Last pieces of the jig-saw

I have managed to find a very cheap DVD writer (about £15) which has 'lightscribe' capability, this will be the main CD drive for my 'Frankensteins Monster' PC that I am building. I am now bidding on a SATA hard-drive for storage - I already have a 80GB IDE drive for the operating system, and this will be my first venture into SATA drives. I have noticed that there are a lot of different sizes of hard-drives available which makes it tricky trying to find a bargain on eBay (the DVD writer is new, but the hard-drive will probably be second-hand).
I started with the idea of a 300GB drive, but had to also try 320, 350 and 360 to make sure I had the best price - I then noticed a couple of 400GB drives which were not more expensive (one even on buy-it-now) and then the 500GB drives didn't seem to be attracting many bids.
My resulting strategy (after failing to secure a number of 250GB drives) is to place some big bids on 500GB drives and if I don't get those, I will do a 'buy-it-now' on a reasonably-priced 400GB drive (assuming it's still available). This demonstrates how a 'buy-it-now' price can work in your favour if you price it right - it offers a definite alternative to the bidder and is fairly likley to sell way quicker...
My eBay rating is now 103 transactions (100% feedback) and I really MUST look seriously at flogging off the flotsam and jetsam of PC parts I have lying around in my loft..

House renovations

The one room in our house that desperately needs a makeover is the bathroom, a job which I have only 'dabbled with' so far. When we first moved in, I did strip off the nasty vinyl wallpaper, gave it a lick of fresh paint and made a new bath panel.
Since then, I have replaced the bathroom faucet with some nice new shiny ones, and I have stripped and sanded the floor. I know that at some point I am going to have to fork out for a complete new bathroom with a shower (still haven't fitted a shower...) and a new suite to replace the lovely pink one we inherited...but it does for now.
The two areas of the house that demand the most attention (and expense) nowadays are the kitchen and bathroom, but this wasn't always the case - kitchens and bathrooms of yesteryear were hardly given any thought at all.
We are actually 'blessed' with an extra outside loo which we tend to use for storage, but as the household expands, there will come a time where having an extra toilet will be extremely useful - turning this outside facility into something usable is a job that is a bit more up my street...

My mistake...

What an idiot! It turns out I moved a 'jumper' on the new motherboard that I was attempting to boot up and forgot to reset it in it's proper place - so my previously reported eBay failure was a success after all...
Fortunately I was outbid on a replacement that I had already lined up - so I have been busy for a couple of days configuring my new set-up.
I have ended up with a 2.2GHz AMD Athalon CPU on a ECS Extreme motherboard in a nice new case using one of my old hard-drives (80GB) and an old 512MB RAM stick. I intend to get some more RAM and a nice big SATA drive to finish the system off, but this is what the system has cost me so far:
CPU (eBay) £31.00
Mobo (eBay) £30.50
PC case (eBay) £25.92
Hard-drive - already had
graphics card - already had
CD drive - already had
XP pro - already had
RAM - already had
A grand total of £87.42
(all including postage) which I don't think is too bad for a complete PC which seems to function very nicely even with the single RAM stick (I am already bidding on some RAM!!) I will probably treat myself to a new DVD writer, but right now it's not really essential.. I must report though that installing a new OS and getting things just as you want them on a new PC is quite a satisfying experience, it's only when they start to get loaded up with lots of different applications that they start to become erratic, slow and generally annoying.

Getting Older...

Aging happens to us all of course, but I have been 'blessed' with youthful looks since childhood. When I was a teenager, having youthful looks was not really helpful although there were times when it could be used to my advantage. In the main it was a pain to always look younger than your mates when you are young - however I always knew I would have the last laugh when I got older. So when all my old school-friends are looking for the the best skin-care products and eye cream, I am 'product-free' and proud of it..
There is a down-side however, and at somewhere between my fourth and fifth decade, I am certainly feeling the physical effects of age, not least of which is my newly-deteriorating eyesight. I am going to have to get some glasses pretty soon...
My back is struggling to keep up with my sporting ambitions, and playing football twice a week generally ensures that I am in a permanent state varying between back-twinges and full-blown 'can't get out of bed' back pain.

My first real eBay failure

I have to admit that things did not really go according to plan with my recent eBay purchases. I have been attempting to build a new PC from eBay spares, but the Motherboard I bought decided it was not going to work after initially booting up successfully.
This was a disappointment, and to be honest I am not sure if it was the mobo, or my CPU that failed, but there are no signs of life and I have had to go back to the drawing board. Not to be put off, I am already bidding on another mobo/CPU bundle (!) and am determined to emerge with a working system. I have promised myself that once the new system is up and running, I will have to clear out any remaining computer debris from my loft. Currently this comprises four Motherboards, three CPU's and various power supplies.
I have described this as my first eBay failure because usually eBay sellers are very good at refunding when you have out of the box failures - my problem was that I knew full well that when it arrived, the mobo did actually power up and it is only since I tried fitting it into a new case that it decided to fail. So I cannot in all honesty threaten negative feedback when the seller has sold a working board in good faith.
To expand on my recent experiences with eBay, I also recently had someone sell an item I had bid on (and won) to an off-eBay customer, which to say the least was disappointing. This was the first time ever that I have left negative feedback for anybody, and I have just reached the 100 transaction mark...

Get yourself a bargain online

Such a wide variety of products are now available online, one can't help wondering how high street shops are going to be able to survive the current economic crisis. Even the tradition of Christmas shopping is now largely carried out online. We gave cautiously embraced online purchases over the last decade, and at the same time have seen the steady erosion of 'off-line' retail outlets.
We are able to obtain anything from doughnuts to diamond rings, and mostly at a vastly improved price over high street equivalents.
There are two main reasons for the lower online prices, the primary reason is that overheads are lower where there is no need for a physical 'shop front' to be maintained, and the other reason is the level of competition in the growing online community is definitely hotting up.
Jewelery is certainly one of areas that can benefit from online retailing. In the main, jewelery outlets are in high-cost premises with expensive fittings and must invest in a lot of security before they can even open their doors to the public. Once you switch to online, the overheads are drastically cut to a mere fraction.

Surviving the economic crisis

Shopping around for the best deals will become more and more necessary as the economic climate worsens. Shopping online will definitely become more popular due to the fact that online stores usually offer a price advantage over high street stores. High street stores will hit back with Sale after sale, and some stores will be going out of business altogether.
Whilst that may mean a few extra bargains in the short-term, having less choice of retail outlets is a bad thing in the long run. Controlling your spending and keeping to budgets will be the key to surviving the current recession.

Health and wealth

The healthy option is almost if not more important that the wealthy option nowadays, with health and dieting in particular being one of the most discussed topics on the internet. dNeero wades in with it's own survey on health - easy to participate and you can get paid for taking part...

One step closer...

I am one step closer to building new PC (almost) entirely funded by blogging earnings and purchased from eBay.. I found a nice new PC case and didn't quite have enough Paypal funds to pay for it. The case was on a 'buy it now' or 'make an offer', so I made an offer which was about £2 below the asking price of £16.99. The seller countered the offer with a price of £16, which was reasonable for the case, but I only had enough in my PayPal to pay £15.93 plus postage...
So I countered with £15.93 and sent a message to the seller to explain that I wasn't being funny, but that was the full extent of my available funds. I was pleased to find that my offer was accepted and this should be the final piece that will get my new PC up and running. The case includes a 500W power supply, I have a CPU and motherboard from recent Ebay dealings, and a hard-drive that was languishing in my previous 'spare' PC. I also had a 512MB stick of RAM left over from a previous upgrade which is enough to get me started.
I intend to spend a little more on RAM and a SATA hard-drive, but after that, I promise faithfully to actually save some money so that I have something to show for the hours spent in front of a computer monitor.
So far this month earnings have been slow, but there should be some payouts due for previous work. I am encouraged however to find that passive earnings from Adsense on my blogs are building up and would like to maximise this revenue.

