Its been 2 days since I have changed my lifestyle drastically. Drinking more water, running, healthier diet and also more sleep. If im honest, I notice a difference already. I feel incredibly more alert, i’m waking up feeling refreshed instead of the caffiene craving demon I used to be and most importantly, I feel a lot happier!

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Google’s SearchWiki provides you with an up arrow in order to promote a search result, an ‘X’ in order to delete search results and a little speech bubble in order to add comments. This is designed in order to give the google search a more ‘personal’ feel, allowing users to adjust their search results to fit themselves. This is the first time that google have ever let users alter the order of search results. Google still wont let out their website ranking formulae though.

I think this is a footstep in the correct direction, allowing users some more input into their searches, allowing for rank, demotion and if neccessary removal of useless searches. Should be something to keep an eye on, and once again, Google have brought in the innovation.

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Google has just released 30 new themes for its mail client Gmail, so its now possible to give your inbox a fresh new look. As well as this, a minor facelift has been produced.

You can access these by going to inbox > settings > themes. I’m personally loving the old notebook style, and its a nice change from the generic clean and plain inbox im used to seeing!

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I have let a lot of my work get on top of me, and I think my main problem is the way I go about organising things, so I have been trying out some different notetaking software available online as freeware.

One of my favourites is Evernote, by Evernote corporation. As stated by themselves ‘Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere’. It allows you to use a variety of different mediums in order to capture images, written notes, clipped web pages and other information to be sent back to any number of personal notebooks. By use of a Account and password, you can then access this information from anywhere with an Internet connection.

I have been using my phone to take pictures of things I need to remember; be it a phone number from an advert, to a film or game that I would like to look up and then uploading it directly to my account. This is a quick and efficient process and I find it the perfect way to keep a running track of what I need to do. Combined with a sleek GUI (Graphical User Interface) and a lightning fast search engine integrated within the program in order to search through your posts. Evernote is slowly taking my life back into order. You can find Evernote here.

Back from the grave once again, one of my favourite TV sitcoms, the IT crowd, is returning to channel 4 once again at 10pm on the 21st November. According to word spread around the filming, this is set to be the funniest season so far, so is definately worth a minute of my time!

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Lichtenstein Tom

When you first get anything new, be it new shoes or new clothes, you always have that attachment to the object. Where you want to preserve and keep it in as good condition as possible.

It is because it is a new and novel ‘toy’ but soon, shortly after, it just becomes another belonging that you own. This has happened with my car now. It’s been a month and now I no longer have that urge and drive to keep it as clean as possible anymore. Just leaving it there to gather dust till the weekend when it gets its weekly clean down.

Im talking around this subject, because recently my life has become a bit like this. I feel like I need a stiff injection of change and im hoping, with the end of my training at work approaching in the distant future, that this might bring it around.

As you can probably see, I have been experimenting with photoshop a bit more yet again. And using the awesome site Good Tutorials I have slowly been bringing my skills upto where I want them to be. The Lichtenstein pop art inspired image you see was made using this tutorial here. However I stopped short, as I didnt want to add colour into the image apart from the background.

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Is that really enough?

Well, after a few days of contemplation I got my ear pierced. Wasn’t that hard of a decision but I thought I would make sure it was what I really wanted before getting it done.

One thing people are never aware of are the vast amount of things that can go wrong with just a straight forward piercing, but its in such a small minority, that I didn’t even really consider it. Despite what some people have told me, I didnt find it that painful, more of a relieving feeling after the needle had finally cut its way through. A few days on now, and its going good, apart from a little bruising, things seem to be coming on nicely.

On my expiditions through the internet, I also stumbled across a mug that I have instantly ordered purely down to its design aesthetics and originality. This knuckle Duster

mug can be found at Thabto at the awesome price of £11.99 for you to be enjoying hot beverages throughout the long cold winter nights. Started by the award winning London designers
Steven Smith and James Wosiek they plan on providing gift idea’s for both men and women alike. They only have a limited product line at this point in time, but plan on soon expanding it with other unique products and interesting conversation starters.

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Following a certain robot’s reccomendation, I ventured onto steam and took the descent and bought Audiosurf for the steep price of $2.93.

Yes, you read right. $2.93 including tax. For this week only, Steam is offering the game for a discount price, which gives noone a reason not to try it. And at that price its the most addicting and cheapest fun you will have in ages.

Download a free copy of steam at SteamPowered and enter the store now for your copy.

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Seeing his blog inspired me to begin chronicling my thoughts. Check his blog out and leave him some comments. Only a fresh blog, but already with some interesting posts well worth a read.

Yet to be decided, but content will be varied. From design to music, check back for updates.

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