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Just listening to or reading jokes and riddles may “wake up” your brain, but it is creating them that really exercises your brainpower. The process requires you to use both logical and lateral thinking skills. How do you do it, then?

Jokes and riddle don’t come to mind randomly. In fact, after watching how many comedians create their routines, I am convinced that they use what I call “humor algorithms,” even if they do so unconsciously. You can learn to do the same, but consciously, and as an interesting brain exercise.

Joke And Riddle Algorithms

One systematic and creative humor algorithm involves starting with a word or a subject, and then fitting it into various joke and riddle “types.” For an example, I’ll start with “chair.” (I really am doing this as I write, so forgive the weak humor that is sure to result.)

The first thing I do is systematically think of all the types of chairs I can, and write them down. After that, I write down a few types of jokes, such as “puns,” “misdirection,” “differences,” and “similarities.” As I do this, it occurs to me that an electric chair might have the most potential for humor (all serious things do). Here is what I could come up with in thirteen minutes:

Differences: What is the difference between a toilet and a chair? I’m sorry, but if you don’t know, I can’t invite you over to my house!

Misdirection: Why did Charlie hate the chair they gave him for his birthday? Because they gave him the electric chair!

Similarities: What does my dog have in common with a chair? He has four legs and an IQ of zero.

Pun: Why did the customer at the motor vehicles department start rearranging seats after waiting for hours? Because he was the “chair-man of the bored.”

Writing humor isn’t necessarily easy, but it is great brain exercise. Whether it is easy or not, by using these “algorithms,” anyone can write jokes and riddles. Why not give it a try?

Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more humor algorithms, visit the page on writing Jokes and Riddles, and get the Brain Power Newsletter at: www.IncreaseBrainPower.com

The reaction to the budget announcement by Alistair Darling about governments’ planned financial aid for implementation of the Digital Britain Universal Service has not been positive.

Charles Trotman, an expert of broadband industry and the chief of rural business development of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), said that there is serious flaw in the entire proposal, as the money promised can apparently not be released until 2012, which is the year of conclusion of the project.

Severely criticising the budget report, Trotman said that there was a lot of ambiguity about the budget. Even by the end of the report, he was not sure how much money would come to the project, which is to be funded from money that would be remaining after the Digital TV switch project. He said that ultimately the amount available could be less than the budget estimate of £250 million.

The government’s plan of providing all homes in the UK with a broadband connection with speeds of at least 2MB is already turning out to be a contentious project on many accounts. Many even argue that the speed of 2MB for broadband UK is not fast enough.

While expressing his views regarding the announcement, Oliver Johnson, chief executive of broadband analysis company Point Topic, said that the budget report was not extensive enough in detail. He said that it is better to wait for Lord Carter’s final report before commenting on the inadequacy of resources. He also said that the figures quoted in the budget report looked small compared to what US (around 10 billion US Dollars) and Australia (around 20 billion Australian Dollars) are planning to spend.

Is depression really the curse of genius? Research shows that writers and other creatives do suffer from depression at a higher rate than the rest of the population. And they, along with others born with creative gifts have a much higher rate of suicide.

Writing is not the glamorous profession it may appear to be. Rejection, deadlines, self-doubt and many hours spent in isolation can eventually push you over the edge. Plus lack of exercise and being stuck indoors staring at a computer screen all day doesn’t help either. Success as a writer also means you have to rely on the opinions of other people such as editors, publishers and agents, which makes things even worse.

I’m not claiming to be a genius but I am a creative person and a depressive. My depression affects my creativity. Sometimes it is good for it, sometimes it’s bad. Normally, when everything gets dark and gloomy for me I tend to go into myself and I begin to question everything. I can’t deny that I’ve always seen the world differently, that I tend to see all the negatives about it rather than the positives. Sometimes I am aware that I may be too pessimistic and when I’m accused of this I always say that I’m only being realistic. I know that when I’m in this state of mind people don’t want to be around me, but that’s fine because I don’t want to be around people. Pessimistic thoughts can ruin my writing though. Especially if I am doubting my talent as a writer, which is often.

During this time dark thoughts enter my head and I ask myself just what is the point of writing as I won’t get published. Anyway, who would want to publish such rubbish? Me a writer? Ha! I’m just a talentless depressed person living in a world of make believe because I can’t face the real world. I might as well end it right now. And the thoughts torment me all day, adding to the feeling of hopelessness, the future looking bleak.