I'm still spending

I know I said I should try and build up some cash in my PayPal account to pay back into my bank account, but I've got the spending bug, and although I haven't broken into my 'real' money lately I have carried on fueling my plans for building a new computer...
I now have a new Motherboard to go with my recently purchased CPU, and I am bidding on a replacement case with power supply... I can see myself buying a new hard-drive and a stack of RAM before there is any surplus in my PayPal account - at least I am not spending 'real' money - that would be far more difficult to justify.
Therein lies my error of course, because money in PayPal is, in every way as good as money in the bank, and I have already spent a good deal of good hard cash pursuing half-formed ideas of taking my computer(s) to another level. When I have finished this project I will have two very similar computers and what will I have gained? Not much... I console myself with the thought that the whole project is of course a learning process. I am learning about fixing computers whilst I am learning how to build them - I have already fixed a PC for a work colleague, and used my new-found knowledge and expertise (and willingness to poke around inside a PC..) to fix a panel PC at work, saving us a deal of money...
I am determined then to complete this project and then curb my spending until I have actually built up enough money to shift it back into a bank account - I am getting very close to ridding myself completely of a credit card debt, and I am starting to feel that my compulsive spending is holding me back from finally paying the thing off..

This month has not seen a lot of blogging earnings coming my way so far, but I have been paid by Adsense, so all is not lost... I have a few 'jobs' to complete which will bring in a few dollars, but they will be online earnings that do not come under the banner of blogging cash. I have been reasonably successful in building a bit of interest and traffic to one or two of my blogs and will continue my 'organic' method of comment posting and links placed in relevant forums to try to extend that traffic to levels that will bring more Adsense income.
Once I have completed my PC project, I promise to put all my efforts into paying off the remaining credit card debt and relkeasing myself from those particular shackles - I will be sure to blog about it here and on my finance-related blog.

Server Systems

Whilst I am not about to search eBay for KVM switches, I have considered turning one of my PC's into a server and running the other, and any subsequent PC's on the same network. This does not have to entail purchasing a network operating system as XP pro can handle a network without too many problems. The advantage is that I could use the server for routine tasks and backups , leaving other PC's to handle dedicated tasks. This may sound over the top for a home system, but more and more home systems are run from homeservers combining media handling tasks with other home-based or gaming tasks.
Dedicated homeservers are now commonly advertised and the likelihood is that this will become the norm.

New Survey from dNeero

Looks like dNeero haven't abandoned surveys altogether and are running twitter and surveys side by side. It's been a while since any survey were offered, but this music one came up today and it's fairly topical - click the widget to take part in dNeero surveys to boost your online earnings...
If you are on twitter, then you can make extra cash by replying to twitter questions too...

How do we use the web?

I am honestly getting to the stage where I wonder how we survived without the internet. I use Google all day every day at work to find all sorts of items and find out all sorts of facts. We get our car insurance, term life quotes and any number of items and gadgets from eBay. Added to this is the massive factual resource the internet provides, whether you need information about, travel, insurance, electronic or any scientific queries you might have, the internet has the answer if you know how to look for it. A modern business, even if it has no link to technology or the web MUST have a web presence if they are to be taken seriously, even if it's just an entry in a directory. With the demise of high street shopping comes the rise in internet shopping, and with the recession getting worse, the internet offers a chance to get items you want at a keener price. These savings can also be extended to things like internet banking and insurance service which can offer better rates than their high street equivalents.

February 2009

A return to recent good form, with a little over $110 this month (having turned $100 down!), also been paid by Adsense recently, a good portion of this now comes from blogs. I am experimenting with ideas for publicising blogs and getting more traffic organically trying to do it in an informed, smart way!
I am having some success getting attention to my credit crunch blog, especially with being able to post about current events and link in with forums and other social sites. My latest post has been about Sir Fred Goodwin's pension. I am running a poll to see how many people I can attract to the blog to vote on whether Sir Fred should be allowed his £700,000 pension at the age of fifty.
I ran a similar poll on another blog, but didn't really make the effort to attract visitors, I am making a bit more effort with this one and so far, it has paid off.
Having blogsvertise back on line has allowed me to add some revenue to the steady earnings from PayU2blog, but the spreadsheet tells the full story...

The cold snap is still with us

We had had a few days of snow this winter which is more than we have seen for a few years now. Personally I love it when it snows especially when everything grinds to a halt, and fondly remember the heavy winter snowfalls we used to have when I was a kid.
Winter for me is a time of cosy fireplaces, heated mattress pads, and hot drinks with the occasional excursion into the garden to play snowballs or build a snowman. Now that I live reasonably close to the coast, we rarely get snow, and when it comes it is often gone within hours.
We are still experiencing some winter cold, but the chance of any more snow is getting slimmer by the day. The only drawback to the cold for me is the aches and pains of middle age which are accentuated by the winter, and relieved with the afore-mentioned heated pads.

Twittering - what's it all about??

I finally found where my twitter/dNeero activation code was nestling on my dNeero profile (this will look like pure gibberish to many of you I have no doubt...), and am a fully-fledged twittering dNeero-ite now... Hopefully this will open up opportunities to drive my dNeero earnings relentlessly towards payout - rah!
If you are a twitterer, you can twitter me at username 'livewyre' - there's always something new, but I fear I might be getting too old for this brave new world....

latest activity

I seem to be back on track with paid postings now and will probably announce earnings of around $100 again this month. I was delighted to find that I had earned some affiliate money this month on another website, but will have to get some more under my belt before payout. Surveys have continued to generate a little, but I haven't had anything from dNeero from a while (and I have not yet reached payout!!). I even joined twitter in an attempt to get some more opps from dNeero, but nothing came of it...
In other news, I fitted my 'new' CPU last night and am pleased with the results so far, I am probably going to pursue a 'previously enjoyed' motherboard to significantly upgrade my 'spare' PC with the CPU I have just replaced... I have been having a lot of problems with my internet connection 'hanging' for quite a while now, so I bought a new network card from eBay (other PC's on the network had no such issue) and fitted it the same time as the CPU. It certainly seems to have fixed the problem, but it's one of those intermittent faults, so I won't really know until I have had a week or so with no further problems.
So all I need now is some advice on how to use twitter - do you use it? what is the most effective way of using it?

I turned down $100..

This week I was offered $100 via Text Link Ads at Linkworth, but as I was not happy that the adverts were appropriate for my website, I turned it down... This was definitely one of the best offers I have had, but the links would have had to be site-wide and I was reluctant to promote the subject of the link.
I have always had a policy for what I will and will not promote, and I would add that any links that you place on a site for revenue should ideally be in line with the general content or niche of your site. As a rule, off topic adverts are not likely to find you anyway, and I am still puzzled that I received this offer - but the fact remains that your visitors (if you are geared towards serving your visitors) would accept contextual adverts, but be less tolerant of off-topic adverts.
I have openly advertised my blogs for links, but have always advertised them as niches requesting niche links, I always think that random links somehow 'dilute' your content and the authority of your site.
I am sure there are plenty of paid bloggers who think I am crazy to turn down $100, and the fact that I have written about it demonstrates how much it pained me to turn it down. I am not sure that I would have turned down the link had it been for one of my blogs, but I think it's important for a website to maintain integrity if you have an 'audience' to serve. What do you think - Is there anything you wouldn't do for $100???

My internet spending

Of my two 'constructive hobbies' that I have recently talked about ie. computer-renovation and house-renovation, I have discovered an easy way to work out which is closest to my heart. Simply... which do I spend the most money on? hammers or instrument screwdrivers?, flooring joists or blank CDR's?, industrial clamps or computer RAM?
Unsurprisingly, my purchases indicate that playing with computers is more important to me than fixing up the house for the family. Although it is fair to say that when there are big bucks to be spent, it is the house that generates bigger one-off bills.
I remember buying decorative wooden coving for our dining room, the first room that I fully renovated (the one that I took the floor out of...), each length was about £30 and I think I used 5 lengths in all making this a very expensive project...especially when my wood-working skills leave so much to be desired..

My off-line pursuits

Anyone who reads my posts (if you can filter out the ads... ahem) will have an impression of someone who is always pulling their computer apart - which is true. But I am not limited to puling computers apart, oh no - in my 'spare' time I pull my house apart too!
Our house is still in a state of being 'done up' (you might be forgiven for thinking it had been 'done over'!) for the best part of ten years... In that time I have done quite a bit, but the things that remain undone are mostly very visible, whereas of the work that has been done, much has been invisible.
For instance, one of the first jobs that I undertook was the re-wiring of the house - you can't really see the results but at least the house was safe from that point on, and we now have enough outlets for all the appliances (I do believe that there are actually more than twenty five sockets in our kitchen!!).
We have aimed for wood flooring throughout by sanding down the original floor boards except where there were tiles (kitchen and hallway). The original tiles were evocative of the age of the house but were just too broken up and we have replaced both kitchen and hall tiles (admittedly we had a tiler in to do the floors, I wasn't allowed to have a go myself!). There was a point where I removed the carpet from the dining room, noticed some woodworm-eaten floorboards, so removed the floorboards. It then became obvious that the under-floor joists were also in a sorry state, so I took those out too until there was nothing left!! It took me about eighteen months to get around to putting it all back with brand new joists (I have the photo's somewhere...)
We are about half-way done but hopefully next half won't take another ten years .....

