Mental Toughness - Starting Strong

May 15th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

The keys to getting a good start happen prior to taking the court. You need to be well rested, eat healthy meals, and have activity the day before to make for a good nights rest. Feel good about yourself by wearing clothes you feel confident and comfortable in. The process on picking out clothes should be done the night before.

Make sure to wake up with plenty of time to get dressed, eat a smart meal that is light but will last through that match. The meal must be enjoyed. Make sure that you have enough time to get to a match 20-30 minutes before it starts. Your drive must be relaxing with the focus and excitement based on the fun you will have on the court. All of these elements will improve your match results prior to your arrival.

Once you arrive the key is to warm yourself up. There is a chance a court may not be available so make sure to carry a few items to help. Carry a jump rope to warm up your entire body before the match, be careful to not overdue your pre-match warm-up.

Second have a sock racket in which you can use to warm up your shoulder and arm for serving. Last have surgical tubing to stretch your rotator cuff and arms. If you forget these items take a slow jog with side shuffle and grapevines, swing your racket in a relaxed serving motion, and pick a line to jump forward and back and side to side over.

Once you reach the court introduce yourself to your opponent(s) spin the racquet for serve, return, and sides. This will get the match started as soon as the warm-up concludes. Start the warm-up with short court first to get control of your shots. Use topspin and underspin on your shots up from the service line for 2 minutes. This will prevent the on court warm-up from being a ball chasing fest.

Once you are controlling your shots have one player back up to the baseline with the other starting at the net. The player on the baseline should hit controlled ground strokes as the net player is hitting controlled volley’s back. After 2 minutes ask for some overheads and this will give the baseliner a chance to warm-up the lob. Take as many overheads as you need as this is good for your serve warm-up also. Once finished switch baseline and net positions and repeat. You should have 2 minutes left for serves.

Players should serve at slow speeds to warm-up and if you are making the practice serves continue to increase your speed until you start to miss and then slow it down. Practice placement over power with these serves. Each player should hit, catch the serve, and hit back this is not time to practice returns unless you are first to return and you feel confident in your serve placement. You and your opponent are now ready to start the match. If you followed all of the above you are well rested, your body is well nourished, and you are properly warmed-up to start.

Beth McCaskill

http://www.TennisPlayersNetwork.com

Contact: Beth McCaskill
Phone: 678-622-3708
Email: BethMcCaskill@TennisPlayersNetwork.com
URL: http://www.TennisPlayersNetwork.com

Preparing Your Computer for Overclocking

May 14th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

There is certain steps that a person needs to take before they overclock their PC. As with any process that involves the main components of your computer (such as upgrading), there is risks. Preparing ahead of time will not only make the process easier but will help ease the pain if something happens, such as your computer crashing.

The first step that a person should do before overclocking their computer is to make a backup of all files stored. Most computer systems have a built-in program that allows you to make backup copies of your files and even your operating system. If you don’t have a program to make the process of backing up your files easier, you can simply create a disk with copies of your important files. Be sure to include your documents, photos, and anything else that you would hate to lose.

It is also a good idea to start with a fresh system, so if your computer has the option to return to factory settings, do so. Having a fresh system will allow a person to see the changes better and will allow the person to be able to view any issues that may arise better.

After making a backup of your files, you will want to do some research and find out exactly how much overclocking your computer can handle.

There is many websites on the internet that provides a list of the results of other people’s overclock. You can do a search for your particular CPU and find out exactly how much others have successfully overclocked without causing damage. You can also read about instances where they overclocked too much.

It is good to find out what the safe overclocking limit is for your particular CPU in order to prevent damage.

Another action that a person needs to take before overclocking is to find out exactly what it will take to reach the intended level of overclocking. There is several websites on the internet that can provide you with the exact method on how to find this out. The most basic method is to multiply the multiplier by the bus speed and the result is the CPU speed. Then you would just compare your results to the ones you obtained about the safe amount of overclocking.

