As our bodies grow older, there are many changes that take place, to meet the different stages of our lives. Bones grew while we were children, until we reached full height. Then different hormones came along and influenced how we looked and felt and how we acted.

What we can do in later years changes as we move through the seasons of our lives.

How many of us can eat — or drink– what we used to in our teens and twenties?

How many of us used to look at older generations and swear that we would never let ourselves end up like that? So what happened to them?

There is a lot of information out there. It can be very confusing to know what to believe, who to trust?
And there isn’t a lot of time to spend sorting it out.

There are a lot of supplements and books, authorities and methods to lose weight, to look younger, to have more energy, more libido, handle your knees, your back, your ….. You can fill in just about any thing in the blank.
So, one way is to look for people who get results and who have been around for a while getting consistent results.

One such person is Dr Eric Berg. He is a medical practitioner in America, with an extensive practice. He focuses on helping people get healthy. By doing this, they lose weight, lose the symptoms of various conditions and diseases and become free of unwanted medications with their side effects, not to mention expensive costs.

Many people are told they need to take one medication to normalize their blood pressure, another for the heart, something to handle their cholesterol, and along with another pill for their blood sugar, not to mention things to help you sleep, and others to wake you up, and something to keep your mood swings from going up and down in between.

Stress can interfere with the usual functions of the body and interfere with our hormones.

What if there are other ways to handle the stress? To get healthier naturally, without side effects.

There are techniques and information at DrBerg.com that might just change your health and your life for the better.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, Malala Yousafzai described her experience at the hands of the Taliban, in Swat Valley. She and her some of her school friends were targeted and shot by terrorists. Malala was shot in the head. Malala was targeted because she spoke out for education, in particular for the education of girls.

“They thought the bullet would silence us. But they failed. Out of that silence came thousands of voices. Terrorists thought they could change our aims and our ambitions. Nothing changed, but this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, courage and fervour was born.”

She went on to speak about her feelings and how she was not seeking revenge,

“They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”

“Education is the only solution.”

“One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

What she says is so true and so important, that I felt moved to forward her message.

As we stand on the eve of the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, I wanted to reflect on Malala’s words. She is a young girl, yet she is a leader and inspiration to us all. She demonstrates her courage and conviction for all to see.

Her weapon is the pen, and it is truly mightier than the sword.

As I write this, it is the eve of the Referendum on Scottish Independence. Tomorrow,the residents of Scotland will vote on how they wish their future to be. We will find out soon after what they collectively decided.

Independence is the Scottish dream, one every Scot grows up with, and kept alive by the folk songs and monuments to William Wallace, the Scottish hero, who led the Scots to stand up to, fight back and challenge the rule and power of the English King.

Wallace himself was betrayed, captured and died in the attempt, in London, where he was hung, drawn and quartered. But he set in motion a movement which could not be stopped, culminating in the victory of Robert the Bruce at the Battle at Bannockburn in 1314. The English fled.

Scotland won back its independence, and the right to rule itself as a proud nation under Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.

Not everyone in the United Kingdom knows the story, especially in England, as English children are not taught Scottish history prior to 1603 when a Scottish King, James Stuart, King James VI of Scotland was crowned King James 1, of England.

The reign of the royal English line of Tudors came to an end after Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth 1, who never married, hardly a surprise when she saw what Henry did to his spouses. Ironically a Scottish King was next in line to the English throne And that is how it came to pass that Scotland and England came together
under one crown while still retaining their own legal systems, different religions, banks, education system and other cultural elements.

It would certainly be ironic if if the two countries were to become separate again
under another Elizabeth, some 700 years after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Lots of people, however, saw the film “Braveheart” starring Mel Gibson; a stirring tale immortalising a somewhat romantic version of the life and struggles of William Wallace in his fight for freedom, a fight to the death. It may have been told with Hollywood licence, adapting some details here and inventing some others there to make a rousing, good movie. But the important details of the story were true enough.

And tell about the importance of freedom and independence to the Scots, a message that stirs in the souls of many others around the world.

Man has his dreams and seeks to be free. He has no wish to be a slave to a machine, to a boss, to the clock, to another power.

It’s a wonderful place where a person can learn traditional arts and learn them from true professionals who can do what they teach. The  School was founded in 2004 by HRH The Prince of Wales as one of his core charities.

The Prince’s School was established on the work of Professor Keith Critchlow who pioneered a teaching programme in 1984, at the Royal College of Art, based on the practice of, and research into, the traditional arts.

The Prince’s School recently started offering an Open Program to the general public who may enrol for short periods of training with some of their wonderful tutors.