I crossed the line..

I got carried away, I actually spent some money out of my own pocket.... I was looking for a CPU upgrade for my main desktop and got involved in an eBay bidding fracas which extended beyond my Paypal means. I had to raid my current account to fund my purchases, all for a measly extra 400Mhz processor speed. I am now torn between going the whole hog and buying another motherboard (one that will hold 4GB as opposed to my current 2GB max) or raising enough funds to pay something back into my current account.
After the purchase, I checked my Paypal this morning, and would you believe it? I have been paid £20 overnight (thank you 'TheAdNetwork') and that would probably have been enough to cover the excess...
I think I need to be more disciplined and maybe see if the replacement CPU works, then I could put some money back into the bank before waiting until my earning are sufficient for a new mobo... I am not a patient man....and can ill-afford to be spending money made in the 'real' world when my Paypal money dries up.

Technology and Upgrades

I certainly do a great deal of shopping on the internet nowadays and this type of activity has grown considerably in the last year or two. One of the reasons is having access to funds that can be freely moved around the internet either via a credit card, online current account or good old Paypal. Having this type of financial freedom, a freedom that can cross currencies without difficulty, gives us all access to the latest technology at rock bottom prices such as the deals available on Cyber Monday or any one of many online stores.
I find myself browsing around these stores looking for prices comparisons on a range of products for which I have already an idea of cost, and it is not at all unusual to watch the price of these items dropping on an almost daily basis. I always tend to look at prices for USB memory sticks, hard-drives and SD cards, this type of technology is forever being superseded by newer higher capacity memory, hence 'last months' high spec memory is constantly being confined to the bargain bin.
If upgrades and technology in general interests you, the best thing you can do is sign up to an email notifier from one of these sites. I get an email every week from one of my favourite sites that gives me an overview of the latest bargains and I inevitably end up browsing their site for my old favourites.

More free software

I am delighted to be able to post again about free software that we can all find a use for. There was a time when shareware and freeware was 'clunky', unprofessional and hard to get to grips with. The range of freely downloadable applications is impressive and very often hard to tell from software that would cost a great deal.
I mentioned Syncback in the previous post about creating a back-up drive for my laptop, and I am happy to report that Syncback appears to offer all the facilities that I could possibly want for keeping my backup up to date.
The only drawback with this software that I can see is that backup of each folder needs to be scheduled as a separate job. Admittedly I have not spent a great deal of time playing with the settings, but I could not find a way of backing up multiple folders in the root of a hard-drive in one go. That said, once you set up the backups you want, you only need to schedule them and then you don't need to revisit the set-up screen ever again....
My task was to make sure that two folders (My Documents, and my web files) were updated on a daily basis on weekdays. In my case, the backup drive mirrors the hard drive exactly, so all I needed to do was select the folder I wanted to back up, set the destination and decide what sort of backup I wanted. The software allows for synchronisation as well as backup, so every possible type of backup is available. You can update from the destination, synchronise changes in either folder or as in my case, just look for updates to the source drive and copy them to the destination. Once the backup was configured, it just remained for me to schedule the task. Hourly, Weekly, Bi-weeekly, Monthly etc... tasks can be scheduled in an easy to use screen that has lots of options for stopping the back-up if the battery is in use, stopping the backup if it exceeds a set time etc. etc...
All I can say is if this does exactly what it says on the tin, I will be very happy with my latest piece of free software, if not, I'll be sure to update this post...
If you want to go looking for this, I would try searching for 'Syncback' and download it from the '2brightsparks' website. Naturally, they have paid-for versions too, so look out for the free version...

UPDATE 18/03/09 - I have now found the function for copying specific folders from a drive, the only drawback I can now see is that if you have multiple drives, you will need to create a separate backup profile for each drive (small amount of pain for excellent results). I now have this software running effectively on both a laptop and a desktop. I have also learned a lesson in backing up 'My Documents' IE. make sure you use the path which starts 'C:documents and settings', then select the specific 'my documents' for your profile - this seems to work far better than trying to select 'My Documents' as a source folder. Also I had to be careful how I selected the paths to make sure I was not saving folders within a folder of the same name, duplicating the backup within itself - turns out this is really easy to do when you're not paying sufficient attention to what you are doing...!

Online clothing for UK shoppers

The economic climate being what it is at the moment, there is no doubt that the companies that survive will be the companies that offer a good service at a good price. One of the best ways to be able to offer a good price is to have an online store which means a saving in overheads compared with a high street store. Passing those savings on to your customers will be the key to success as belts get tightened for at least the next 18 months or so.
Divine trash is one such entity a uk clothes shop offering savings online over the high street. After all, there will still be a demand for brands such as French Connection and Fenchurch even if the clothing budget has been dramatically squeezed.
Online shopping is here to stay as we see the demise of some of the major high street names, the best online stores will have a combination of:

• Great pictures which will make you feel that you have the clothes right in front of you
• Great prices which will appeal to the limited budget
• Great service which will keep you coming back for more.

It's not that an internet store-front is easy, you have to work hard to make it appeal to the internet shopper, but it a lot cheaper to make an appealing website than it is to build an appealing shop. We are so used to internet surfing now, that secure ordering online is set to become part of our everyday life.

What price a blog-post?

Well at the risk of being seen as a complete Pariah by Google, I admittedly have on the odd occasion blogged for cash... But the question is how much cash should we demand? The days of great paid blogging rewards were brief in my experience - I don't know how much John Chow commands these days, but I thing the glory days are a thing of the past since Google took a dim view of paid blogging. I have always argued that paid adverts are part of the internet and Google itself sells advertising space on it's search results. I think there is room for bloggers to sell space if there are willing buyers without having to have their PageRank automatically wiped, but then what do I know??
On the subject of how much, I guess you have to factor in what you could make if you spent your time doing something else, and how desperate you are to make a few bucks. I have drawn the line at overly-demanding posts at less than $5. I would probably do text-link for that much, but not a time-consuming post with three links and 200 words...
How about you? what are your limits??
I am encouraged that Blogsvertise appears to have come back on line this month offering the chance to extend beyond the $60 that I made in January. I am feeling the pinch and have seriously considered funding my eBay purchases with my 'own' money this month. I remain hopeful of the return of paid posts to keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed - It's not so long ago that I was taking out $100 a month AND spending $100 a month on eBay toys...

Power to the shopper

A search engine that crawls on line stores like Google crawls websites, that ShopWiki, the site that is revolutionising on line purchasing. Many shopping sites give results from advertisers who have paid for an entry, ShopWiki trawls anything and everything for sale on the Web.

From sports and movie collectibles to some of the latest technology, your search can contain anything that is available on the internet today.

Some of my relatives are particularly keen on military memorabilia and I am always looking for appropriate gifts at Christmas an Birthday times, but where can you shop for this type of thing securely? Some auction sites have this type of merchandise, but they are a bit hit and miss. If you need to buy a present, then you are better off going to a website that specialises in the type of present that you are after.

You can refine your search by colour, brand or by price by simply using the controls at the top of each results page. My relatives are particularly interested in British and American militaria, so I selected the ‘brand’ of ‘Allied’ which gave me a selection of very suitable books.

Along with the shopping results, there are ShopWiki buying guides where appropriate giving information related to the search that you have done, like this one to help you if you are looking to buy toys such as collectible toy soldiers.
All together ShopWiki is a first-rate resource, not only to find what you want quickly, but to give you all sorts of helpful support to make your shopping experience fun and stress-free.

Great free software find...