It might take a little adjustments but a person will soon find out the exact solution to reach their goals.

Being prepared before starting any task can greatly affect the outcome. By researching and studying the task at hand, a person will have a better understanding on how to reach their goal.

Since there is much risks associated with overclocking a computer, it is extremely necessary that a person is fully prepared and can dedicate their full attention to the process. Even though the actual process of overclocking a computer is simple, the issue is monitoring the status of the computer and watching for overheating.

With even the best programs available for temperature monitoring available, a person must devote their full attention to watching for warning signs of possible problems. That said, being prepared is just one way to keep on track and be able to devote that attention to where it is needed.

In review, there is a few steps that every person should take before overclocking their computer. Not only will these steps be helpful in saving time during the process, but will allow the person the opportunity to devote their attention to the more critical tasks such as monitoring.

Billy Zype is an overclocking expert. You can check out his website at http://www.hotoverclocking.com

Download World Of Warcraft Full Version Computer Game, Free

May 13th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

World Of Warcraft is one of the best single and multi player computer games every designed. There are multiple ways in which this game can be downloaded for free on the internet. I have done some research and the tips should save you a lot of research.

Best Ways To Download World Of Warcraft Full Version Free:

1. Game Pass From Real Arcade. The free trial version can simply be registered again and it allows free and unlimited downloads of full games. Games including World of Warcraft and Gears of War. It really is the best service online at the moment for gaming fans.

2. Kazaa. Offers free full version download of the game and it downloads rather quick, often only taking a couple of hours. The only bad thing is this software is not allowed in all countries and often the files can contain viruses and other forms of spyware.

3. Games Warehouse. They charge a little bit for new games. But often with games around two years old from the original release date, they will allow it to be downloaded for free. This is my favourite service, as it also has updates for the world of warcraft with patches.

4. Morpheus. The quality of this service has dropped off a lot lately. Although it still does offer the game free. The download time is slow as well. But it is a valuable alternative all gaming fans will like.

Often the quality of these downloads are near perfect and the only thing you have to check up on is updates and patches to improve the quality of world of warcraft especially when playing online.

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What Happened To My Hard Drive Space?

May 12th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

Today I wanted to share with you a question sent in from a reader who asks; “I just bought a 160GB hard drive to replace my old 80GB drive. Installation went fine however, XP only recognizes 149.01GB what’s the deal??

Well this question gets asked quite often and it brings with it a lot of arguments and confusion.

So what’s the deal?

Well your hard drive is advertised as having a 160GB capacity, but your computer shows only 149.01.

This discrepancy is the result of having two methods of measuring capacity. Computers are binary, or “base two,” mathematical systems, and in a binary world a kilobyte is 1024 bytes (2 to the 10th power). When computers were new, the designers referred to this as a “kilo.” The public, however, understood kilo to mean thousand, (decimal) and thought that 1000 bytes should equal a kilobyte.

So, two different measurements of hard drive space were born. In 1998, (IEC) weighed in, defining 1 “gigabyte” as 1 billion bytes. Hard disk manufacturers agree, marketing their products using the rounder decimal value instead of the binary system. So, your drive is labeled as decimal “giga” and your PC reads binary IEC’s term, “gibi”. (We wont get into those foolish names today.)

So essentially you are not being ripped off. The number of bytes on the hard drive is the same weather you use decimal or binary. Lets use a scenario often used to help better understand this conversion. This is similar to the difference between 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the same temperature, but will be reported differently depending on the scale you are using. I hope I have cleared up any confusion you may have had regarding the “missing” space on your hard drive.

Have a Tech question you want answers to? Computers at a Glance will answer your questions within 24 hours!

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Removing Spyware From Your Computer

May 11th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

Spyware is hard to detect on the system but there are signs that suggest you are having infections. These signs are: various pop-up windows that disturb your surfing, your system is becoming slow to respond or freezes or your web browser’s home page changes from time to time. If you suspect the existence of spyware on your computer than you should run remover software to clean up your PC.