But I don’t give up. I don’t kill myself, even if the thought does cross my mind. This is because I know from experience that this dark period won’t last. In a few days my writing will start getting good again. The dark cloud will lift and I will think differently. I will start to believe in myself again. Of course I can write. Of course I can get published. If others can get book deals so can I. After all, there are worse writers in the world than me and they’re published and successful.

And when I do eventually emerge from the pit of depression, to my surprise, I am struck by a short burst of creative energy that lasts from around three days to a whole week. Sometimes I’ll have two or three projects on the go because the ideas just keep flooding in and I can’t stop them. This is a great feeling and I can’t wait to get out of bed and put in those extra hours of writing. It’s not that my depression has worn off, it just gets a little more manageable. I still feel sadness, but it’s not as intense.

Sometimes though I don’t wait for this moment to arrive. Instead, I try to write myself through a depressive episode, even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing. If I’m angry it’s even better as I can use this anger in my fiction.

It is said that writers are depressed because they work for long periods alone. But this isn’t my problem because I actually enjoy my own company. I accept that this is part of a writer’s life and if I spent all my time socializing no writing would ever get done. It’s nice to have other writer friends though, so I would recommend joining a writers’ group or participating in one of the many writers’ forums on the Internet.

I do sometimes wonder if being a writer is a curse, but then I think how would I be if I didn’t write? It’s such a large part of me. It’s what makes me who I am as an individual. I’m sure other writers can understand what I mean. I don’t think you choose to write. It chooses you. And I do question what type of writer I’d be without my depression. Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t be a writer. That’s something I can’t answer I’m afraid.

If you are depressed please don’t suffer in silence. See your doctor for professional medical advice.

Marie Seymour has written articles on alternative health, writing and music and is currently writing a vampire novel. She lives in London but dreams of escaping all the pollution, litter and noise to live in the countryside where she can write novels for a living in peace.

http://www.marieseymour.com

http://marie-deepthinker.blogspot.com/

Creative writing is considered to be one of the most perplexing forms of articulating thoughts and ideas on paper. It turns out to be a hard nut to crack because it requires the ability to think freely, giving thoughts a modicum of leeway, and express ideas and experienced feelings sincerely and openly.

That’s why putting wind in the sails with creative writing is not within every writer’s grasp. It means that a person, who succeeded in process writing approach that is all about planning, revising, re-arranging, and deleting text, re-reading, and producing multiple drafts before producing finished documents, will have the same good results in creative writing.

Surely, it does not imply that creative writing process does not need proper planning and preparation, it means that creative writing permits the author to deviate from the specific writing styles and not to be consistent with all the standards of this style. In a word, creative writing gives the author leeway in terms of presentation and development of a piece of writing.

Since creative writing is not simply a matter of sitting down, putting pen to paper, following smart instructions of emeritus pundits, commence at the beginning and write through to the end. Creative approach treats all writing as a creative act that requires time, positive feedback, and inspiration to be done well. People who engage in creative writing do not merely think freely; they view the world from free-thinking perspective.

Without a doubt, creative writing is not only about inspiration and gift of the writer, and it is far from coming easy to the writer, it also needs a lot of elbow grease in order to produce a piece of writing worth the attention of the readers.

The key to success in creative writing lies in the author’s ability to be frank with his readers and honest with himself. Don’t be afraid to step aside from the established standards of the particular writing style, and open the door of your brain to the new ideas that cross the threshold of your imagination and knock around your mind.

Remember that process and explorations are the keystones in creative writing, rather than the finished product. Let yourself release your inner genius and vent on paper the most bizarre ideas that amassed in your mind. The source of ideas for your creative writing can be various kinds of resources of creativity such as oral tradition, dreams, childhood memories, sense perceptions and intuition.

Katrina Crosbie, a tutor of creative writing in Edinburgh University’s Open Studies programme, asserts that getting in touch with subconscious mind is the key to original and creative writing. She also claims that every writer can harness three simple techniques to enhance his creative writing abilities, they are mental focusing techniques, harnessing the power of your dreams and journal writing. Harnessing these techniques takes hard work; so, if you are ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these simple strategies.

I. Mental focusing techniques

Mental focusing techniques involve focusing on the positive outcome. It implies that you should concentrate and regulate your mental activity in order to enter a quiet state of your mind. The key point in mental focusing is to get rid of all the stray thoughts and replace it with one thought; this process should gradually induce a calm sensation. The procedure is very simple, you make yourself comfortable in a cozy armchair, and in all possible ways try to awake creativity inside of you.