A while ago I had a copy of Norton Partition Manager to try which I found to be very effective, but I've found some free software which is just as powerful called EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition. This software is just the job for copying your boot disk (which is what I wanted to do) among other tasks.
My aim was to create an exact copy of a lap-top hard-drive, and this is how I went about it:
I purchased a laptop hard drive from eBay - with the same specifications as the original drive - same capacity and speed.
I purchased a 2.5" hard-drive caddy with USB cable also from eBay.
I downloaded EASEUS free software.
There was change I had to make to my original plan, I had expected to be able to copy the drive whilst it was still in-situ in the laptop. Now, the software was happy to do this by closing down Windows (I use XP pro). However my laptop wouldn't reboot with the USB caddy attached, I have had a number of peculiar experiences with the USB ports on this PC... and whatever I tried, there was no way that I could complete the task in the way I had hoped.
My 'fix' was to get another USB caddy, take the original laptop drive out of the laptop and connect both drives to a desktop PC with the free software.
Once the drives were plugged into USB 2.0 ports (they don't seem to work on older ports..), the software was able to see the original drive and the new empty drive. I selected the 'copy disk' wizard, old drive as the source (even though it had partitions, one as FAT32, one as NTFS), new drive as the destination.
After a couple of hours, the program had run it's course and I had a perfect bootable copy of my original drive. I replaced it in my laptop and powered it up - to my delight it booted straight away, after loading Windows it needed a reboot, but after the reboot it was indistinguishable from the original.
What was the point? you might say, well the laptop is about three or four years old and I suspected that the hard-drive may be on it's way out - This way I have a brand new drive in place without the hassle of having to re-install an operating system. Not only that, but if there is a catastrophic failure of my hard drive, I have an exact bootable copy on standby. My plan is to keep this spare drive in it's USB caddy and update 'My Documents' and other data folders an a weekly basis by just dragging them across (or I could use more free software 'SyncBack' from '2brightsparks' to automate this task). Every so often, in the same way that you might set a system restore point, I plan to copy the complete disk again so that whatever happens I can carry on working with exactly the same settings.
I am considering carrying out similar procedures on my desktop(s) next, after all with the advent of 1.5 & 2TB units, hard-drives are fairly cheap. One step I haven't mentioned is to make sure your drive is in optimum shape before copying it - this would include most of the steps covered in the system restore point link above (delete unwanted files, run CCleaner, run chkdsk and defrag).

Going nowhere fast...

Right now, I am in the final stages of ridding myself of a credit card debt which has been hanging over me for a few years. As a consequence, there are a range of things that have been part of my purchasing patterns of the past that are no longer on my shopping list...
That list includes

• A small wine cellar that I had my mind on creating and had intended to heep stocked with some favourite tipples.
• Holidays abroad
• Our own car (relying on a company car and public transport is our current mode...)

I often think about what car I would have given the choice, would I go for a 4x4 or a family car? Will I ever be able to create a wine cellar from some of my favourite Australian wines? Will our next holiday be with Vegas vacations, will we ever get to go back to Malta or New York or Southern France?
I reckon it will be about four months or so before the credit card debt is completely cleared, after that I hope to answer some of these questions...

Why do I blog?

I don't tend to write much about my personal life and my reasons for blogging, yet in the blogosphere it is important to engage with your readers and tell at least a little of your story. I am by nature more of a private person, but thought it would be fitting to talk about my reasons for blogging.
I started blogging initially because I was getting into web site design and wanted to get some back links for a website - my first blog started as a kind of website building and SEO blog. After that I heard about being paid to blog and that intrigued me to the point where I had to find out if anyone could do it. This is how the Munny4Hunny blog began - as an investigation into online earnings. Roughly 2 years and about $2000 later, the blog has it's own domain but has seen quite a few changes in the paid to blog arena.
I was interested in paid to blog as my wife had decided to become a stay-at-home Mum, so we were reliant on a single income. I was interested in building up a bit of spare cash (Munny) so that we might be able to treat (Hunny) ourselves occasionally. The last four years or so have seen us turn around our financial situation as a family through neccesity. It's funny how when you are both earning, you don't worry so much about credit card bills... Since becoming a single income family, my credit card debt has shrunk from about £6,500 to around it's current level of around £600 - it won't be too long before it has disappeared and I can start saving money... This has been helped enormously by having a small online income - It doesn't pay any large bills, but it does supply a small stream of cash for those little purchases that otherwise eat away at your savings - To be fair a large proportion of the earnings are spent on computer bits and bobs, but if I didn't pay for them this way, I would be spending money that would otherwise be paying off the credit card.
That's a bit about me, feel free to leave a comment (I do follow...) and say why you blog, or why you would like to blog - or even why you don't...

Saving money while holidaying

To be truthful, over the last few years of frugal living, holidays have been pretty much at the back of my mind, but everyone needs a break. We have been investigating all the ways to holiday without spending a great deal, and you might be surprised to find there are a few ways to save on your holidays.
The recent holidays we have taken have been rentals like the beach vacation rentals available on the internet, although they have been a little closer to home... This Summer we are holidaying on the cheap again - one of the advantages of rentals is that you can accommodate friends and family, we will be taking advantage of a family rental this Summer - my parents will be footing the bill. Another tactic we will be exploring is Tesco vouchers which can be exchanged for weekend hotel vouchers at four times their face value. Some of these deals seem really great, so I hope to be enjoying some top quality accommodation on the cheap this Summer too.

Home security gadgets

The development in technology means that humble householders can have access to security technology that only a few years ago would have only been available to film stars and super celebrities. The kind of systems that would have been the toys of millionaires about thirty years ago are available on the internet now for a few dollars.
Whether it be hidden spy camera gadgets, multi-camera closed circuit television, GSM and text-message alarm systems, remote switches for household circuits... all these things and more are now a couple of clicks away and at only the expense of a few dollars. The rate at which technology is founded, developed and marketed is astounding. The rate at which it then becomes affordable to the general populace is equally astounding.
It does make you wonder where all this development is going to take us, the good thing is that it won't cost us much to find out...

Make some savings

In this tight financial climate it makes sense to try and make savings wherever you can. My list of priorities for savings have included:

• Searching for the best deals on power (domestic electricity and gas)
• Using the car less than normal
• Looking for the best deals on auto insurance quotes
• Making my own lunch rather than buying lunch and snacks every day

In fact every way in which I spend money has been examined and pared to the bone over the last few years, my ultimate aim is to be debt-free and start building up some money for the future. I have managed to limit my 'frivolous' spending to the extra money that I have made online.
We have to 'treat' ourselves from time to time otherwise we lose focus on what we are trying to achieve - much of my online earnings go into Paypal, so I tend to limit spending on myself to things that can be purchased with Paypal funds, mostly via eBay.

Spend, spend, spend...

I read an article the other day which spoke about the way in which we are so willing to spend on technology and it really rang true with me (although I don't go to the extremes with spending in this particular area). The writer was an IT professional, but was writing about his personal spend rather than work-related, and this is the gist of what he was saying, but from my own perspective:

The basic requirements of a home PC are email, word processing, spreadsheets and internet browsing and like many people, my adventures into full-blown PC ownership started between ten and fifteen years ago. My PC configuration of approx 13 years ago was something like this: An 8GB hard-drive partitioned into 4 x 2GB (!!!this was the factory settings!!!), 300MHz PII with 64MB RAM and Windows 95 with a dial-up 56k modem. This mighty machine cost £1200 ($2000).
Actually, I still have this PC (in bits) though nothing of the original is retained in the casing. I recently started a project to renew every part of the old machine just to see if I could do it. It now has a motherboard which cost £10 from eBay which has a CPU that runs at a mighty 500MHz, has 384MB RAM and a 20GB drive complemented by a 120GB drive (all bought from eBay) - the only thing still in use is the casing...

This ancient machine is my 'backup' in case of catastrophe, my main machine is a more respectable 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM with a 160GB drive and a 320GB drive with a 250GB external drive - To be fair this one was given to me, but without drives and with 512MB RAM. The point of all this is that once I am settled with a new PC, I start to look at how I can make it better. The reason for this is that PC's are expandable in all sorts of ways, and there is this desire to have the best spec available even though it may not be totally crucial. After all the main things that I use the PC for are email, word processing, spreadsheets and internet browsing IE. exactly what they were thirteen years ago. We seem happy to spend a LOT of money even though we have not really improved things a great deal. Admittedly money spent on broadband has seen some significant returns in the way the PC is now used, and hard drive size allows us to store huge amounts of data, our PC's run faster, but the bang-per-buck is very difficult to justify when you look at how much people (blokes in particular) actually spend on their PC's.

