Archive for August 4th, 2009

Home Security Tips

Here’s a few tips for making your home more secure.

1) Lighting is your best and cheapest defence against burglaries. If a burglar can be seen it’s much more risky for them to target your house. Neighbours and passerbys could potentially see them and notify the police. Use an energy efficient compact fluorescent bulb in your front and rear porch light and leave them on all nite. You can automate this by connecting them to a timer or photocell.

2) Make sure your house is not hidden from view. At least make sure that your front door can be seen from the street. Clear away overgrown shrubbery from the front of your house. Don’t give potential burglars anything that they can use to conceal their activities.

3) Install motion sensors to light up the dark areas of your property. There’s nothing more startling to someone approaching your home to be suddenly bathed in light. Motion sensors are very cheap and can be installed easily in existing or new light outlets. They can be set to stay on for a set period of time when triggered by motion.

4) When you go on vacation, connect some lamps in your home to plugin timers. Some timers allow you to set multiple on/off events every 24 hours. Do this with 2 or 3 lamps to give the impression that someone is home in the evenings. This is especially important if someone is watching your house to determine if anybody is home. Ask your neighbour to pickup mail and newspapers every day. There’s nothing like a pile of newspapers on your front porch to tip off a burglar that you’re away.

5) Install dead bolt locks on all your doors. This is a fairly inexpensive way to secure your home. Deadbolts cannot be picked as easily as regular door locks. This is something the average homeowner can install with a minimum of tools.

Your best defence is to make sure that it appears that someone is always home, even when you’re not. For even more security consider installing a burglar alarm in your home.

 

Before You Read P90X Reviews

In this busy day and age, it can be difficult squeezing a healthy workout routine into your schedule. And on top of that equipment and gym memberships seem to be more expensive when so many of us can afford less.

The Power 90 workout, or the P90x workout, is a new regiment designed and presented by fitness guru Tony Horton. It has the ambitious goal of improving your physique in 90 days (hence the p90x in the name).

To be clear, I am not advocating the P90x workout; I am simply describing it as it is one of many options available to people trying to get in shape.

The workout package comes with twelve separate workouts on DVD set led by Tony Horton himself.

This fitness routine covers appropriate stretch exercise as well as plyometrics. The explanation of these different portions of the workout are described in a simple and down-to-earth way.

Each workout is intended to challenge you more and more over time, so if you don’t have the discipline and perseverance to stick to any kind of workout, you may struggle with this one as well.

When you consider any p90x reviews or pitches to buy p90x, you need to ask, does p90x work for you personally? And the answer will be as much about your attitude and personal discipline as it is about the product itself.

Each workout lasts around an hour or so and includes extensive encouragement to keep you going. Whether you find these pep talks helpful or no will really be up to your own personality.

You’ll find all the workouts organized in specific sections using an on-screen bar to display your progress.

With p90x routine, you will cover strength training, cardiovascular training and extensive stretching to experience a balanced workout.

The basic premise is twofold: Balance strength, cardio and flexibility, and keep surprising your body to avoid plateaus.

Whether Tony Horton’s personality and particular regiment will work is entirely up to your personality and your level of discipline.

 

Can light help you wake up?

Most of us know what it feels like to be tired. And I’m guessing that most of us know how sluggish we feel on a cold, dark winter’s day. In fact it’s so natural to feel like that that most of us take it for granted.

But what many people don’t know is that daylight has a very dramatic effect on how you feel. Both the amount and quality of light has an impact. Which of us hasn’t felt wonderful in the warm glow of a beautiful sunset?

Research shows that light stimulates the senses. Light is energy, after all. And light can give you more energy which in turn can help you less lethargic. Is it any wonder then that people wake easily in the summer months, but often have trouble in the dark winter months? That’s why some people use special lighting, such as the HF3461.

When light falls onto your eyes your brain gets a message to produce cortisol. That stimulates you, because it’s the energy hormone. When it’s time to wake up in the morning a good bathing of light is important so that your hormones are better balanced and you’ll feel more energetic right from the get-go.

But what do you do if you don’t get enough natural light? That’s when devices such as the Philips HF3461 can help. It’s classed as a medical device. That’s right, the Philips hf3461 wake up light alarm clock is actually classifed as a medical device.

Offering up to 400 Lux light intensity, it easily meets the level of 250 Lux that is required to affect energy hormones so you wake up full of energy. And for easy reading a light level of 300 to 400 Lux is ideal to avoid eye-strain, so such lighting devices are great for catching up on your favourite novel before bed!

Only you know whether you have trouble waking each morning, but remember that light can help. And if you don’t have a suitable natural source of light – for example if your bedroom window is obscured by other buildings – then a specialist light might just be the thing you need.

Trovaricambi