Young and Restless

Hi guys..,

Its been a long days... weeks... even months... wherein I have not updated the my blog.

I came across a this interesting article in one of the forwarded mails...

Preparing for a string of competitive exams, making time for friends, looking good, keeping fit, making big-time choices, knowing the intricacies of downloading music on to your IPod, presenting a confident image...truly, the list is endless. These are some of the million challenges strewn across the path of a young person today. If you thought it is easy to be part of the new age generation, be informed, it's not!

Having to juggle with multiple things, the mantra being "multi-task", youngsters have a tough time satisfying their parents, friends, colleagues and most importantly, themselves.

''It is raining competition everywhere. Be it the college, workplace and also your home, it's a battle having to live up to other people's expectations,'' complains student. A sad and telling statement about the times we live in.

Most of the challenges a young person faces today seem to however circle around academic and career choices.

''Parents build their dreams around us, sometimes, I want them to just let me be. But, at the same time I don't feel like letting them down,'' says Most students seem trapped in this paradox.

Parents are busy building agendas and career plans for their children, even as the latter valiantly strive to match up to their expectations.

Take the case of Chennai based. She had always wanted to be a model but her parents were dead against it. A software engineer, she points out, ''I made my parents happy but I have the most unhappiest professional life in the process.''

Coming a close second to professional pressure seems to be the effort of keeping up with friends. It has become all important to "fit in" with your group of friends.

''I study with really hip girls and boys. You can be sure they won't even look at you leave alone talk to you,'' says a high-school student from Bangalore.

''The worst thing is being branded as a lesbian if you remain single for long,'' she adds woefully. The pressure to have a boyfriend is big.

''It's a criminal offense to be single,'' also laments, a management student. ''The boys just look down on me if I don't hangout with a livewire of a girl,'' he says. Once you get into a relationship, you have to deal with the baggage that comes with it. But, are young people mature enough to handle relationships?

Like, a science student in a Chennai based women's college reveals, ''I am so obsessed with my guy that every time I have a fight with him, I cut myself.'' This might be an extreme situation but real.

On top of all this, thanks to beauty pageants and Sushmita Sen and Aiswarya Rai, looking like someone stepping out of an advertisement is so crucial. For example, ''I spend a lot of time in a salon, pampering myself with beauty treatments. I also indulge in serious shopping to always look my best.''

As the pressures pile up, there are many young people hiding their anxieties, insecurities and their lack of self-confidence. Their judgements then get clouded and their academic performance suffers.

In extreme cases, such pressures lead to deviant behaviour like consuming drugs and pills.
Life would be a lot different for young people if parents paid attention to their choices without applying pressure, ''We are not asking our parents to completely absolve their responsibility, all we want is to decide for ourselves.''

The role of friends and siblings are also important. They need to lend support and positive advice.

However, at the end of the day, if youngsters can believe in themselves and rely on their own abilities to handle life, they can perform better no matter the pressure.

A sense of self or self-worth can win many a battle for young people. That's the most precious gift a parent can give their child, to believe in onself.

Happy reading....

Nice way to portray...

Guitar Tuning Tips (For Begginers)

hello everybody....

Have come across some of the great tunning tips. Lemme share with you.

Most new guitar players and even some experienced ones have trouble staying and playing in tune. I'll try listing here some of the common mistakes and there solutions.

When putting new strings on your guitar you must always make sure you stretch them as you tune them to pitch. I always hold them down on the neck around the 24th fret with my left hand while pulling them away from the guitar body with my right hand. You don't have to use too much muscle, a few firm tugs should do the trick.

Whenever you tune a string down in pitch, be sure to use the string stretching technique described above. Remember ALWAYS TUNE UP! It's always better when tuning down, to get close to the note, stretch the string and then tune up to the intended pitch.

You should purchase a quality tuner from a music store . You don't need to spend your life's saving. An inexpensive tuner should be fine to start out. Remember, this thing will be traveling to gigs and jam sessions with you. I would recommend a good Boss tuner or Korg tuner. Both brands have low cost tuners that will do the job just fine.

If your guitar has a tremolo bridge, always remember that each string that you tune will go down in pitch as you tune the next string. One solution to this is to over tune the strings. That is to say, you may need to tune your low E string to an F in order to have it be around an E note by the time you finish tuning the other strings. Over time you'll get a feel for how much you need to over tune each string and it will become second nature.