Now I am a skinflint, a meanie and a user of second-hand technology so to be fair I have probably spent less than most, and if I'm totally honest, I only really spend money that I have generated from internet earnings, so I feel justified... but the fact remains that we can pour money into these bottomless pits and feel that we are getting good value. This 'value' is distorted by the comparisons that we make.
Yesterday you may have had a total of 160GB hard-drive space, today you spent £80 and have a total of 66oGB hard-drive space. If you had waited for 6 months, you could have had the same thing for £30 probably... yet you still feel a sense of value because you can remember when a 500GB hard drive would have cost £500. I'm starting to think that maybe that is the crux of the matter, the fact that we place a value on something, then can see it get cheaper almost daily until we can resist no more and end up buying it, regardless of it's real value in terms of what it can offer us.

Of course, one of the reasons that you can get such a cheap hard-drive is that someone else has felt the call of a 1TB hard-drive (even though they don't need it..) and is prepared to sell off their 'previously enjoyed' 500GB drive to make room for the new shiny 1TB drive. Ebay is the driver behind this culture of replacing old with new and passing on the old so that it becomes new for the 'followers', the 'early adopters' are forging the way whether it be for components or for a complete PC. The idea that I can go out today and buy something for £300 that is far more powerful that the equivalent thing I bought for £1200 thirteen years ago is a compelling argument on it's own.. Do I need it? Well no, but it's ONLY £300...!

Shopping on the internet

In these times of uncertain financial status and dwindling reserves and profits, it's good to know that there are bargains to be had. Whether you are thinking about buying Gucci watches from an online store or are browsing eBay for the latest gadget, the internet will be one place where trade is likely to increase during the financial crisis. The cry from internet traders is likely to be akin to Jim Callaghan's (British PM) famous 'Crisis, what crisis?' uttered nearly thirty years ago.
I have found that in particular, prices for technology 'toys' are not lowered on the high street as frequently as they are on the internet. The internet responds quickly to pressure form the global market, the high street generally only responds to pressure from another high street retailer just down to road.
The plain fact is that if you don't at least do an online price comparison for your purchases, you could be missing out on huge savings.

Earnings January 2009

As the face of paid blogging continues to change, we are ready to disclose blogging earnings for the opening month of 2009.
There were few sources of funds this month, some PayU2blog, more than usual from Adsense giving a total of just about $60 for the month. This has got me thinking about how I want to approach paid blogging for the future. I have just renewed two domain names so I am committed for a further 12 months, but am open to changing tactics and maybe switching emphasis. I really want to make time to explore some affiliate earnings, but am finding that i don't have enough time to devote to making the appropriate changes. I have another blog that I am working on in the background but honeslty have paid little attention to it this month. The overall picture is very different to two years ago when comfortable earning could relatively easily be made.

I am very probably a bit lazy in my approach to earnings as my pal Rachel on the TurnOnePoundIntoOneMillion blog is still making good earnings spread over many earning channels. I am happy to concede that I am lazy in relation to online earnings and am choosy about what programs I will use. I have the excuse that my offline income and general family welfare has to come first, so my blogging has to fit in around these priorities.

I am also keen to explore non-blogging online earnings which are as important to me as the blogging earnings although I don't usually report them here. I have reached payout with Adsense again this month, most of this revenue stream is from non-blogging activity although I have found that spread over a number of niche blogs, Adsense is becoming a more significant element in blog-revenue. My investigations into affiliates will be mostly non-blogging sites, but at the same time I will have an eye on anything I may be able to place on a blog.

Every so often, we have to look at the projects we have cultivated and cut out those that are not flourishing - I am notoriously bad at doing this, wanting to give every avenue a chance to blossom. The reality is that in order to pursue a defined goal, things that detract from the main goal need to be sacrificed. I am not saying that I will give up on paid blogging, but I am saying that I will need to work out a strategy to optimise revenue. It turns out that of the four blogs I regularly update, that I am actually 'interested' in continuing two of them - this means that I would be interested in these topics regardless of whether I was being paid. Unfortunately these are not the blogs which make me the most money... and I remain 'interested' in generating revenue even if it's only $60 a month ($60 goes a long way on eBay).

Education, Education, Education

The now-famous mantra of Tony Blair (British PM) and New Labour still rings in our ears today, and the reason is that it remains a priority for us all.
In these days of fast-moving technology and super-fast communication, education in all forms is at the cornerstone of our society. Most 'education' is informal in the sense that you can teach yourself to use the latest gadget and to use the latest software or website. However there comes a point where formal learning is required whether to acquire a particular competence, or to get a specific qualification. This is where technical colleges in California or your local region come into their own.
In many cases, our early education just doesn't give us the grounding needed for specific tasks in the workplace and vocational training is required. Often courses for a specific software package such as an accounts program or technical drawing program can be found at vocational training outlets. Personally I have been looking around for a suitable health and safety qualification which will help me to complete tasks in my work environment.
Education is an ongoing process, I have believed for a long time that the maturity of a worker can be assessed by the point at which they stopped learning - for some that was before they left high school, for others, their quest for knowledge continues to this day. I hope to remain in the latter group for as long as possible.

Tower or Laptop

I use both laptops and desktops on a daily basis, a laptop at work and desktop (or even two...) at home and the accepted wisdom is that laptops lag behind desktops in processing power, memory and speed.
Whilst this is true, it is also true to point out that today's laptops are far more powerful than laptops a year ago, and in many cases more powerful than desktops a year ago. So, the slight lack in power is offset by the flexibility that a laptop affords. Admittedly whilst one is less likely to do a 'do-it-yourself upgrade' on a laptop, the portability and ease of use can swing the argument. After all there is little that you can do on a laptop that you CAN'T do on a desktop, but out on the road, your desktop is pretty much useless....
Linking your laptop with a mobile broadband service or making use of 'hotspots' can leave you with a no-brainer scenario - the laptop offers far more options such as accessing the internet whilst on a train or in a motorway service station, and with falling prices the laptop is now the option of choice for many households having previously been mainly the domain of businesses.

PageRank punishment

I have noticed that in the last week or so, some of my newer blogs that had PR, have been slapped presumably for carrying PPP or associated paid to blog posts. I have only done a few paid posts on these blogs but it seems that these few posts have had an effect on PageRank.
I had two blogs which had started to build up PR, one was ranked 2, the other 1 - these have lost a ranking point each. Not a huge problem you would have thought except that once more the opportunities that I was getting for these blogs have depleted from an average offering of between 8-12 posts each time I logged into PPP, (usually about four actually available) to currently about 4 (one of which is available). So ironically, it is the taking part in PPP which is lessening the opportunities I am offered.

There are doubtless several ways in which Google can 'detect' PPP opps, firstly there is the tinyURL link that you sometimes have to use - these could easily be sniffed out by Google. then there is the fact that the jobs are so specific with the link requirements, that using the 'link:' search function would throw up all the links that had been put on the internet in the duration of the opp on PPP. Who's to say that there are not Google employees with accounts at PPP using the information from each oppotunity to search for paid bloggers??
The upshot is that the more PPP you do the less likely you will be able to do PPP again because your PR will come down and opps will dry up.

No such worries with PayU2Blog thankfully as the jobs keep coming regardless of PR - there was a bit of a rush before Christmas, and it has been quiet since, but I noticed a few more PU2B opps today so I will have something to do at the weekend...

Chicago Lawyers

The unwelcome trauma of an accident can be repeated when it comes to legal action after the event. Having a good legal team will keep the stress to a minimum, and when looking for representation, there are a number of factors to consider. Image is important and your first impression will tell you a lot of what you need to know straight off. Experience is vital, especially specific experience of winning cases just like yours - don't be scared of asking what their success rate is. A good local firm can be found by searching the internet or yellow pages for Chicago accident attorney or Boston criminal lawyer or Florida family lawyer etc...

dNeero surveys

I am still enjoying completing dNeero surveys, they are entertaining (and short!) and easy to complete - plus you can get paid for them - you can't ask for more than that...
A note of caution though.. after March 2009, you have to submit a single destination site that you will post the surveys on - this will prevent us from choosing lots of surveys and spreading them over a number of blogs, which is a nice way of completing lots of surveys without cramming a single blog full of survey widgets.
Here is the latest survey on Spitz tunes:

Looking for a present with a difference

Need a present for a certain female? Now Christmas is over and thoughts turn to Valentines Day or a special birthday, what about something slinky and silky for a lady friend?
I came across the Shirley of Hollywood website the other day which I must say is the classiest lingerie site you could ever hope to clap your eyes on... The pictures are beautifully and tastefully shot and represent a real elegance that is not always seen on underwear websites (though it's not like I spend a lot of my time on the internet looking at underwear!!).
The prices online were pretty impressive too...and in this internet age, online shopping is not only cheaper but gets around the embarrassment of having to ask the shop assistant if she has it in a bigger size...

