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.

I continue to dwell on the negative effects money causes us personally and as a nation. As with my previous post about the Monetary System, I’m still in strong belief money has forced us to become over aggressive and keeping our minds off track much more important things like sustaining longer and healthier lives. Having no money causes different symptoms to different people, however one statement still applies to all – “In order to survive, one must possess some form of currency in the monetary system.” - Basically, no matter where you live, you will need money to a certain extent due to our continuous efforts to build our nation around money.

Money has long since existed, just in many different forms to how we see it now. According to Wikipedia, currency started being used as early as 3000 BC, using specific amounts of barley in a metric measurement such as silver, bronze, copper etc would be used later on. Then it was reported the Lydians became the first to introduce the use of Gold and Silver in a coin form. From there it became known the first stamped coins were minted around 650-600BC. If true wisdom does exist, it would not come from one man, it would be from history and how we’ve learnt not to make the same mistakes again, or have we? Have we forgotten how many wars money has caused, how many people have been killed? Not to mention time wasted squalling over money rather then focusing on the growth of humanity.

My father once told me, “Andrew, I’ve tossed money back & forth so many times, its better with, than without.” and the way the world is growing, this statement is not only valid at present but will be for many, many years. People say money doesn’t bring happiness nor wealth within, however many fail to realise our world is constantly moving and following the path of money, so in order to gain access to needed things like food, shelter and clothing, you need money and then from there, you can build up within yourself and not focus on negatives like your bad financial status.

You still believe you don’t need money for happiness? Picture this, you and your partner are taking a walk along the river, there is an ice cream truck and you make your way to the board. You want to buy two big ice creams, one for your partner and one for yourself, it’s a beautiful day and it will taste divine so you take your wallet out and open it – BAM, empty. How would you feel? Not only embarrassed but also ashamed of yourself, not able to provide something so simple. This will be stored in your sub-conscience and over time will dampen your confidence.  Now this maybe a simple story however it’s critical to understand money can and will bring you happiness, if managed and used correctly.

Money is important and is a nesscceity but don’t let it run your life, make it work for you. To make money work for you, you need to know the process of ‘time leverage’, I will discuss this at a later date. Once you have a few simple steps on how to manage money, you’ll feel better, your partner will feel better and you’ll be more happy! Stay positive and keep strong.

After the recent incident of an Iraqi Journalist throwing shoes at President Bush last Monday, 15th of December, a developer by the name of PopJam released a funny interactive game titled “Sock and Awe!”. The aim of the game is to throw as many shows at President Bush within the specified time limit, using your mouse to move the shoe left and right and clicking to throw.

It’s a very quick game and really is just a novelty type of thing, you wouldn’t play it for hours unless you felt some ridicioulous desire to haha. You can play the game by visiting the website below:

Sock and Awe – http://www.sockandawe.com

Fathers 4 Justice – f4joz.com (F4J) has shown an interesting article from News.com.au regarding the new proposed Australian Internet Web Filter, which simply put, will strip the last source of freedom from people and with reduced speeds of up to 25%. I’ll make it easy, just think of your web page loading a few more seconds later or your downloads a few more minutes later…now times that by a few thousand times you load a website or download a song, starting to add up now? Not to mention, if the government takes control of our web, then they can deliberately block websites to their own advantage – scary stuff hey?

The ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) also noted that web filtering software blocked the wrong content up to 25 per cent in most studies. Think of your local community centre or a blog about gardening could just get blocked, for absolutely no reason. Sure, there is some “nasty” stuff out there and for that, you need the right anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, however forcing you not to see websites is a restriction, a restriction that should not be put in place!

There were hundreds of people who attended protests in capital cities around Australia on Saturday, 13th of December, voicing their opinion on the above proposed internet filtering scheme by Kevin Rudd.

I’m far higher than politics and don’t wish to be involved in any shape or form, however Mr. Rudd seems to be doing a good service so far, however if this goes ahead, he will no longer have my support – that’s a promise… and you can take that to the bank with interest on top!

Full article on Fathers 4 Justice Australia:

http://www.f4joz.com/news/newspage.php?yr=8&id=10291

Google, the largest search engine in the world, revealed on the 29th of November they managed to move and sort 1 petabyte of data (1024 terabytes) to over 48,000 hard drives in just 6 hours and 2 minutes. Breaking it down, that’s 1 terabyte of data (1024 gigabytes) in 68 seconds, crushing the previous record of 1 terabyte across 910 computers in 209 seconds.

So with so much data being moved, so quickly, there is always a chance of something not going right and in this case, Google  was on the ball. They have triple redundancy, keeping the possibility open that something could happen, fortunately, nothing did. Though you may ask, with triple redundancy, would’ve this slowed things down? Not really, since storing may not be part of the sorting algorithm that was recorded (and storing the data could have still been ongoing after the sort had been completed). Though this is purely speculation as we’re unsure of Google’s full play.

Though all this was a milestone for the technology world, demonstrating how effective our technology is becoming and how quick things can be moved with the right hardware and knowledge. Google did push the boundaries for various reasons with the main one being to help further our knowledge to create better systems to make things like these seem small in the future.

Written based on: http://www.web-app.net/?Google_Breaks_Speed_Record_Sorting_1PB_Data_In_6_hours_%2F&action=viewnews&id=43

Consumerism has hit me hard recently, making me get on my knees and grovel for a popular materialistic item, the iPod Touch – 2nd Edition. Even with our current economic situation with world debt being increasingly high and money dropping in value by the hour, the iPod is still referred to as an liability due to the fact it’s not making me any money and posesses the possibility of breaking down in some way.

I have lost some money surplus by giving in to my feelings which has been invoked by multiple things like incredible marketing. Not to mention, my own desire to hold something which has been beautifully crafted to perfection, with a sleek steel case and a 480×320 touch screen – it’s pure all over.