What is spyware?

According to Wikipedia spyware is a malicious software that is installed on your PC - in order to perform various tasks or take partial control over it without your consent. It can get installed while you are browsing the web or installing software such as file sharing or video downloading software.

What you can do about spyware on your computer?

Removing spyware can not be done once and for all. Using removers must be a weekly habit to delete these infections from your personal computer. In much the same way you clean your home once in a week you will also need good tools to clean spyware out of your PC.

All removal tools do a scan and then remove the found infections. Some of them offer a permanent real-time protection shield to prevent malware entering your computer. Usually, detection and removal of a spyware is much simpler compared to prevention, so keep your good habit and do a scan at least once a week.

There are more than 270,000 known infections today and the number is constantly growing. It is a must to have a frequently updated database. Fortunately almost all removers feature automatic updaters so you do not have to worry about having the current version.

There are several good anti-spyware programs which help removing malicious code from an infected system. These removal programs scan all your files including Windows registry, operating system files, running processes, essential system components and cookies. If they find an infected file, they delete it. It is a good idea to have 2 or even 3 spyware removers to maximize protection.

Frank Stefano has witnessed far too many system crashes and lost files due to spyware and adware, so he decided to make a website and write articles about the issue. Visit http://www.DetectingSpyware.info to access free spyware scans and read more tips and tricks about spyware and adware protections.

Samsung Mobile Phones A Tango - Smart, Sexy & Slim

May 9th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

South Korea based Samsung Group is a multi billion dollar corporation. It is one of the leading players in mobile phone markets around the world. Samsung is the 5th largest transnational corporation in the world. It is South Korea’s largest electronics company. The Samsung Group is currently headed by Lee Kun-Hee who is the third son of the Group’s founder Lee Byung-Chul. Samsung is perhaps the most prestigious company in South Korea. The company accounts for more than 20 percent of the total exports of the country.

Samsung has launched several models of cell phones that can be used by people belonging to different strata of society. Most of its high end mobile phones are generally purchased by high profile executives and business people and the devices are competitively priced and they also offer value for money. The newest light weight models of Samsung mobile phones are loaded with a variety of advanced features like a touch sensitive display and motion sensor. The company runs a dedicated after sales service to maintain its credibility among the masses.

Samsung literally means “three stars” in Korean. The Group has diversified interests in a number of industries like electronics, chemicals, entertainment and financial services. The company has developed and marketed a number of high performance handsets in recent times. Some of the Group’s highly popular models of mobile phones include Samsung U600, Samsung G600 and Samsung U700.

The Samsung U600 is a tri-band GSM camera phone. The device is equipped with a 3.15 mega pixel camera and weighs just 81 gm. It has a 256K colours TFT display that has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The U600 has support for Bluetooth 2.0 and GPRS class 10 connectivity. The handset measures 103.5 x 49.3 x 10.9 mm and also features a FM radio with RDS. The Samsung G600 mobile phone is equipped with a 5 mega pixel camera. It sports a 2.2 inches, 16M colours TFT display that has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The G600 comes with 55 MB of embedded memory.

On the other hand, Samsung U700 is a smart camera phone. The handset has support for EDGE class 11, Bluetooth 2.0 and HSDPA connectivity. The device is equipped with a WAP 2.0 browser and weighs 86 gm. The Samsung U700 is available in three beautiful colours - violet, white and chocolate at retailers around the world.

Retailers across the UK are offering latest Samsung mobile phones at very attractive bargain prices. One may also browse the internet to know more about the new online Samsung mobile phone offers of various retailers. The latest Samsung mobile phones can also be acquired under various contract phone deals announced by the retailers across the UK.

If you want to know more about the latest Samsung mobile phones like Samsung G800, Samsung D900i, Samsung U600 with best mobile phone deals & free gifts like free laptop, free LCD TV please visit our online mobile phone shop.

Dell Computer Corp.—Michael Dell’s Success Story

May 8th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

Famous Quote “You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.”