Weght control

I have just been made aware of yet another weight loss pill on the market called Leptovox. With the proliferation of all kinds of fad diets, medications and healthy foods, the modern-day slimmer is left with a bewildering choice.
My advice is to make sure you are eating sensibly and taking good regular exercise before resorting to medication. If healthy living is not achieving the results, then good medical advice should be employed before taking the plunge with some diet pills.

Earnings December 2008

I am pleased to report $105 earnings mostly from PayU2Blog and PPP during December. A few dollars come from surveys, but to be honest I have not reached payout from any of the survey schemes that I use - these are not schemes that will be main earners though they are useful for 'topping up' the earnings. I am still getting reasonable success on Adsense and this could be improved if I could generate visitors more easily.
I (as always) have a few schemes to pursue, namely affiliates on one of my non-blog' sites - this should generate some revenue if I can get it right, but it needs some major re-working and there is never the time. I have started on a new blog and would like to use this to explore the possibilities that Wordpress has to offer - again where the time is going to come from I don't know...
At least the paid blog earnings are ticking over nicely providing some residual funds some of which I am going to need to fund the Wordpress project. Although the eranings from Paid to Blog are lower now than originally seen 18 months or so ago, I find the extra cash keeps me from spending money that would otherwise be accumulating on my credit card, so the benefits are clear to me and have helped me to reduce my credit card bill by 90% in the last two years - I am aiming to have it cleared in 7 months time..

More weight-loss claims

I am fortunate in that weight has never really been a problem for me, so I have no need to trawl through reviews of the many products that proliferate the weight-loss market such as Hydroxycut reviews and pages dedicated to other medications.
My main focus is to keep healthy through plenty of exercise and sensible eating habits. If I felt I needed some sort of medication, I would be wary of what I was taking and where it was coming from. I would make sure I employed plenty of resources to learn all that I could including getting professional medical advice before using any sort of medication that wasn't prescribed.

2008 Summary

A while ago, I speculated on how many posts I would have completed by the end of the year, and I am pleased to find that I have exceeded expectations. I expected to have 935 posts under my belt in the two years I have been blogging, but can reveal that this is my 957th ever blog post (488th on Munny4Hunny)... and I have earned almost USD2000 from my blogs in that time.
I have reported my earnings every month since the first dollars hit my Paypal account on this blog, my other blogs are less blatant ;)
I run a separate internet enterprise and earn some Adsense from other sites which has generated more income which I do not include as part of my blog earnings. My philosphy is not merely to amass income, but to do so in a way which remains enjoyable to me. There are certain subjects that I will not promote even when the pickings are rich, and I am not a big fan of PTC sites even though many of my internet friends use this method (one even started a PTC site...).
I hope my observations and experiences have been useful to someone somewhere as earnings has never been the only motive for this blog even though sometimes the content does not seem to reflect those ideals.
It remains to say Happy New Year and happy blogging and browsing in 2009.

The lull before New Year

I am getting ready to write up my summary of 2008 and preparing for what 2009 has to offer. It is his time of year that has us thinking about how we are going to do things better in the future. Our New Years resolutions may well include some ideas about how we might work better, get fit or encourage healthy cooking in our homes.
A healthy mind and healthy body are effective for success in all walks of life and should be the starting point for future planning. We are usually indulging ourselves with left-over turkey and boxes of chocolates in the lull between Christmas and New Year - what better time to work out how we are going to sort ourselves out financially and physically in the next 12 months?

Christmas Survey

To get you in the mood for Christmas, here is a Christmas survey from dNeero. Don't forget you can earn money for completing surveys, and more money for posting them on a blog or social site. Just click on the survey below to take part...

Diet pills

I have taken a few days off to do my Christmas shopping and my brain is being taxed to the limit as my family have not given me many clues as to what they want for Christmas. I like to buy practical gifts, but prefer to be told what someone wants rather than waste money on something that is not going to be used. Some of my more imaginative presents would include diet pills which should be particularly useful at Christmas (or at least the new year!), fake snow because we rarely get snow where I live, and ear-plugs to ensure someone gets the rest they really need during the holiday season.

More Tech Advice...

One more tip for getting the most of your older PC set up involves your virtual memory or 'swap file'. Your PC virtual memory is a memory file set aside on your hard-disk (C:Drive by default) this memory is utilised by programs that you have running. I can offer no advice on the size of the file (something that can be configured within the virtual memory management), but I have come up with two good reasons why you might consider moving the location of this file.

1. You may be getting short of space on your main drive, moving what is often a very large file, can free up some vital room.
2. If you have added hard-drives (as I have) you may discover that later drives actually run faster, offering a chance to speed up the entire system a little. I checked this out on my PC and found that my original hard-disk was 5400rpm, whereas the disk I had recently added was 7200rpm.

You can even assign virtual memory to an external drive if you want, but I settled for this newer internal drive that I bought primarily just for extra storage. My computer/C: Drive/properties/hardware will give you the names of your hard disks. I Googled these names to get the spec. including the speed of the drive.
Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change - gives you your current settings. If you decide to move the file, keep the settings the same just add the same settings to another drive and select 'set'. Don't forget to remove the settings from the previous set-up otherwise you end up with two swap files running at the same time (like I did! - don't worry, it doesn't do any harm...).
You will need to restart your system for the changes to take effect. On my XP pro installation, the virtual memory is identified as a 'pagefile.sys' file, on my previous Win 98SE installation, I think it was called 'swapfile'.

Home networks

More and more people are building or buying servers for home networks as IT begins to infiltrate the home. A few years ago, you would be one of the few if you had a PC and internet access at home, it is now the norm to have broadband and a wireless network. As more home users are added, more PC's will be in the home requiring a network to share an internet connection. Not many homes run a 'proper' server network, but with the advent of media-sharing and component sharing (ie. one printer shared by the PC's in a house) the more it is likely that homes will start to have their own dedicated servers like business networks. You can create a low-end server from an old PC, or a piece of discarded business equipment like a used cisco or blade server. To buy a dedicated network Operating System will cost several hundred dollars, but XP pro will run as a server O/S with just a few adjustments. Linux is another alternative for those who don't want to spend a lot of money, but you would be well-advised to join some linux forums first, as support for free software is in scant supply....

For the man who has everything

If you need a Christmas present for the man in your life, but his tastes are expensive and he has already bought himself everything he wants, consider his hobbies...
Does he need some of those mufflers he can put on his golf clubs? Does he need a silver spoon to eat his caviar? or some Ferrari parts for that yellow monstrosity gathering dust in his garage??
Even rich people need accessories that don't cost the earth, though admittedly a set of tires for a Ferrari would not doubt cost more than 6 months of my wages...

Dream Holiday

Holidays are not really on my agenda until we have dispensed with our frugal lifestyle (ie. when we finally find ourselves with some excess money!!), but we can dream...
I would love to go back to a few places that we visited when we were younger and a little more reckless with our money. Southern France calls me as do the many friends we should revisit in Malta, I would love to see more of the US, and my little one would be particularly impressed with any Disney vacations that might be on the horizon.
I have visited some of the Northern states of the US but have not yet had the good fortune to head for the beaches of Florida. there can be no more complete holiday for a child than one that features Mickey Mouse...

Still not want to go Vista?

I am one of those who is very happy with my XP installation and have XP Pro on my works laptop and both of the PC's that I use at home (one of those PC's is too old to run Vista anyway). Despite thinking seriously about Linux for some time, I still haven't had the courage to go down that route yet.
I am not yet ready to embrace Vista unless forced to and will be contect to wait for the next generation OS to come along from Windows. So how do we keep XP running in the meantime? There are a number of routine steps that you can take to keep your XP installation in tip-top condition and some of these are listed below:

• Have sufficient anti-virus and spyware cover - I use two free pieces of software to do this AVG FREE for anti-virus and SPYBOT S&D (Google for them if you want to download them) both of these programs are highly-rated and highly effective and offer free updates.
• Keep your disks uncluttered and well-maintained. If you have on board disk management so much the better, but there are some simple steps you can take to keep your disks running to their optimum. Use the Check-disk facility (my computer/right click on the disk/properties/tools) regularly - you may have to restart the PC for this to work. From the same tools tab, use disk defragmenter regularly too. To clear off unwanted files from your disks, try 'CCleaner' - this can dig out Megabytes of filespace and free it up for a cleaner system.
• Once you have been through all the maintenenace steps (scanned for viruses and spyware, checked and defrag'd your disks and cleaned out the redundant files - create a system restore point so that you can go back to those settings if anything goes wrong in the future. Having an up to date clean system restore point will means that recovery from errors will not be too much hard work. (Accessories/System tools/System restore).

