Month: December 2010

London kickboxing club can provide personal training and conditioning

When it comes to getting in shape, meeting new friends, and learning a new discipline, there can be few better things to do than London kickboxing classes. Seriously: if you don’t believe me, then you are missing out! I went to a London kickboxing club for the first time around a year ago. I went on the suggestion of a friend, and also because I had nothing else to do, and I have not looked back since then! I enjoyed it so much I wanted to go back straight away! Since then I went every week, and I started to work on a training program, with the instructor acting as my personal trainer. I have never been so healthy and energetic, and it feels amazing. I’m sure – in fact I know, since I have been to compete in a few other dojos – that there are many different types of kickboxing London clubs can offer, but I think I was just lucky to find the one that was just right for me at the first time of asking. If I hadn’t, I imagine I would have just decided that kickboxing in general wasn’t for me.

As it is, I have really enjoyed finding out about the sport and its origins, and also about the codes of conduct and discipline that you can apply to your everyday life; some meditation and breathing exercises I have learned at Karmaa (my London kickboxing club), for instance, have really reduced my stress levels at work, and helped me to deal with tough issues involving colleagues. I didn’t beat anybody up, if that’s what you’re thinking!

In fact, Kickboxing has weirdly made me feel more calm and passive in life. Less like I am fighting against anything and more like I am going with the flow and calmly finding my way through. It’s funny: before I took up kickboxing, I was seriously contemplating leaving my job, because I found living in London too stressful. Now I don’t think of it in that way, and I don’t think that can be a coincidence.

In London kickboxing classes can be a brilliant way to escape from your job in the city for a while. You get an adrenaline rush, which helps you to relax and sleep more at night. A good London kickboxing club should be able to cater for your individual needs – i.e. what it is you want to get out of kickboxing. Through kickboxing London has become a less difficult and more exciting place to live.

Please visit http://www.karmaa.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.karmaa.co.uk/

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Video conferencing technology has progressed beyond recognition

The future of video conferencing is here. Audio visual conferencing has developed in leaps and bounds since its inception, which arguably dates back to the late 1930s, when the German Post Office (Reich Postzentralamt) successfully set up a network in several cities. These connections were made of closed circuit television systems, which were connected by cables. Since then a technique was developed, chiefly by NASA on the first manned space flights, to link televisual information via radio frequency links. This is the sort of link, still used today, by news teams to transmit reports from faraway locations. This kind of communication is all very well and good for high profile media presenters, or space expeditions, but it can hardly be viable for businesses, educational purposes, or telemedicine practices: it is simply far too expensive. Telepresence video conferencing, as we think of it today, uses much more economical technology, and so it is much more accessible to businesses and individuals around the world.

A good visual link enables you to communicate remotely to the fullest extent possible – visually and verbally. But the road to having the sufficient level of technology to achieve this has not been simple, since there have been a number of issues that have made things tricky. In the 1980s a breakthrough was made when developers used Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) digital telephony transmission networks to support compressed audio and visual transmissions, with some degree of success. In the 1990s, however, video conferencing founded on Internet Protocol (IP) became available, which represented a revolution in the industry. This is because among the implications was the fact that televisual communications on personal computers was now feasible, and the race to realise a widely available software solution had commenced.

Nowadays, audio visual conferencing solutions are available left, right and centre, from the free, albeit relatively low quality, Skype and iChat webcam plugin services to high-end telepresence video conferencing firms supplying large multi-national companies. A huge range of solutions are available, and can be catered to the individual needs of any business. video conferencing is said to be the way forward for remote communications in the future, so some communications companies are competing to stay on top of the game as far as the technology is concerned. In an age where almost everybody in the western world already seems to have mobile telephones, it seems only a matter of time before we are all communicating with mobile video technology as well.

Please visit http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.edgevision.co.uk/

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Phono stage is required for good LP sound reproduction

For the committed music lover, especially those dedicated to listening to recordings of early 20th century musicians whose recordings may only be available on vinyl, the shiny silver micro CD system in the corner of most modern living-rooms, maybe purchased at an out of town supermarket, is an abomination. Suggesting they listen to CDs on an audio system without phono amp or phono preamp, is like asking Raymond Blanc to subsist on a diet of Pot Noodles. In pursuit of the perfect, most authentic sound, these fanatics will spend much time and money on the perfect phono stage while the rest of the world looks on perplexed at their love of a so-called obsolete technology.

Although today only a minority of people under the age of thirty will have bought vinyl in their time, the ability to record and reproduce sound was so revolutionary that they remained in popular use in one form or another across an entire century from the 1890s right up to the early 1990s.  Once cheap CD players became as affordable as turntables, digital music reproduction became king, but the love of those dedicated to ‘real’ music recordings is such that the technology behind and the market for turntables, phono stages and cartridges continues to develop at the upper end of the audio system market.

Indeed, many purists continue to use vinyl only, arguing that digital music systems – CDs, and MP3 downloads – give a clinical and processed sound that is a far second to the records of yesteryear. Others may want to continue listening to their record collection without forking out large amounts of money to purchase duplicates in digital format – and, in any case, many records may simply not be available on CD. The evolution of music reproduction has also seen an evolution in marketing and corporate strategy, and smaller parties are not economically worth updating. Consequently, vinyl editions of these artists are unique and irreplaceable.

This does not mean that vinyl cannot be combined with state-of-the-art modern sound equipment, though. You can have the best of both worlds, linking your turntable to amplifier and speakers via a phono stage. The task of a phono pre-amp is to amplify the signal from your turntable to make it useful to the main amp; thus a phono amp is an indispensable part of listening to your old LPs on modern equipment, helping to keep the past alive without sanitising it with the vagaries of the new digital developments.

Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/

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Bacs has been widely used for in excess of forty years

Finance officers working for companies of all sizes in the United Kingdom rely on Bacs payments to make their working lives more straightforward. Storing cash, making regular and time-consuming trips to the bank, and keeping track of the many pieces of important paper required to transfer money is a stressful and needlessly difficult job. Most businesses now use Bacs to pay invoices, salaries, expenses and to transfer funds from one account to another for many other reasons. bacs software has, over the years, made the transfer of money significantly easier and is often considered indispensable by accounts departments.

Bacs was invented in the United Kingdom by Denis Gladwell in the late 1960s. The name is in fact an acronym, standing for Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services. It was meant to reduce the number of paper documents that were needed when transferring money from one account to another. Since its invention it has been very handy. In the twenty-first century where you can use touch-screen computers in bank branches and manage your account online from the comfort of your own home it is easy to neglect the enormous success of Denis Gladwell’s idea.

Software which helps to make Bacs payments from one account to another is tremendously important for many companies. Not only is it secure and straightforward, but it can also greatly aid finance departments in dealing with their auditing requirements. Bacs software makes the financial work of many businesses more efficient and more straightforward. This frees up staff time to get on with more important tasks to grow the business.

Bacs also helps invoices to be paid regularly and speedily. A typical Bacs payment will normally take three working days to clear. This means that finance officers have to make allowances for weekends and bank holidays. Fortunately, now that so much of the banking and accounting process is computerised it is very rare that a finance department will miss a payment deadline. Online calendars can be used to give reminders and past payments can easily be viewed and collated.

bacs software helps to streamline financial processes at the same time as making them more secure. Accounting and finance management are key parts of a business (enabling it to run smoothly and helping bosses to plan for the future). Bacs has become an integral part of most businesses over the last forty years and Bacs payments remain one of the most popular ways of transferring money between accounts.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

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