Courses are arranged to be accessible for the working person by being held on week-ends or mid week evenings or for the period of a one week so it can be fitted into a holiday. During the summer months, by custom a holiday period, some of the short courses are again on offer. There are also one day taster courses providing an introduction to various disciplines and subjects.

The work is exquisite and the tutors are masters of their techniques. So, the teaching is demonstrated by professional example. The coaching is precise and exact and as the classes are small, the attention is personalised and sufficient to make real progress while learning the basic simple techniques and how to perform them within a short period of time.

Courses on offer include Oil Painting: Methods and Materials, The Flemish Technique – The mixed method of tempera and oil paint, courses on Gilding, Medieval Illuminated Manuscript, Ikon painting according to the Russian school, Persian and Indian miniatures, and Celtic Design. There are also applied arts such as parquetry, stained glass window, natural dyes, weaving, knotting, ceramics, including tiles as produced in different schools such as Zillij (Moroccan Ceramic tiles) Iznik (Ottoman Ceramic Design).

Geometry is a fundamental to much of the training and so several courses on geometry are available and form part of some of the tasters.

This is a unique opportunity to learn true methods and tested techniques from people who are devoted to the study of their subjects and excellent in their own professional accomplishments and high quality standards. It preserves these skills and this knowledge which was becoming lost to future generations, now, before it is too late and gone forever.

As we come to the close of another year, I thought this message from Neil Gaiman was a great way to look at the New Year and how to go about what you will do in the coming year.
It’s not full of high goals or impossible New Year’s resolutions that won’t last past the middle of January. It’s not full of daydreaming fantasy nor depressing perfectionism.
I hope it will encourage you to reach for more and better and when we sit at this place this time next year, you will have had an interesting and worthwhile year.

Recently picked up a copy “The Snowball”, a book about Warren Buffet, the billionaire. It’s a fascinating read. It tells in a lot of detail how he got to where he is and how he did what he did.

He attributes his success in part to the influence of a book he read by F.C. Minaker called “One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000″.

Now Warren started young. After reading the book at age eleven, he declared he would be a millionaire by the time he was 35. And then promptly set about making it happen, using the insights, advice and inspiration he got from the book. We should note that this was at the time of the Great Depression, which was a far worse financial crisis than the recent recession we have experienced.
There is a wealth of information in this little book. It’s been out of print for a while, but after getting a such a powerful recommendation, you can find it on Amazon as a print-on-demand book.

Well, there’s a very interesting section in Minaker’s book about the history of money and how it came into existence. It’s good to get a grasp of what money is at this time of confusing information and banking skulduggery.

I plan to get this book too. If it’s good enough for Warren Buffet, then it’s good enough for me.

What do you think?

Aileen

When I first started out, it ticked all the boxes. And I jumped in feet first. Great, I thought. I’ve started. This is easy. And so began an interest in Internet Marketing, or Information Publishing as some people describe it.

That feeling lasted for about a week.

Then, suddenly, I was swamped. There were SOOooo many things to learn, things to do to get up and running before I even got to square zero, new words, no definitions, new actions on the computer, jumping off from what felt like the top board, when I should be at the shallow end of the pool, sites I’d never heard of and now needed to be able to navigate around. Yes life on the control panel side is different from the happy browser clicking her way around the internet…. With only a few hours a couple of evenings a week, the course zoomed out ahead of me. And me, I was still at the starting post working out which way to face, staring at glitches and stopped by the hitches, confused by the stitches it took to keep it together.

Suddenly a year went by. I didn’t quite make it to the end of the course. But I didn’t give up on it, dipped in and out of it, slipped around and about in it, picked up bits of it….always came back to it…maybe one day…

But today was a good day. I got back to my blog, poshed up a post, published it promptly. Did some work on the course. Wow, that wasn’t so tough.

Found some later lessons, took a sneak peak, didn’t collapse in a heap.

Gosh, now that makes more sense. I can see where I am going and how to get there. And now I can see how I can use it and make it my own.

It’s exciting and looks like good fun. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and do some more.

There are so many internet marketing websites and “gurus” out there that it’s hard to know where to start, who to trust, who to go to.

For some people, it’s the very real fear of being scammed. Even a small amount of money can be a lot to the person spending it and it can add up if it happens more than once.

Then there is the ever-present risk of what happens to your personal details after you’ve  entered your name and email address, or your card or other important ID details on a page. It’s been known to happen that a person started to fill in a form with email adress and name, then changed their mind and left the page before they pressed submit or to confirm those details, came out of the page totally, only to find that their  details had already been captured and the site was using them.  Next thing they started receiving mailings and offers from the site which they hadn’t actually joined.