If you play in a band, it is a good idea to always tune to the same pitch. Standard pitch is 440 but some bands like to tune down to 430 or even 420 for the heavier sound or vocal reasons or both. My point is that if you're practicing at 430 then you have a gig and your band tunes to 440, everything will suddenly sound different, your singer might not be able hit all the notes he or she did at practice, your solos might even sound wrong. This is because everything is now a half step higher in pitch. Make things easy on yourself, pick a pitch and stick with it, at practice and gigs.

Read more articles from http://online-articles.org/music/site-map.php


GreAt gUiTaRing!!!

Indian Food Recipes - Part 01

Check out the following for the Great Indian Food Recipes...
http://recipes.indiaserver.com
http://www.recepies-cookbooks.com
http://www.indianfoodforever.com
http://kitchensofindia.com

Foods That Heal

Foods That Heal

Know About Depression

Everyone feels a bit low sometimes - it's the mental health equivalent of the common cold. But for some people it's much more serious, paralyzing their ability to get on with life.

What are the symptoms?
As with many mental health problems, there are a number of symptoms of depression and it's very rare for all of them to occur in one person. They include feeling generally miserable, as well as:

• Variation of mood during the day. It's often worse in the morning, improving as the day goes on - but the pattern can be the other way around.
• Disturbed sleep, usually waking early and being unable to get back to sleep. This is often because of the negative thoughts racing through their heads.
• A general slowing down of thought, speech and movement.
• Feelings of anxiety.
• Tearfulness for no reason.
• Short temper.
• Lack of energy and constant exhaustion.
• Inability to enjoy things.
• Lack of concentration.
• Difficulty making decisions.
• Feeling that you're forgetful.
• Negative thoughts about the future.
• Feelings of guilt.
• Loss of identity.
• Blaming self and low self-esteem.
• Feelings of hopelessness and despair.
• Unrealistic sense of failure.
• Loneliness, even when around others.
• Becoming preoccupied with illness.
• Loss of appetite and resulting loss of weight.
• Reduced desire for sex.

This presents a very bleak picture. However, it's important to remember that depression isn't an absolute - it's not simply a case of either you're depressed or you're not. There's a progression from feeling blue to the full clinical illness described above. Even then, you won't suffer from every symptom. It's also important to remember that depression is treatable and, if you take the right steps, avoidable.

How common is it?
Seven to 12 per cent of men suffer from diagnosable depression, and 20 to 25 per cent of women. There are many theories as to why the figure is higher for women. The incidence of post-natal depression certainly contributes to the higher figure.

Other explanations include the low status of women and the difficulties they face in achieving life goals. It could also be that women tend to be more honest about their emotions than men, so their depression is easier to detect.

Monitoring your mood and thoughts
This is the starting point for managing depression. It will help you learn to spot an episode of depression before it's too late. Using the thought monitoring technique, you can decide which thoughts represent an accurate picture of what's going on around you - and which are unrealistic and created by your mood beginning to fall.

Ask someone you trust to monitor your mood
You won't spot every episode of depression before it happens, but those closest to you will often be able to recognize the early signs. Talking to them about this problem is probably one of the most valuable ways to deal with it. An agreement with a family member or friend as to how and when they could point out the problem, and what the two of you do to address it, is invaluable.

It's important that you go through the agreed tasks to address the problem, even if you don't feel your mood is falling - you may be surprised by what they bring out. The kind of tasks you could do with your relative or friend includes: stress auditing, thought and mood inventories, and talking about any incident that's given the family member or friend cause for concern.

What support is available?
There's nothing like speaking to someone who's been through the experience and come out the other side. A listening ear is often the greatest help to a depressed person. Samaritans are available to listen 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It can also be useful to attend support groups. The national mental health charity MIND runs several.

A good place for further information about depression is the Royal College of Psychiatrists' series of leaflets.

Depression Alliance offers information, support and understanding to people affected by depression, including a network of self-help groups, a correspondence service and scheme, and free information leaflets on the many aspects of depression. Depression Alliance also campaigns to raise awareness of the condition.

What professional help is available?
Many of the self-help exercises on this site are based on a technique called cognitive therapy; there's a growing body of evidence for the effectiveness of this approach. However, some people need to see a professional for cognitive therapy to work for them. They may also need another form of therapy.

The first person to talk to about this is your family doctor, who may have a practice counsellor who you could talk to. Alternatively, you may be referred to the local community mental health team to see a community psychiatric nurse (CPN) or a clinical psychologist. For some people, therapy alone isn't enough. There are now a number of antidepressants available for doctors to prescribe, which can be used with cognitive therapy.

Working with your mental health team, it's possible to draw up a crisis card - an agreed plan detailing the type of care you want (or don't want) in the event of a crisis. The Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London has more information on how to develop joint crisis plans.

