Infotainment

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience ... ... raised a glass of water and asked, "how heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it." "If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. "In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on." "As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.&quo

Electronics enthusiast Miroslaw Sowa and programmer Vsevolod Zagainov - both from Montreal, Canada - are currently busy putting the final touches on a new button-based, guitar-shaped sound machine called the Tabstrummer. In the same way that tablature notation has allowed players like me (who are unable to read score) to learn new songs, this new MIDI instrument allows folks who'd like to play a guitar, but for whatever reason can't, the opportunity to easily create some chord-strumming music. The instrument allows chord shapes to be assigned to clicky buttons on the short neck, which can then be recalled and played as a song by simultaneously strumming or picking the virtual strings. Described by its creator as a karaoke for your fingers, the Tabstrummer features an Atmel microcontroller at its heart, touch-sensitive printed-circuit-board (PCB) trace strings positioned in the familiar position on the transparent 3mm-thick acrylic guitar body (which are wid

One of the most insidious tempting habits is the habit of blaming others or external conditions for our failures, mistakes, problems, and lack of success. You might call it “the blame game.” Blaming others is a very easy thing to do. It creeps into our lives in subtle, as well as not so subtle ways. It shows up in our thoughts and in our conversations. We might, for example, think to ourselves, “I’d be more successful if the products I were selling were of better quality,” or “I’d make more money if I had taken a different career direction”. We might attribute our lack of fulfillment to changing times, recession, a missed opportunity, or too little education. Or, we might complain “I can’t help it, no one ever taught me how to close a deal.” The habit of blaming can and does happen in almost any situation – we blame our competitors, employer, the government, our personal history, our age, even our parents or current family responsibilities. It’s not that our t

A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother told him to go out to the back porch and bring her the broom. The little boy turned to his mother and said, “Mama, I don’t want to go out there. It’s dark.” The mother smiled reassuringly at her son. “You don’t have to be afraid of the dark,” she explained. “God is out there. He’ll look after you and protect you.” The little boy looked at his mother real hard and asked, “Are you sure he’s out there?” “Yes, I’m sure. He is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him,” she said. The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he called, “God? If you’re out there, would you please hand me the broom?”

Determination is the strength that will enable you to pass the barrier of useless thoughts in order to create positive thoughts and to be successful in whatever you wish. It comes from within and its partner is patience. Patience teaches you not to push but rather to wait and appreciate the game of life instead, knowing that nothing remains the same, and everything will change at some point.

Although owners of the iPod Shuffle might have something to say about it, Singapore's Bluetree Electronics has announced the launch of what it claims is "the smallest touch MP3 player in the world," theKube2. The diminutive device has an aluminum body, runs for six hours on a one-hour charge of its lithium-polymer battery, and can store approximately 1,000 songs on its included 4GB microSD card. You can also buy replaceable skins for it, should shiny silver not be your thing. The follow-up product to Bluetree's similar theKube, theKube2 charges from and syncs with its owner's PC (no word on Mac compatibility) via an included USB cable. A set of earbuds is also included. Users have the option of increasing its capacity by swapping in memory cards up to 32GB in size, which should allow for the storage of about 8,000 songs. No figures are available on the device's dimensions, so unfortunately we can't do the math to determine if its t

Sometimes crazy things happen at the most unexpected times. Thankfully, there is someone around with a camera to capture the exact terrifying moment.