Coolest Thin Notebook: MacBook Air

Okay, we have heard of this before several months ago when Steve Jobs and company launched it before the overwhelmed public, mostly hyper geeks who could not get enough of what’s new in the store of Apple Computer. Yes, even it has passed several months already MacBook Air still kicks ass in terms of notebook innovations. Thinnovations as the advertorial cry embraced by Apple presents the tinniest of all laptops you can find in the market: just as thick as your index finger.

Got a hold of this magnificent Apple product and quickly there ran a queasy feeling in my stomach that what I could be handling was the most exquisite computer gadget that one can hold now. It is sooooooooo super thin. Throw away that over-used description of portability. What this apple product present is the evolution of an anorexic notebook where everything is designed to fit its thinness.

Everything that you want to find in a notebook is here. If there is a Jaguar in the realm of sleek laptops, MacBook Air is that one. If you don’t want this analogy then just imagine this notebook as his Airness Michael Jordan attacking the basket with its arsenal of graceful innovative offense. Sure win no doubt.

Checklist for Online Home Business

It is not uncommon to hear now that a friend or an acquaintance has an online home business. Everybody so it seems is hooked by the Internet and some people are wise enough to cash-in in this phenomena by building their own online store. This fact is manifested by the rate on how many websites are being built everyday in the World Wide Web. For those who are toying with the idea on how to get a piece of the pie of this online financial windfall, here is a checklist on how to go about this high-tech business right on one’s own home.

Create a Product that Sell Online

The first important aspect of online home business is the product or service one wants to sell to the public. This is why this is called business in the first place. One needs to sell something in the online market. This product or services can be derived from an existing product being sold in a traditional store or may be a hobby one is willing to make money from.

Design and Build an Online Site

Designing and building a site online does not mean one has to create by himself his own space online. This can be done by commissioning web designers to do the dirty work. It must be understood that one’s primary goal is to maintain an online home business not on thinking creatively on how the site would be pleasing to the eyes of net surfers.

Subscribe or Invest on Software that Facilitate Online Payment

Given that one’s business is on the Internet, it is expected that payment for products that are purchased will be online. Many payment software are out in the market that can help online business owners get this aspect smoothened out. There are even sites that get this financial transaction done. Two of the most popular are paypal.com and payquake.com.

Launch an Online Marketing Promotion

One of the most important things to get a sale and people visiting one’s business site is by effective online marketing. With millions of online stores existing on the Internet, it is difficult or almost impossible to be noticed in the vast virtual space of the Web. Nevertheless, there is one solution to this difficult task of creating traffic in ones site. And this can be done by effective marketing promotion. An example of how to do this is by promoting the site through the use of copies sent to article directories.

If one can follow this simple checklist, one is bound to gain financial success while staying in one’s domicile and having his online home business.

Meditation is what the Common Man Needs

It is already redundant to state that the life of the modern man in the 21^st century is one of a stressful and physically draining life. The pace of daily grind during this Information Revolution is too much for the common man to bear. This is the reason why there is a need for meditation to help him sort his life out. Meditation will help him free himself from unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Unknown to many, meditation is easy to practice by which ordinary man can practice without much difficulty. Moreover, unlike the notion that meditation is synonymous with religious belief, it can be practiced by everyone regardless of his social, religious and cultural background and affiliation. Meditation is more than mere religious ritual but rather a lifestyle that is applicable to all people living in this planet. It is a science with methodical system of knowing the identity of man and where he belongs; the same way like the science that we know of that study everything that is external to man to find who he is and where he belongs in reality.

Given that the modern man of the 21^st is besieged by never-ending challenge of how to survive in the rat-race setup of this era, his nerves is understandably wreck by all the tasks and responsibilities that never stop to get attention. With this reality, man should seek refuge in meditation, even just for the need to free his physical self from the anxiety and stress of everyday life.

Meditation in the first place has a calming and relaxing effect to its practitioner. Since the mind is taught how to remain still, the physical body follows of learning how to stand still and release negative tensions.

More than this, there are many positive benefits that a practitioner can derive from meditation. One of these is gaining a more focused concentration. Add to this that he discovers for himself that he is more intelligent than he thought he is. From meditation, the individual can harness knowledge and wisdom that is far beyond his previous understanding.

There is also the discovery of creativity within him. Moreover, the ordinary man set on the realization as to what is important to him. This thus creates the ripples that will negate all stress and anxiety from his being.

Thus said, it is with importance and emphasis that man should use the tool called meditation to give him freedom to have a life better than what he has now.

Finding Castaneda’s Ixtlan

I have head before the name of the author and anthropologist Carlos Castaneda from friends and writers whom I usually read in newspaper columns. These people usually attributed Castaneda to the seminal work titled The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. The book, they described, talks about the psychedelic adventure of Castaneda when he came to be a student of a native Indian named don Juan Matus whom he was thought how to experience the use of psychotropic plants like peyote. One way or another, the platitudes about Castaneda and his work made me wonder what the book was really like when reading and what it really presents to the public. For a long time I kept within myself certain curiosity on what Castaneda deals with his works and books.

Unknown to me, the time when I can satisfy my curiosity about Castaneda would come when one day I strolled in a nearby mall and saw a book sale. Without anything to do, I flipped through the pages of some dusty books and scanned without order the spine of the books piled there. Then, lo and behold, the name Carlos Castaneda suddenly sprang up in one of the books and for 25 cents one of his unknown works titled Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan could be had. I quickly shelled up from my pocket the amount, grabbed the book and went to the cashier to pay for it. Upon reaching home, I locked myself up in my room and went on to devour the book anticipating something grandeur, something out of this world, something that would quench my curiosity about Carlos Castaneda.

There was nothing difficult in the text of Carlos Castaneda. The book was written in a clear, succinct narrative style that anybody with an interest in books can easily understand. There in the introduction of Castaneda, he explains how he had been hooked by the oddity of don Juan Matus, notoriously known in the old man’s community as somebody who had lost a screw in his head and showed deviant notion of reality when talk to.

The book is basically a semi-journal on the events that transpired from the perspective of Castaneda when he went under the tutelage of don Juan learning about sorcery and the esoteric wisdom of the native Indians. One lesson after another lesson, Castaneda is thought by the old man about the hidden and mysterious design of reality and on how to become a warrior and achieving this upon finding a worthy opponent. And this don Juan relays to Castaneda in somewhat funny, comical way that the former would deliver in sporadic attacks of laughter that usually would send him almost lying of the floor as he kicked in the air in utter display of astonishment on the naivety of Castaneda.

Throughout the book, Castaneda and don Juan make several journeys into the desert, on the hunt for a worthy opponent and a chance to view the mystical design of the universe. As I have mentioned earlier, the old man is always in a gleeful mood, almost always acting in a funny way and at the same time saying as truthful like this sentence: “…for me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you (Castaneda) that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world… that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too, short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”

If there ever was a book that astonished me beyond the power of words uttered in it, the mysticism of the subject and the different way as to how to see the world, then this book is it. At the same time, Journey to Ixtlan no matter how entertaining and happy don Magus is described, as somebody who has discovered the underlying design of the reality of the universe, is one of the saddest book I have ever read. It is the saddest book I have ever read because along side the gift of knowing the reality of the world there comes along with it the fact that you can no longer return to your own place, to your own city. This is the reason why the book is entitled Journey to Ixtlan. Ixtlan, as a place would still be there, but because your thoughts and experience have brought you to a different level of understanding, the place will no longer be the same old place. The journey to reach it will never end since there is no such thing as return to innocence.