Growing Up Despite Mr. and Mrs. Dell’s hopes that their son would become a doctor, by the time Michael Dell was in grade seven, the boy’s only area of interest was computers. While his classmates started playing around under the hoods of classic cars, Dell spent all of his time with his Apple II.

Dell showed an aptitude for business from an early age. He was making thousands of dollars in mail-order sales to stamp collectors at the age of 12, and - through careful planning - earned an astonishing $18,000 by selling newspaper subscriptions for the Houston Post (with which he bought his first BMW) in his final year of high school. By 18, Dell began planning to build a company that could rival IBM.

Succumbing to his parents’ wishes, Dell began a pre-med course at the University of Texas in 1983. However, all of his time outside the classroom was spent buying remaindered, out-of-date computers, upgrading them, and then selling them for a profit. His room became so cluttered with hardware that, out of consideration for his roommate, he finally decided to move his operation off campus. His parents were extremely disappointed at the news that Dell would be dropping out of university, but he promised to return if his venture failed to be profitable by the end of the summer. At the end of one month of operation, Dell had made $180,000 in PC sales. Needless to say, Dell did not go back to school.

Starting the Business As Dell planned out the future of his business, he identified price and delivery as the most important aspects of the growing computer business. By buying parts and putting the PC together on his own, Dell was able to put the machines together cheaply. He then decided to sell his computers over the phone to established brand name companies at a 15% discount, getting rid of the middleman and establishing a name for himself. “The direct model of selling”, as it has come to be known, completely changed the way computers would be sold.

Dell called his company PCs Ltd., and at nineteen years old, his company had become one of the fastest growing in the U.S. The secret of Dell’s success was the emphasis that was placed on creating customized computers to meet the specific demands of his clients. Within a year, PCs Ltd. had made more than $6 million. The company’s name was changed the Dell Computer Corp. in 1987. And a year later, Dell’s sales surpassed $159 million.

Building an Empire Dell pushed forward and set as his next goal to surpass IBM to become number one in the industry. Around that aim, Dell employees worked hard to bring sales past $800 million by 1991. His new goal for the following year was to make more that $1.5 billion, however, Dell ended up pulling in nearly $2 million in 1992.

The company was growing at such a rate that in 1993 it began to get out of Dell’s control as stock prices dropped from $49 to $16 over the first six months of the year, his CFO stepped down, and the newest line of computers was dropped because of its low quality.

Dell quickly turned to older, experienced managers, Mort Topfer from Motorola, Kevin Rollins from Bain and Co., and John Medica, designer of the Apple Powerbook, to get his business back on the right track. A year after these management changes were implemented, profits again began to rise, and in 1995, came close to $150 million. After having reestablished his company, Dell worried about how to stay on top. Together with his executives, he made two decisions that went against the norm; to focus solely on high-margin business customers, and to rely entirely on direct marketing.

Contrary to expectations, the implementing of these policies was a success and sales reached $5.5 billion by December of 1996. Dell then set up a web site for consumers to purchase computers directly from the company, one of only a few at the time, and after being up for only two months, sales had surpassed $2 million daily, reaching $6 million daily by 1996. In 1998, Dell reached total sales of 12.3 billion and was outselling IBM and Hewlett-Packard (a close second behind Compaq). Dell’s breadth of vision, insistence on continual improvement, and willingness to make decisions that did not conform to industry standards has made him both a very wealthy man and the computer industry’s longest-tenured CEO.

Evan is an entrepreneur and international speaker. At the age of 19, he became an owner and Chief Operating Officer in Redasoft, a biotechnology software company. The company quickly grew to over 300 organizations as clients, including NASA and Johnson & Johnson, in 30 countries. He started Evan Carmichael & Associates with the goal to give entrepreneurs the motivation to follow their passion and the strategies they need to succeed. Evan has delivered over 100 keynote presentations to entrepreneurs in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has been interviewed by newspapers, radio stations, and television stations including CHUM FM, CityTV, Global TV, OMNI TV, Enterprise, and the Toronto Sun. Evan’s website, http://www.evancarmichael.com is the world’s #1 website for small business motivation and strategies.

