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Showing posts from January, 2009

Making money online could be disappointing

One of the first things you discover when you start a new website or blog is that no one reads it. It’s lost in the millions of other sites on the net. So you spend hours promoting it and yourself on forums, submitting to search engines, etc etc. But unless you have a very hot topic and a wide circle of online friends, you still don’t get much traffic, and Google doesn’t even know you exist. So publishing a website and make money online can be a disappointing affair - if there's no traffic, there can't be any sales!

A Derby cyclist's four seasons

These paragraphs are excerpted from a cyclist's diary who lived in Derby in the end of 19th Century not long after the bicycle had just been invented, the poetic seasonal message, which, after Shakespearean flights, required a come-down of pure bathos: It will be some time before the leaves of the forest trees begin to unroll, but the hedgerows are already green, and the floral procession has begun.  The scented violet and the pallid primrose have made their appearance, and the wayside bank is an index of coming beauty. Spotted and shiny arums, deeply indented wild parsley, purple-veined dock, soft-grey foxgloves, leaves of ground ivies, of celandine, wood-violets, dandelion, jack-by-the-hedge, herb-robert all foretell the return of  the wild flowers to their accustomed quarters. Springtime has come, and now is the time for cyclists to put a girdle round as much of the earth as they possibly can. By May the call to the narrow saddle had obviously been heard abundantly: A more

Household Meters

Electricity Meters Three types of electricity meters in common use in households:Standard meters, Variable rate meters, Prepayment meters, Smart meters. Standard meter measures your electricity consumption in terms of kilowatt-hours, Variable meter ("economy 7" meter) gives two readings, one for daytime electricity usage, and one for night-time electricity usage. Prepayment meters usually accept tokens or cards that can be bought or topped up, respectively. A smart meter allows you to see the actual cost of the gas or electricity you use and provides information for each appliance. Gas Meters Gas meters either show numbers only or dials, There are two types of digital meter, digital meteric meter and digital imperial meter, recording the number of units of cubic meter or cubic feet respectively. Dial meter has four or five dials with each dial turns in the opposite direction to the one before it. Water meters water meter has only one dial with a sweep hand which m

Bring up a chimpanzee and teach it language

When I was a child, I had a list of goals: (1) I wanted to write a novel. (2) I wanted to have a child. (3) I wanted to bring up a chimpanzee and teach it language. Getting there took a long time, and there were many obstacles on the way. But now that I have achieved my goals, I am a Linguist, Writer, and Primatologist, and I am dealing with the challenges that come after. Primatologist: (primatology) the branch of zoology that studies primates http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=primatology (primatology) The study of the biology, behavior, social life, and evolution of monkeys, apes, and other nonhuman primates. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072832258/student_view0/glossary.html a scientist who studies primates; humans, monkeys and apes. http://www.shodor.org/succeedhi/vocab/vocab_glossary.html