These three simple steps will keep you ahead of the game and help to keep your XP O/S up to scratch pending a shiny new system from Windows. If you have to reinstall your O/S (which is a good way to 'clean' your system anyway..) it makes sense to create a new XP disk incorporating SP3 to speed up the process - there are other short-cuts you can introduce when creating your new start-up disk, but I will save the details for another day probably after I have tried it myself and can report on how easy this is to do.

Looking for work

Looking for a job in these financially tight times is a task for which you are going to need some help if you want to be effective. Firstly you need to sketch out your resume and have an idea of the job and salary that you are looking for. Next you should sign up with some job websites related to your specific field of work or geographical location. Many sites have an option for you to post your resume online to enable prospective employers to short-list for example from a list of Dallas resumes or engineers resumes etc...
The more specific area that the website is aimed at, the better chance you have of getting short-listed for the job of your dreams. If you have been out of the job-market for a while you may need to brush up on your interview technique too. get friends to help you. or some work agencies may be able to help you with that too.

Even more diet pills..

I am starting to get goggle-eyed over the many different forms of diet pills there are out there and ever more tongue-tied with their names. the latest one I have come across is called Ephedra eca stack and contains caffeine and aspirin (Ephedra Caffeine Aspirin - get it...??)
Now you know right off that some people are sensitive to aspirin, so it is as well to be informed about what these medications consist of. From what I know, caffeine is used as a stimulant to push drugs around the body quicker, so that explains what the caffeine is doing there. There have been restrictions on the use of ephedra/ephedrine in some places in the past so make sure you do your own thorough research before taking anybody's word for the effectiveness of this drug.

An unsafe world

If you have felt the need for some personal protection as part of your job or day to day life then there are a host of self defense products you can carry to help give you a little more confidence while roaming those mean streets.
You may have read about the latest stun gun disguised as a mobile phone, and thought about carrying a pepper spray or other self protection devise. If you decide to purchase a device of this nature, be aware of how it can be used safely and local restrictions on these products. In many countries you would not normally be permitted, and some US states do not allow carrying stun guns.

November Earnings

Earnings took a bit of a drop this month, but to be honest I put less effort into paid blogging and concentrated on other online projects. On the positive side I have been paid by Adsense again this month - the fourth payout in 2008, and that will help to see me through the Christmas period. I should just point out that I don't record Adsense earnings as blog earnings except where the earnings are directly attributable to blogs rather than other online projects.
This months' total earnings were just a little over $73, which is lower than recent months. The majority of earnings coming via PayU2Blog. I am working out a new blog project at the moment which is going to be considerably different to previous projects, I'm not even sure if I can monetise it as yet and it may be a while before I am ready to unveil anything. I am thinking of going 'Wordpress' for the first time and am researching the most cost-effective way of doing that. Most services seem to charge about $6.95 a month to host Wordpress, and I was disappointed to find that GoDaddy seem to be more expensive as they are my favourite domain-purchasing service. More about this to follow...

Diet supplement

Are you aware that 97% of diet supplement don't work? You have to look long and hard to find something really effective that is going to suit your body and lifestyle. You should get a lot of good advice before embarking on any course of treatment which includes supplements or medication of any sort. Don't forget that on 3% of what is available on the market is in any way effective, so there is a much better chance of being ripped off than there is of having good results.
How do they get away with it? Basically they exploit a weakness, they know that their clients won't make a fuss and will think it is their own fault if they don't lose weight, and they are happy to peddle useless pills and potions on a basis of empty promises.

dNeero surveys

With the demise of one fixed adverts scheme last week, it's going to be difficult to find a replacement - I am thinking of looking at some new affiliates maybe shifting out some old ones that don't work. One scheme that does provide a few cents here and there is dNeero surveys, they are mostly extremely simple to complete, and very easy to display on your blog (although you can still earn something for the survey without displaying it). It will not replace the type of income that fixed adverts do, but there is the advantage of earning from your downline up to three tiers and I am happy to say I have a downline that includes eleven individuals (of which three are active) which generates a few cents for me. I have not made payout yet, but I am getting there slowly. You can join the scheme by clicking on the survey below take a few surveys and see just how easy it is...

Site Maintenance

Well I finally got around to removing my 'matched.co.uk' adverts today and also am happy to report that they did pay my November payment after all a couple of days after the closing down announcement. I worked out that in the short time I was signed up to them, they paid out £175 (couldn't guess what that is in dollars now...). In the current economic climate, we are better off with dollar-paying schemes than UK£ payouts at the moment. I had got used to accounting for all my £ earnings at a basic $2=£1 rate, this is no longer the case.

Of course, as I was converting all my earnings to £ anyway, I am now getting a much better rate for the US$ payouts. This is welcome news as I await a Adsense payout next month, which will be the fourth one in a 12 month period.
My next task must be to find all the 'matched' affiliate adverts and remove those, I will them try submitting new pages to the other fixed advets schemes that I use - you can see more about monetisation for websites on my 'livewyre.net' pages. The end of the month is drawing in, and my paid to blog activity has been low this month compared with last month and the earnings will no doubt reflect that.

Holiday plans

I find Christmas holidays a difficult time of year where the winding up of the years business meets the endless list of parties, gatherings and performances to be endured or enjoyed. Suffice to say I get somewhat stressed over how I am going to fit everything in. Life has been hectic enough in the last few months, add to that a host of dates to cram into the first three weeks of December along with all the regular commitments and the whole thing is enough to make you succumb to whatever bug is currently doing the rounds.

The good news is that I have a week of holidays left over (not that I can afford to go away - although that would get me out of a whole load of obligations!), in which I will be expected to do all the odd jobs around the house that have been building up. The bathroom light fixtures need some attention, the woodwork in the hallway needs replacing after we had new floor tiles - there are a million and one other little tasks, but I find setting a realistic target of just a couple of jobs allows me to relax in the knowledge that I have at least got some of these jobs cleared off my 'to-do' list before the New Year kicks in and the 'to do' list starts again...

Christmas Present Ideas

I think I am easy to buy for at Christmas as I have always loved traditional man-gadgets ie: watches, pens, briefcases the sort of item that makes a subtle statement about who you are and what you are about. I like classic styling with a twist and I like certain brands:
Pens: Parker, MontBlanc or any other recognisable make
Watches: Swatch is my favourite
Briefcases or suitcases: Has to be Samsonite
These are the type of item you can buy duplicates of, never mind if your man has a watch, if it's more than 12 months old, he will be thinking about getting a new one anyway.. You can have as many pens as you like, and a new briefcase is always welcome. Those are my tips for man-gifts this Christmas - and... Please don't buy your man moisturizer whatever the TV adverts say!!

Matched.co.uk is no more...

What a shame, a nice little earner providing fixed adverts for fixed monthly payments has closed down this week - emails were sent to publishers, and I am gutted to have missed the last months' payment. This is what the email said, and is now posted on the matched.co.uk website:

It is with much regret that we announce that Matched.co.uk has closed.

Matched has been running as a beta experiment for some time and, after much careful consideration, it has been decided not to progress the project to the next stage.

I wondered if they are planning to sell the domain to matched.com?? but if that were the case, they would surely just move their operation to a new domain... These are not the only provider of this type of service, and hopefully this won't be the start of a trend. Having fixed adverts at fixed rates brings in a guaranteed monthly income which can easily cover any hosting costs a small site may have. Matched used to pay £3 per month for each advert hosted up to a maximum of £75 per month.