Is Imagery And Visualization Import In Tennis?

May 7th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

There is some confusion concerning Imagery and Visualization and we need to deal with this to start with. It is only in recent years that more emphasis has been placed on the mental side of tennis together with other sports, even though tennis is 65% mental once you have got past the learning of techniques, tactics etc.

Visualization has been used for some time in certain sports but this is only part of the equation and only refers to the practice of mental rehearsal with the emphasis on the visual sense, to imagine a sport situation.

Tennis players use visualization on a daily basis when getting ready for the serve, whilst doing their preliminary routines they are visualizing in their minds where they are going to place the serve. This can be very powerful and should not be overlooked as a help to your serving practice.

As an experiment, the Boston Celtic Basketball team split into two sections. One section spent the time practicing their free-throw shots from the line, the other half sat on the bench and in their mind visualized doing the free-throws. They all then took a quantity of free-throws and those who had sat and visualized out scored those who has actually practiced.

Imagery is best described as a method of using all the senses to create or re-create an experience in the mind.

Imagery can be used to encourage you to see your successful performances - either in a re-run of previous events or successfully performing a new task. It helps you to focus on the key points that contribute to those successes and to develop ways to enhance these performances in future events.

Mental imagery techniques are critical tools in an elite performers training and it is believed that up to 90% of Olympic athletes regularly use these imagery rehearsals as part of their training.

Imagery is very versatile and to put it into perspective, whereas using visualization in placing your serve where you want it to go, with imagery you would go through the complete serve routine in your mind. i.e. right from the setting up of the correct stance through the turning and coiling of the body, the bending of the knees, correct movement of the racket to hitting the ball and a secure follow through. You would see and feel the whole movement in your minds eye and in your body. Your mind controls all of your body movements.

You should use two distinct types of imagery in your tennis training.

The first is external imagery and we are all familiar with this, even though it is only now being used more within the game. You will most likely understand this, and it is the taking of a video of your body executing a particular skill. When I show players a video of them performing a particular skill i.e. the serve or groundstroke, they are surprised that what they are doing often does not conform to what they believe they are doing. This is particularly so with the serve, being the most difficult shot to execute to a specific design. Get your coach or a friend to video one of your shots and then analyze each segment in comparison to how you believed you were performing.

The second is internal imagery, that we have discussed earlier, you would picture a visual image as if you were looking through your own eyes and at the same time feeling the muscular contractions and movement sensations that occur during actual movement.

To learn more about these skills visit our website.

To find out more about the great game of tennis and to subscribe to a monthly news letter, visit http://www.tennisatthenet.ws

John Hoskins is an L.T.A. and a PTRUK qualified licensed tennis coach working at a number of facilities as head coach in Kent, England.

Is the Nokia N95 8GB King of the Mobile Phones?

May 6th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

These days technology is everywhere, with many of us carting multiple gadgets around with us from mobile phones to digital cameras, MP3 players to GPS devices in our cars. For a while now our pockets have been overflowing with all this portable tech, that is up until now the Nokia N95 has surfaced.

The Nokia N95 is less a mobile phone and more of a portable office in the palm of your hand. The N95 could quite capably replace all the devices mentioned above, with it’s inclusion of it’s own GPS and ability to install other software on it this mobile phone has finally become the “all-in-one” device we’ve been waiting for.

The problem with some devices similar to this is that it becomes a jack of all trades and master of none, this could have been said about the initial release of the N95, with a silver colour-way and the need of external memory cards it was impressive, there were teething problems though, the battery life for this device was shockingly poor especially if you planned on making good use of all the features like video playback, camera and GPS.