Then there are the spammy emails that suddenly start appearing in your inbox, and you wonder how they got your details and who maybe sold on your details…

So, is there somewhere you CAN go that you can rely on? Somewhere you can find out  find out who other people have learned is trustworthy?  Which products are worth buying?

There is one place I go when I want to find out more about a program or product and see reviews by people who have bought the product or worked with the person. It’ s IM Report Card.com

The reviews are by real people, and the sites and products are graded on a simple A+, A-, B+, B-, C+, C- scale with the reason why the reviewer thought they were good or not.

You can make up your own mind based on people’s real experience with the product being reviewed or the marketer who created it. The reviews are independent and I’ve found it very helpful and useful, especially when I first got on line. It helped me sort out who to listen to and where to spend my hard earned cash for good value and who to leave alone.

There are other interesting features and sections. Time spent here is well worth it.

IM Report Card.com  Check it out here and find out for yourself.

Had a strange phenomenon recently. My usually happy laptop started behaving strangely –lots of annoying pop-ups and misdirecting me to limited sites, some of them what you could call a bit dodgy, defintely places I didn’t want to go to. The first search result page was mostly lot of sponsored ads with maybe only the bottom entry on the page being an actual search result. What on earth was going on?

I noticed a change in my browser to Searchnu which I hadn’t set up. The other thing was a frequent error page with the words searchnu/ followed by a number. The numbers can vary. There is another form that is searchqu

It seems that searchnu is a browser hijacker often downloaded when the person agrees to  the terms and conditions of something they want to download without paying close attention to the small print. Problem is that because it was downloaded “voluntarily” by the user, it doesn’t get picked up by usual security programs as a virus or malware when you run a scan so it sits there undetected and continues to operate annoyingly. What I found out was it’s often downloaded along with iLivid or Google Chrome. It is also apparently connected with Ask Jeeves web site.

That is only the beginning of the story — some forms of searchnu are more serious, such as searchnu/421–  which can start to steal your details all the way up to identity theft.  Obviously, it needs to be dealt with quickly. The longer it remains on your computer the more damage it can create. Unfortunately it installs itself in the registry so some searchnu programs need to be tackled more strenuously than just deleting an item from your programs folder.

So, time for some homework on google.

The tools I found to handle it were: Hitman Pro from SurfRight followed by some other programs

Downloads – SurfRight
Smitfraudfix How to use SmitFraudFix – Geeks to Go Forums
Combofix A guide and tutorial on using ComboFix
Malwarebyte Antimalware Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – Download.com

After I ran the above, then I installed something to protect my browser.

Browser Protect: Browser Hijack Protection for free – BrowserProtect.org

And then an additional security program was added from Avast:

avast! | Download Free Antivirus Software or Internet Security

Combofix is a very powerful program and best used under supervision by someone who is knowledgeable about computers. Not one to mess around with.

The problem appears to be fixed now and my computer is now running smoothly. It took some time but it was worth it.

On Wednesday, we had another live training webinar with John Thorhill as members of his Partnership to Success Program.

John is just back from a sailing vacation on the Norfolk Broads – and that was the first point of his lesson by actual demonstration. While he’d been away, his business continued to operate to promote and sell products and make income. He showed us the value of automating as many aspects of your business as possible and the power it generates. He also discovered the value of the connections he’s made and the importance of co0operation and teamwork.

While John was away, I was still able to use his support desk, to handle an issue I had. His support desk is abley manned by one of his former students, so she knows how his program work. She is a product of his training who has also developed her own internet businesses.  Providing good support to your customers is vital if you want to continue a successful business that delivers good value.  That, in turn, develops  good word of mouth. Having someone trustworthy to turn this over to is essential. So for us on John’s program was an insight in to the mindset that goes with success and a live demonstration of how to do things the right way.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up another internet marketer whose list I used to be on. He also launched a training program. I’m not going to name names, but I had my reservations so I never took him up on it at the time. Well, looking into now, there were plenty of comments on a forum about lack of support: emails not answered, poor contact details, lack of follow up leading to requests for refunds. All on the first page of Google! Not even hard to find. Just goes to show how important your support is and how quickly it can impact on your business.  Poor word of mouth spread like like a wild fire

It speaks well for John’s approach, his programs and services that he has loyal students who continue to work with him and want to remain in contact with him. Obviously they learned information of value and weren’t disappointed with his training. I like that he doesn’t disconnect from the students of his coaching programs when their time is up. He empowers them. He doesn’t criticise his students and or refer to them negatively.

Just like tennis great, Andy Murray benefited from his coaching with Ivan Lendl, and won two Olympic medals and a Grand Slam this summer, Partnership to Success is an opportunity for mentoring from someone who is a winner in the internet marketing game. Next time John offers the Partnership to Success, take the opportunity. You won’t regret it.