By Eyebee, on November 20th, 2008
Do you use the AIM Free phone line service? I tried it out for a while some time back, and it worked quite well if you didn’t mind running AIM on your desktop all the time.
AIM Free Phoneline is
I haven’t used it since I moved my business lines to Skype, which gives me much more portability, and the ability to use my cellphone as well via their service. AIM free phone line tied you to your desk. Still it was, well, free, and it was useful before I had GrandCentral to separate my personal and business calls for me.
Anyway, it’s another service that AOL are closing down. From January 13, 2009, it will be no more. They seem to be taking stuff down bit by bit. The AOL journals went recently too.
I don’t use AOL myself these days, and I only dabbled with it out of curiosity in the past, but they seem to be slowing fading away. They’ve attempted to become more and more part of the ‘mainstream’ internet in recent times, but I wonder if they’ve left it too late. Perhaps they could have been one of the leaders of Social Media Networking if they’d followed a different strategy. After all like ‘em or loathe ‘em they were one of the leaders at one time in online connectivity, with millions of customers. It was where the majority of the newbies went, and it was part of the crapware installed on many many store-bought home PCs.
Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I had one of those AOL CDs appear in my mailbox…
By Eyebee, on August 21st, 2008
I was recently reading about bad backs, and how we get into bad habits at the computer. Many of us spend many hours sat in front of a computer, and bad posture can lead to problems.
Many folks sit on the edge of their chair, and hunch forward. I kow I find myself doing this at times. It’s not good unless you want to be The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Also many folks have their monitor far too low on their desk. If you place your monitor directly on your desk, it’s almost certainly way too low. The way to check is quite simple. You should sit up straight, and look straight ahead. Your eyes should come to rest about on third of the way down your monitor screen. If they don’t or you have to move your eyes down to get to that point, then your screen is too low. What happens is that your eyes don’t look down for long – you tilt your head down, so you can look directly straight out – it’s a subconcious thing – and then you get neck ache, and hunched shoulders.
Get a chair with decent support. Some ergonomic chairs are silly money, but really you need to check for one that you can adjust the hieght, lumbar support, and arm rests on. Try and get one wit ha waterfall front on the seat too, that helps the blood supply to keep flowing to your legs.
Now, you’ve read this, and even before you’ve sat up straight, get up and walk around the room.
By Eyebee, on June 19th, 2008
It’s one of the best things you can have. Not coffee, tea, soda, lemonade, but good old plain tap water.
Bottled water is mostly a fashion fad, and it’s a crazy waste of energy and materials. In the US alone there are tons of plastics bottles going into landfill sites each year. Most people in the US, and most of the rest of the western world have perfectly safe drinkable water from the faucet. I personally drink cupfuls of it every day. In fact bottled water has been shown to have up to one thousand times more bacteria in it than water from the tap, and of course, it’s thousands of times more expensive too!
I always drink a glassful of water when I get up in the morning. It helps to re-hydrate you after sleeping, and not drinking all night.
I spend a lot of time at my desk during the day, and I always have a glass of water on it. I’ve got a pint mug of water there right now.
Drink water during your meals and it will help you digest your food, and keep you hydrated at the same time.
After exercise, and also particularly during hot weather when you sweat more, it’s a good idea to drink extra water too.
If you do drink coffee or soda, or other caffeinated drinks, you should drink an extra glass of water for every cup of coffee you drink, as caffeine is a diuretic, and stimulates your kidneys to excrete more water. That’s why drinking lots of coffee makes you run to the bathroom. The same goes for alcohol too.
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