You should say something like “I’m getting in touch with my creativity source”, and imagine physically how the stream of creativity comes into your mind. Remember the sensation of clear, cool water on your face, or a stream of fresh breeze, which is blowing in your face. Then imagine yourself sitting at your word processor, typing fluently, and writing avidly. After several minutes open your eyes and commence writing.

II. Harness the power of your dreams

Dreams have tremendous power. The subconscious memory can be the direct cause of the certain dreams. “When the mind is centered on certain things, the sleeper goes over his life again and again in phantom fashion. He lives over the experiences of his daily life.”

Overall, your daydreams can be important, just write them down after waking up in the morning. Perhaps, later on, re-reading the notes of your dreams will prompt you some interesting ideas for your creative works.”These can be triggers for an especially imaginative piece of work. American writer Joyce Carol Oates has said that her novel Bellefleur was inspired by a dream of a walled garden which haunted her for years ’till she felt she had to write about it.”

III. Keep the writing journal

This technique of enhancing your creativity is very simple and at the same time highly productive. Buy yourself a notebook, so that you can always have it at hand and write some brief narratives in it on a daily basis.

Don’t focus on the style, mistakes, and, in general, in the way you write. Just write down the first things that occur in your mind, even if you think that this is junk. The main idea is to keep your hand moving and to feel a growing sense of inspiration and confidence. In the course of time, you will become a practiced hand in writing. Surely, you will find your journal notes a rich source of inspiration and ideas.

If you really want to enhance you creative writing abilities, give a try to these simple techniques, and bring your craft as a writer into play!

Linda Correli is a staff writer of http://www.CustomResearchPapers.us/ and an author of the popular online tutorial for students “What Teachers Want: Master the Art of Essay Writing in 10 Days”, available at http://www.Go2Essay.com/ Visit Linda’s web log at
http://custom-research-papers.blogspot.com/

All together now, one, two three, we don’t drink enough water! This does not mean just a few of us, this is the majority of us. We are a nation of dehydrated fools. When are we going to sit up and take note and actually do something about it? It’s madness when you think about it. The simple procedure of picking up a glass, filling it and drinking it, is one of the few simple things we can all do. It’s easy, uncomplicated and so beneficial, why don’t ore o us do it and more often? I suppose drinking water is not a fun activity, neither is it a stimulate. We spend most of our eating and drinking lives plying our bodies with products designed to alert them, to increase concentration spans and to enhance our moods. After all, what better mood elevator is there than chocolate. Ah beloved chocolate.

Looking for speech topics? Don’t know what to talk about? No sweat! I will show you how to find good ideas for a speech. Just follow the six steps, and in the end you have developed a speech topic that will surprise your audience.

Speeches can be about everything. Think about subjects, people, events, places, problems, causes and effects, and values in your community, school, college, city, state or country.

The major guideline is: look for topics that are interesting to you and your public, and that meet the requirements of the occasion.

Okay, lets start generating ideas.

Step 1. First, check out the rules of the public speaking assignment. If there are no specific rules or requirements, then always choose to show how to do something, how something is done, how to make something, or how something works.

Step 2. Find out what you like to talk about or love to do. Think about your favorite objects, products, people, animals, events, places, processes, procedures, concepts, policies, and special skills in your personal or professional life.

Step 3. Find out what your listeners think are interesting speech topics. Therefore determine the interests and needs of your audience and write them down. Ask yourself: What do they want to learn?

Step 4. Review the short list and make a decision. Pick out the topic that is interesting to you and your public, and that fits the public speaking assignment.

Step 5. Research just one new single aspect of that topic. Try to find an creative angle of approach. For example, look for information that is new to your audience. To help you researching: look for amazing facts, figures, stories, statistics, survey results, personal and professional experiences, quotations, comparisons or contrasts.

Step 6. Make a rough outline of arguments, pros and cons, main and sub points, steps, stages and your tips.

And there you are! Now you have a topic as well as a blueprint for your speech.

Tip: Use my additional checklists for good speech topics. Keep your eyes and ears open everywhere you go. It will help you at unexpected occasions when you quickly have to come up with a speech.

(c) Copyright 2006 Jim A. Peterson, staff editor of Speech Topics Help, Advice & Ideas. Jim has over 10 year’s experience in the speech writing business. His website offers how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and many free speech topics.

The clash of ideas that started over a decade ago between Microsoft, on the one hand, and other hi-tech giants like Oracle and Sun Microsystems about the relative merits of desk-top-based vs. web-based services is coming to a head with Google’s new web-based and free spreadsheet application.