Other ways to help yourself
It's not unusual to experience some of the signs of depression from time to time. But if the feelings are very strong all the time, there are things you can do to help yourself.

• Notice 'thinking errors'. Are you overgeneralising. For example, do you imagine every pain is a deadly disease? Do you tell yourself everything is going wrong when only one thing has gone wrong? Do you forget about the good things in life and concentrate on the bad?
• Balance frightening thoughts with reassuring statements.
• Occupy your mind. Concentrating on something can lift your mood.
• Exercise. Physical activity relaxes you and makes you feel good.
• Pay attention to the way you look.
• Eat a regular diet of wholefoods. Vitamin B6 supplements are helpful too.
• Try a herbal antidepressant. St John's Wort can be effective (but you shouldn't mix it with other medication - consult your GP or a professional herbalist for advice).
• Avoid alcohol. It's a depressant, even if it makes you feel temporarily better.
• Investigate alternative and complementary therapies.

http://www.sph.umich.edu/news_events/findings/fall05/features/one.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/depression1.shtml

http://www.zizzoo.com/guides/depression/faq/index.php

http://www.menopauserx.com/health_center/health_Depression.htm

http://www.therapy-now.com/TherapyNowDEPRESSION.htm

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depression.cfm

SharePoint or DotNetNuke?

Well the decision between the two products like (SharePoint and DotNetNuke) is to be done very well.

Let me tell you what each of the product offer you. What are the differences between them and which one to go for, either Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server or DotNetNuke.

Here's an article which can help you to decide which to go for....

SP and DNN are very different beasts which offer some similar functionalities. I'm using SP as a generic term for either WSS or SPS, which is a different decision. DNN is really an easy website creation tool, while SP was designed to be an information repository and collaboration tool in a corporate environment. The best way to summarize might be "Extranet vs. Intranet". My thinking is Extranet=DNN, Intranet=SP. DNN is designed to be used and maintained by persons with little IT experience. SP is one of those things that will require having a decent IT person around.

First question would be whether or not you need tight integration with Office. If so, then hands down your only choice is SP. Another feature that DNN is lacking is a document library with version control, although one may appear down the road. SP offers full-text indexing of the documents you store in it, and so you can search inside the documents in its libraries. DNN doesn't offer this. SP stores its documents very securely in the SQL database; DNN stores them as files, which means if someone knows the right path, the site's security could be bypassed and the documents downloaded directly.

If you don't need the tight Office integration, DNN is a very valid choice for a website. A good use would be for a school's website. DNN supports multiple child portals, just as SP does, and you can distribute administration, just as with SP. The school could have its main portal, and each department or club could have its own child portal, each with their own radically different looks. True, you could pull off the school's website with SP, but it wouldn't be so flexible, and you would put in a lot more effort to make it work.

Another consideration is what type of authentication you need to use. WSS was designed to integrate with Active Directory, DNN was designed to work with anonymous users and Forms Authentication. There are ways to make DNN work with AD, and WSS work with anonymous users, but anytime you make a change as significant as authentication scheme, you introduce adminsitrative overhead. One point of using these tools is to simplyify your life, not create extra work.

Cost might also be a consideration. True, if you have Windows 2K3, then WSS is essentially free; DNN is entirely free. There are a lot of good web parts available for free and cheap for WSS, but many are very expensive. DNN can also be extended with inexpensive or free modules, and even the ones you have to pay for are still pretty cheap.

One main difference I see is the amount of different things you can do with DNN. DNN can also serve as an e-commerce platform, or host robust photo galleries (rather than the "list of photos" in SP). There are some nice calendar modules for DNN that not only list events, but allow registrations and can accept payment for them. In this case, it might seem like SP is lacking in some functionality, but SP was never designed to do these things--these are functions of a website, not a collaboration tool.

Skinning is a bazillion times easier with DNN. The DNN core team did a great job with its skinning engine, and there are lots of skins available for free or cheap. Changing the look of a single page, or entire portal is done with a simple package upload and a few mouse clicks. With enough work, you can do some really nice skinning on SP (both SPS and WSS), but it takes some work. I've done both, and DNN is by far easier and more powerful (mainly due to DNN's simplicity--features which are hidden or difficult really aren't features at all).

DNN runs very well in a shared hosting environment; SP, not so much. Although DNN only ships with SQL Server provider, if you're handy enough, you would write one for MySQL, or Vista, etc. You don't have that option with SP--it's SQL Server only.

First Blog

Hi wassup people...

this is my first blog.. right now much to speak out.. but dont know what to speak.. so cross your fingers and keep watching...





happy blogging!!!