unit. With 79 cot spaces including intensive care, high dependency and special care cots, this unit is one of the largest neonatal critical care units in Australia. In addition, the Mater Children’s Hospital treats children from all over Queensland, providing an exceptional level of care unmatched by other health care providers. However even with such a large unit, the demand for cots and extraordinary service continues to grow and the Mater Foundation desperately requires ongoing support in order to help these sick young children and babies.

The Mater Little Miracles Appeal helps raise these needed funds by holding various events such as the annual Mater Little Miracles 5Ks, which is held on Sunday June 27 at Southbank Cultural Forecourt. From families to friends to businesses, the Mater Little Miracles 5Ks is a well known event which everyone can participate in. All funds raised will directly go to the Mater Foundation to help babies and children in need. I have volunteered to enter the event with my colleagues at Reload Media (pictured below).

You can help these children and babies in need by sponsoring me or my team mates in the Mater Little Miracles Charity Run! It can be as little as $1 and every cent will go to the Mater Foundation. To show you support, click the “Donate” button below and follow the steps on how to donate, selecting your amount and runner. I look forward to your support!

Andrew Knight is back… and about time right? Yes, well unfortunately after someone had violated one of my dedicated servers a few months back, I had no choice to lock it down and restrict access to the hacker/s, trying to prevent further damage. After releasing my clients accounts, I had begun to start on my own, though while working full time, my time was very limited. As many can probably imagine, managing websites and especially blogs can be quite time consuming, thus leading to a restricted life!

Andrew Knight is now back however, so I hope to continue writing more thoughtful posts with my opinions included — as always!

To all valued readers, I apologise for the downtime and I`m glad to see you back!

Kind Regards,
Andrew Knight

After impulse buying, you generally get this shock of how much money you actually have spent and questions floating in your head like “Did I need this?” – well, I guess you could say I got these feelings but they were far from strong as I believe I made the right choice. This evening, after work sitting at KFC in my girlfriends car, I got an inclination to look on MSY (a wholesaler of computer equipment) on my iPhone, I”m unsure why but I did. I became quite focused on what I “wanted” to add to my technology collection at home, I actually forgot about my food! Anyway, moving forward. Looking through the PDF on my iPhone, I skipped to the LCD Monitor section, viewing what seems to be affordable prices for great LCD screens, especially top notch brands like Acer, Asus, ViewSonic, Samsung etc. MSY have always been a great provider of excellent brands at unmatched prices, not to mention I”ve been wanting to buy a LCD monitor for quite some now, it just hit me — I will buy a LCD monitor…I just wasn”t sure which one. With the clock ticking over to 6:00PM, I had only 30 mins to make a decision on what LCD monitor to buy, that means researching pricing, quality, feedback, design the whole works in a period of 10 minutes, find it on the website, review the specs then drive to MSY all in this limited time…could it happen? Well, theoretically, of course — anything can happen, however to make a proper, logical calculation, time would be needed and waiting the next day would”ve probably been ideal. However, since I like to keep things exciting, I decided then and there I will go with something I know, like and have seen much of — ViewSonic. That was figured out, so the next step was the size. This wasn”t too hard, given the fact I was upgrading from a 19″ LCD Television, so I wanted to aim around 22″-24″. From there, I picked out the ViewSonic VX2433WM which was $265. Quickly opened a new window in Safari, visited ViewSonic”s website and viewed the specs for the ViewSonic VX2433WM:

All in all, quite a good monitor, considering the fast refresh rate, high contrast ratio and a beautiful 1920×1080 resolution — with HDMI added too! For the price of $265, these great specs and a beautiful size of 23.6″, I was set. I quickly closed my Safari and directed my lovely girlfriend, Cheryl to MSY (5 mins away). We arrived at 6:15, I walked in, asked for the magical ViewSonic VX2433WM from the techno-guy behind the counter and swiped my beautiful red Westpac credit card. The transaction was now completed, I was handed my receipt and we were on our way! Now generally, any impulse buyer would know this is probably when you would start feeling regret, shame, unusual stomach upsets or simple statements in your head like “You”re an idiot for buying that.”, “Why did you buy that, you don”t need it.” – but, I didn”t. This transaction is of course tax deductible but it”s something I”ve wanted for quite a while, and probably needed too!