The ability to run applications was stunted too; with not enough memory dedicated to 3rd party applications the phone was prone to crashing or freezing. Nokia looked like it had bitten off more than it could chew with the N95 and the mobile phones market moved on. A few months later in late 2007 Nokia decided to give the N95 the remix treatment; a new colour, bigger screen, more memory, internal hard drive and best of all: increased battery life.

The Nokia N95-8GB instantly became the most wanted toy in technology, released at the same time as Apple’s iPhone and similarly spec’ed SonyEricsson K850 it was up against stiff competition, but with it being offered for free with some cheap mobile phones contracts it fast became a bestseller and the flagship of Nokia’s new multimedia devices.

At the moment the new black N95 sits at the top of the mobile phones mountain, now that Nokia have recognised the problems with its initial release the N95 has now ironed out all the creases and will take some beating to steal its crown.

If you’re looking for cheap mobile phones then check out some of the new mobile phone deals for both contract and PAYG mobile phones

Computer Courtesy

May 5th, 2008 by dylanwinterk

The tips that follow should help you to write e-mail that will be well received every time…

Pay attention to punctuation, spelling, grammar and capitals. It shows that you value us and that you’ve thought about what you’ve written rather than an off-the-cuff rushed message in the heat of the moment.

Your subject line should be descriptive, especially when we get so many emails or if we like to save the emails in a file. It’d be great a practice to start the subject with “Recipient or group name” then a hyphen, your subject (specific and changed for each email), another hyphen and then the date. E.g. Thea-Email tips attached-15Oct05 Make the subject crystal clear.

Use short paragraphs and leave lines between them. This makes for more easy and quick reading when you experience a lot of email activity on a regular basis.

Tidy up all those “>” characters when replying or forwarding. I use a handy tool for this http://www.dsoft.com.tr/stripmail/ I’ve downloaded it and I keep it on my desktop.

Check the source of any “news” or “chain” mailings before passing on. Here is a good resource for that: sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes alternatively, simply select pertinent keywords from the email and do a Google search.

Avoid sending unsolicited, large attachments. That 3MB movie file may be the funniest thing you’ve seen for a long time, but don’t automatically send it to everyone to know. Ask them first if they want to receive it. There are many free, online tools for large file size sending.

Ensure that your PC is protected against viruses. Your virus scanner might not protect against Spyware and Adware. Good quality, no-cost tools are listed in my article titled “Computer Security and Maintenance”.

Remember to set your email service to scan viruses for emails coming in and going out.

Use lower case font. When in all capitals, it is harder to read and may be perceived as aggressive.

Thou shalt not spam! Find great information here http://yatuc.com/a0

Re-read your message before sending. Read it from the perspective of the recipient.

Consider first if your message needs the “Reply To All” treatment, or if it is sufficient to simply “Reply To Sender” only. Always ask permission if wanting to pass another’s contact details forward. If you need to keep another’s email details hidden when you “Cc:” then place their email address in the “Bcc:” text box.

Limit your “non-group related topic” emails to e.g. one per week, when using the group email option. Keep emails short i.e. to a single screen page. When it’s a more complicated issue to discuss, why not use the telephone and speak? In emails to busy people, tell recipients if/when you do/don’t want a reply or action.

Be mindful of when you use the ‘priority’ or the ‘request receipt’ options (these are under ‘Tools’ and ‘Message’ when you have email open & ready to send). Less use has greater impact when you need it.

Is it clear who is the sender? Use an email signature that has contact details and change the “From:” option for your emails. For an email signature you can go to your task bar Tools, Options, Signatures. To change what shows in the “From:” box, go to Tools, Accounts, Properties and change “Your Name:” in User Information. It won’t impact account settings, it’s safe to do.

© Thea Westra is the senior thought leader, at her Forward Steps site. She resides in Perth, Australia with her ultra-supportive partner Greg. Thea publishes a monthly ezine (among many other publications and products) at http://www.forwardsteps.com.au

Enjoy her life success blogs at http://www.timeformylife.com/blogs.htm and get personally connected here, http://www.ask-thea-about.com