Pushing that aside, I will now be adding money to a personal fund, details I can’t exactly disclose however I can assure you it’s beneficial to my future and will secure profitable ventures – exciting! I will be removing my saving bar and replacing it with a new bar representing the money added to the fund, named “Success Fund”.

Hayden Panettiere, a beautiful and attractive woman who is mostly known from the hit TV series, Heroes. Hayden Panettiere is one of the few women celebrities who {usually} looks natural and composed even though there are photos of her showing her “fake” pose. She seems genuine but how do I know, I can only see the outside — but I guess that’s enough for me!

Hayden Panettiere was born August 21, 1989 and at only age 19 she became a very well known face in TV. Hayden Panettiere is known for her hit role in Remember The Titans as Sheryl Yoast and Maddie Harrington in Ally McBeal, doing 11 episodes.

Hayden Panettiere was born a model and actress, starting her modelling at only 4 months old! At 11 months, she appeared in commercials for popular shows like Playskool. Continuing to grow up, Hayden Panettiere appeared in the soap opera One Life to Live as Sarah Roberts then later as Lizzie Spaulding on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light between five and eight years old.

From there Hayden Panettiere boosted her career from being a wonderful child, straight into being a teenager and landing in Heroes as Claire Bennet. While on the set of Heroes, Hayden Panettiere met Milo Ventimiglia, who plays co-star character, Peter Petrelli. This was known in April 2008 during an interview on the BBC’s ‘The Chris Moyles Show’ to promote the second season of Heroes when Ventimiglia officially confirmed that he is dating Hayden Panettiere.

Last month I posted some Sexy Hayden Panettiere Wallpapers for everyone to download and admire Hayden’s beauty on their desktop. I have recently added more to this collection and recommend you visit my previous post. There is multiple resolutions available, all to the best quality I could find so enjoy!

If you have anything you would like to add about beautiful Hayden Panettiere, please do so by commenting. I would like to hear your thoughts!

I have a few favourite women out there, the number one being Hayden Panettiere. I’m always swapping and changing on a regular basis, depending on my mood. My friend and colleague, Chris Hamilton has recently put up his Top Ten Sexiest Women Of 08 and I think he’s done an excellent job, however my Hayden is ranking 2nd..what shall thou do in this crisis!

So in order to counter this, I have written this article to provide my viewers something even better then a top ten ranking chart, something that of course will allow you to get my favourite Hayden Panettiere on your beloved computer and get your mind indulging in those fantasies of yours…and that would be her sexy wallpapers — of course!

Sexy Hayden Panettieres Wallpapers are organised by resolution then photo. If you don’t know how to download a wallpaper, follow these simple steps:

• Click on your chosen wallpaper with your resolution (Click here to find your screen resolution)
• Wait for the wallpaper to finish loading
• Right click your wallpaper and choose “Set as Desktop Background” In Mozilla Firefox or “Set As Background” in Internet Explorer
• Done! You now have one Sexy Hayden Panettiere Wallpaper on your computer.

Update 29/1/2009: I have updated my collection of Hayden Panettiere wallpapers below. I have also extended the resolution range to 1920×1440 for all those with high resolutions. These wallpapers have been personally chosen by me, if you wish to add any, please contact me and we can add yours up too!

1024×768
1280×1024
1600×1200
1920×1440

I will be trying to add more Sexy Hayden Panettiere Wallpapers under various resolutions so stay tuned for further updates.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to speak your word. You can comment on this post or contact me via my contact form located above.

Rockstar officially released a month ago they would be bringing the multimillion dollar game, Grand Theft Auto IV to PC and have just announced it will be using “Games for Windows Live” for its multiplayer mode. GTA4 PC which hits shelves this November 18th, will not only boost sales for Rockstar once again but will allow users to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers with their strong belief it will help build a strong foundation for the PC online community.

I personally own a copy of GTA4 for PS3 and have found the experience to be excellent as always expected, however there are always limits on consoles, not being able to modify certain aspects like graphics and downloading expansions/mods for the game like skins, new missions etc.

If you’re one of the unfortunate ones who didn’t have a large amount of cash lying about for the latest beefy consoles and have been waiting for GTA4 to be released on PC, you will undoubtedly be impressed by the features coming exclusively to PC.

GTA4 PC will include DirectX, expanded online multiplayer and in-game recording — about time? Now you can record all those superb moments where previously you would’ve said, “Oh did you see that?!” and followed a short reply, “No?”.

From my experience, playing a game with a good storyline, loads of missions and a endless amount of free gameplay is great, but going that one step further and adding multiplayer, allowing you to connect to the rest of world will make any game an enjoyable one, especially GTA4. Previously, online was only obtainable by a unofficial 3rd party who wanted to create a whole different world, now Rockstar has inbuilt that into GTA4 and has made it just that much better.

Genius

Genius is a new implementation by Apple which has two parts attached. Firstly is the Genius Playlists which helps save time by creating new playlists based on your song selection. You pick a song, hit the Genius button and voilà!, you have a playlist with all your songs that go together well with your current song selection – neat.

How iTunes Genius Works

The second part is the Genius Sidebar which will recommend songs based on your current playing song. Basically, it introduces new songs which are almost identical with your selected song. It won’t recommend songs that are already in your library. As you can see on the left hand side, (Click to view full image) you choose a song, hit the genius button and it will automatically find you related songs whether that be in your library or available for download through the iTunes store. I would have to say that this is a great marketing tool, allowing different artists to be heard depending on people’s tastes. It doesn’t force you to purchase the song, but it gives you incentive due to it’s relational to what you’re playing. Working on emotion/feelings – smart.

To read more about iTunes 8 new features, visit their website by clicking here and/or to download iTunes 8, click here.