Sitting back as I type this long, word stuffed article, I”m quite surprised at the brightness and beautiful resolution. It really helps clear my head and with so many pixels more, it gives me that crispy background.

“What’s that you say? I just forgot” Memory – it’s one of the most important factors in our daily human lives, remembering multiple things from birth to the present, helping us achieve more and building a better life. As we all know there are many mind variations out there and memory is always apart of every variant. For example, visually enhanced minds in the right side of the brain (artist type people) are more photographic in memory, allowing them to remember pictures and scenes or particular instances vividly. Whereas left brain types are more mathematical and find themselves remembering numbers, equations and words etc much more easily. I find myself more in tune with the right side of my brain, the visual part. Even though I can do mathematical sums, remember various quotes from certain movies and spell efficiently, these are by far, not my strong points. To be quite honest, I find it harder to use the left side of my brain than the right. Makes sense right? Haha, of course it does.

In addition to the above, there are also more variables which contribute to memory, short term or long term for example. Whether it be someone who uses their left or right brain more, they may find remembering events just passed a lot easier than events which occurred a few years back, depending on how it was presented. For example, George A Miller, when working at Bell Laboratories, conducted several experiments with letters using both short term and long term memory. He concluded that depending on how the letters were presented, you could remember them better in shorter or longer term. To point out a simple example, take a look at the following combination of letters:

FBIPHDTWAIBM

Jumbled together with no meaning what so ever, right? To the average person, this would seem correct. However, upon further analysis, breaking down the letters into sets of 3, you are presented with:

FBI PHD TWA IBM

Suddenly, you’re brain clicks and remembers the combination.

Generally, the rule with memory is, the more you do it, the easier you’ll remember it. Hence why learning at day 0 is just as important than learning at day 100 or year 20. Even though you may believe your child or a young baby is not retaining anything you’re doing, by a matter of fact they actually are, and at some point in their life, they will most likely replicate your habit or particular style with their own.

For those who are intrigued by memory and the brain in general, I would recommend reading Wikipedia to begin with and take it from there. Many people over the years have contributed to this amazing article and all the ones following, not to mention all the websites and blogs devoted to the mind and memory itself. You can view the article at the end of this article.

In addition to all the above, to improve your memory or help retain more things, I would recommend eating certain vegetables and fruit, or well adding them to your current diet. These will help not only improve memory but your mental health and well being. As we all know, carrots are great for our eyes, but are there? It’s simply the vitamins that are carried within them which helps our brain and body.

• Cantaloupe
• Blueberries
• Asparagus
• Black Currants
• Kale
• Sweet potatoes
• Watermelon
• Tomatoes
• Red Cabbage
• Cherries
• Radishes
• Strawberries

Sources

Has anyone experienced their eyelid twitching? It may be for a few seconds or it could go on for days, depending on the cause. For the past few days, eyelid twitching is what I’m currently experiencing and as I work on a computer all day long, it has become quite of an annoyance, even though I’m well aware a computer should be the last thing I’m on.

Investigating this eyelid twitch further, I went to Google and discovered eyelid twitching is brought on by one or several things. Examining these causes wasn’t too surprising, in fact I actually guessed 60% of them. The most common causes for eyelid twitching (or eye twitching) are:-

Stress (*)

Fatigue

Lack of sleep (*)

Corneal irritation or injury

Prolonged staring or eye strain(*)

Neurological disorders

Possibly Hereditary

I have marked the causes with a (*) which I believe are causing my eyelid twitch. As you can see, these are probably the most common as we deal with all these factors every day, assuming you’re a workaholic like myself and sit in front of a computer. From here, I can choose to reduce the amount time spent on the computer and more time sleeping or I can continue my current regime and see what comes from it. Most people who are in tune with their own bodies and mind on a healthy state would probably do as I suggested firstly, however since my job entails working on the computer from 9-5, 5 days a week plus on the weekend, unfortunately I will be sticking to the second suggestion – pathetic right?

As I’m respectful for all the information I read and learn from, I just wish to state the above common causes were obtained from the Eye Doctor Guide. A very interesting website regarding the eyes (the pathway to your soul!). You can find more information here: eyedoctorguide.com/eye_problems/eye-twitching.html