Spy Camera

When I was growing up, the world of secret spying, invisible ink and the spy camera were just fantasy play ideas. You could buy toy kits with plastic cameras and other spy paraphernalia, but now these things are widely available for real and at a price your average person can easily afford. Whether for industrial alarm systems or domestic surveillance/protection, you can easily pick up a quality multi-camera system for very little outlay. Not only that, but this type of equipment is not even difficult to set up. You don't have to be a security expert to have a system up and running in no time. Expanded memory avaialability also means that images and audio can be stored on hard-drives negating the need for endless piles of tapes lying around the place.
Todays surveillance systems are inexpensive, high quality and easy to install which accounts for why there are so many of them installed.

Travel Plans

In the current financial situation, there is little chance of me requiring any travel insurance for a while. Other related issues are that I have not bothered to re-new my passport, and have cancelled European cover on my car insurance as it's not likely to be leaving these shores any time soon..
It is important to take a good hard look at your financial situation and 'cut your cloth' accordingly. If you do plan some foreign travel, then it might be a good idea to get your own travel cover that will save you from having to pay the default insurance every time you book a flight or accommodation - you can save a lot of money by having your own cover and what's more, you get to choose cover which is appropriate to your own needs and circumstances. One of the problems with just ticking to box for standard insurance is most people never bother to see what the terms are until they need to make a claim!

Promotional Writing

It occurs to me that paid bloggers are similar to advertising copywriters writing adverts for radio, although I admit that the quality of the copy varies quite a bit...
When I started writing blog posts, I thought that I had to make them like little adverts promoting a product or service and saying how great it was whether I believed it or not. In recent times I have come to understand that it is really the anchor-text that is the valuable thing to the advertiser, not so much the text that surrounds it.
Many advertisers say that a neutral post will suffice, and the reason for that is that they are not expecting lots of your visitors to take a lot of notice of the 'advert', but they need a link for a specific keyword to push their site or a specific page up the SERPS (search engine results position).
My posts now are much more personalised, as long as I get the link in and it's not out of context, the advertiser will probably be happy. There is no need to 'promote' the link, but equally it would not be helpful to be overly negative. Placing an out-of-context link would be unhelpful as there is value in the surrounding text that search engines can pick up on.
Occasionally when an advertiser wants to create buzz around a new site, product or service they actually request that you log-on to a site and test it. In these cases you are given much more direction, but generally you can slip your link into a related, but not necessarily overtly promotional post. Where I have to say something positive, I often put myself in the shoes of a voice-over artist for a radio advert. They don't need to mean what they say and nobody has any problem over them being paid for their time - There is no need for me to feel cheap about promoting something I don't actually like or enjoy as long as I do a good job. That said, there are certain things that I won't do, hence on numerous occasions I have turned down lucrative opportunities for promoting gambling sites and will continue to do so.

Upgrade your laptop

It's coming up to Christmas and you need a new laptop - great!
It's coming up to Christmas and there's a global recession just around the corner - not so great!
There are plenty of ways you can lick that laptop into shape and have an upgrade that can take you through the next 12 months no sweat!
Here are the steps to take:
Think about asking for some laptop memory for Christmas
Maybe upgrade to VISTA if you feel brave
Ask someone to stick a bigger hard-drive in your stocking!
In my experience, laptop hard-drives need replacing every couple of years, and it would make sense while you have the precision screwdrivers out, to add a little memory in there too...

Losing Weight

Hydroxycut is yet another diet supplement available on the internet, and again we are obliged to ask readers to exercise caution when deciding to use unregulated medication. Note that this product advertises itself as a 'supplement' which indicates that medication alone is not sufficient to achieve weight-loss goals.
Good advice on medication, diet and exercise should 'supplement' your chosen medication, and you should strive to get all the information you can before introducing new chemicals into your body. Check that the medication is compatible with any medical conditions you may have and make sure you understand the effects that the medication will have.

Size Zero

I heard something said the other day which I feel I must address, the implication of the piece was that women pursued 'size zero' at the behest of men - As a man I refute this entirely, I know of no man who would specify a size zero on their list of attractive traits in a female.
So where does this idea come from? In a word 'fashion' - sometimes it is 'fashionable' to have curves, other times it is fashionable to look like you should be in rehab. My supplementary point is this...
Do you believe the fashion industry to be dominated by heterosexual males??
I thought not... so I rest my case, size zero is a preference expressed by the fashion industry and is demanded by fellow-females and men who are not especially attracted to the female form.
When we are looking for someone to blame for the proliferation of diet pill and diet plans, don't look at your average bloke. You will find more about this fascination with size in any womens magazine than you ever would in a mens publication, and I would say again Do you think your average bloke even reads a mens mag?
Now I would not refute that men might be more interested in enhancement than down-sizing, but I would refer anyone to those TV programs where women are considering enhancement procedures. In almost every case, their male partners did not want them to go through any surgery - so if not for their partners, why do they want to be a different shape? The answer in almost every case is for confidence, confidence in the presence of men?? No think again...
I don't wish to try to make out that men are blameless, but let's redress the balance of thinking a little here - I am happy to state that I believe that men are not responsible for the size zero phenomenen.

Fantasy Holidays

With a recession just around the corner, long distance holidays are a dream for me at the moment, but I console myself with dreams of the holidays we can take when our finances are more stable.
I would love to visit friends in New York and New England, take in the sights of the Mid-west and take a trip to vegas Apart from that, we have friends to catch up with in Malta and I would love to take another road trip around France, maybe taking in Italy along the way.
The reality is, with a little one now in tow, we are more likely to stay firmly on British soil, and our next planned holiday is a freebie on the Norfolk Broads..
Apart from that, we are only likely to be able to get away for day trips here are there, so the bright lights of Vegas will have to wait.

Progress in safety equipment

The world of functional safety clothing has evolved over the last few years as safety has become more prominent in everyone’s mind. With some type of safety equipment required for every type of work-based task, manufacturers have realised that safety supplies are in a market which will be expanding for the foreseeable future.
You will note that new safety equipment is designed to appeal to the wearer, rather than just been plain and functional. Safety glasses are constructed with the same design and flair as sunglasses, safety helmets come with zany designs instead of plain colors.
This trend has started with the more commonly-used items but is also spreading to the specialized areas such as fire resistant clothing. This type of equipment traditionally has had a few items on offer which had to cope with all tasks. Now you can even get fire-retardant fleece-jackets and sweat-shirts, along with several designs of fire-retardant cotton or ‘Nomex’ shirts to wear under your fleece. The offerings to this market have increased with demand and competition.

Weight issues

I can't believe that there are so many products available for weight loss nowadays. I have not come across alli weight loss before, but it's just one of a whole host of products available. Other products include names like NOXYCUT and OROVO, with so many on the market thorough research is needed before buying any of these products.
There are two areas which you will need to investigate:

• Do some research on exactly what is in each product and the possible effects/side effects that it might have - try Googling for 'effects of....' for a start.
• Ensure that you ONLY buy from a reputable vendor who is qualified to sell such products and can give advice on the best product to use in your circumstances.

Earnings Oct 2008

In attempting to keep my 'off-line life' on an even keel, I have not been blogging too much this week - and in fact, forgot to do my monthly update.
Some significant differences this month - I did a lot more PPP so that I could have enough posts completed to add another blog to my PPP profile. As it turned out, the blog was not added to my profile as it did not meet the criteria. The blog in question has an editted template to make it less blog-like, and one of the features I have 'turned off' is the automatic dating of posts. This gave PPP a problem, and I am still debating whether I want to put the dates back so for now I just have one PPP blog (not this one...). In fact I will probably put dates back, the blog is concerned with current news, so being able to follow the blog chronologically would be sensible.

PayU2Blog remains the best earner, they sent me some bonus tasks this month, but have been fairly quiet since then. Adsense and other advertising continues to bring in a few much-needed dollars, and I had a new sponsored review op this month for one of my blogs.
As can be seen from the diagram, this months earnings were $142.46 which is above my rolling average of around $100 per month lately - most of this was due to the increased activity in PPP and the sponsored review opp. Blogsvertise has recently come back to life since I have some PR on some blogs - it will be interesting to see how long that PR remains...

Making ends meet

As the recession starts to bite each and every household will need to make budgets and watch very carefully where each little portion of their income is spent.
A good place to start is all those monthly bills in your list of direct debits. Make sure you get the best deal for utilities for your home, and get some competitive auto insurance quotes to see if you can shave some money off your car insurance, the same applies to home insurance. I have always said that the quickest way to make money is to look at your budgets and see where you can save yourself money - instant returns!