Just like the free web editor and hosting that is now available from Google, if you’ve got a Gmail account, you can now also get an innovative spreadsheet program.

The “light client” idea championed by Oracle, Sun and Google has made impressive inroads with an ever-increasing number of applications which were previously bought out in boxes and then installed on PCs.

Now a lot of such out-of-the-box applications are shifting onto the web in an amazing variety of “web services.” The spread of fiber optic networks and the dropping price of broadband are factors that favor the increase of such web service in the future.

Enter Google Spreadsheets…

The service is still in its Beta phase and so you have to register for it. I did and a day later I got my invitation to test drive the Google Spreadsheets.

As usual, Google engineers did their homework well. This is a very easy-to-understand interface, with a disarmingly clean and simple approach to the main tasks that many people end up doing with spreadsheets.

The three main tabs FORMAT, SORT and FORMULAS cover 99% of all the things that I’ll ever do with a spreadsheet.

All three tabs have their own dynamically-constructed mini-menus.

For example, in the main FORMAT tab, the menu offers different ways to format your text and numbers, with great drop-down menus to ALIGN, INSERT and DELETE anything and everything. Wrapping text and merging cells is a breeze though the well-marked menu check-box and button.

The SORT tab has the very useful FREEZE ROWS drop-down list to work efficiently with those spreadsheets with hundreds of rows. Two buttons make ascending and descending SORTING by columns a straight forward operation.

The FORMULAS tab provides an easy one-click way to calculate sums, averages, counts, etc..

And here is the most REVOLUTIONARY feature of all:

By clicking a link you can actually open a CHAT WINDOW and share the spreadsheet with your friends or co-workers. You can literally collaborate in real time as you are working on your spreadsheet. You can people to EDIT or just VIEW the spreadsheet. Try doing that with Excel.

Overall I’m very impressed with this new effort by Google to drive yet another nail into the coffin of the “heavy client” PC idea. The future looks more intriguing by the day.

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The prospects of scooping the Euro Lotto jack-pot is a remote one in seventy six million but the possibility of acquiring a money prize is a fairly decent one : twenty four. When the jackpot is not won on a given lottery draw, it is carried over to the next week which results in an ever increasing jack-pot value. New regulations added on the 09/02/2007 limit the amount of consecutive rollovers to 11, with the jackpot rolled down to smaller prize levels on the 11th lottery draw when the prize is not collected.

The euromillions lotto or the Euro lotto, as it is ordinarily known, pools the ticket receipts of the nine partaking Euro countries presenting a mammoth European Lottery jackpot. With the sum of nations joining the Euro on the increase, that will without a doubt lead to new countries partaking in the EuroMillions lotto. A growth in the number of individuals partaking in the Euro Lotto will result in a lasting increase of the already huge Euro Lotto jackpots.

The new rules also initiated European Lottery Super Draw which go on twice yearly plus they offer jack-pots in the region of 100 million pounds. The difference with Super Draws is that the jackpot has to be collected during the week of the lotto draw; this means, if there is no ticket corresponding, all the drawn numbers then the top prize will then be distributed to the lotto ticket holder(s) in the next winning prize tier.

Every participant must select five main numbers from one to fifty and 2 Lucky Star numbers from one to nine. During the draw, five primary plus 2 lucky star numbers are then chosen at random from two lottery draw machines containing numbered lottery balls.

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Affiliate marketing is arguably the great way that numerous multitude are making massive numbers of money on the cyberspace.

Moreover doing money from adult affiliate programs is fair so easy but whilst this may be so, the true statement is that away of all the hard working affiliate sellers on the net less than 10% ar getting any money and just about 1% are making truly great money.

So what is the difference between the big wage earners and those who ar fighting to get plenty to cover their hosting prices?

Good understanding and implementing the primary techniques of affiliate marketing is an primary component to reaching succeeder as an affiliate marketer.

These proficiencies can be resumed with the coming essential affiliate marketing steps.

3 Essential Steps to Having Money With Cam Affiliate Platforms

1. Affiliate Network Contract with a good affiliate net that provides a wide range of products & services from where you can choose a product or service to suit your affiliate business’ idea.

2. Merchandise Choose a product that will generate an superb affiliate commission when sold – earning a commission of anything less than $10 per sale could be believed too down – some affiliate platforms offer commissions up to 75% of the selling price.

3. Demand for the Product Make sure that there is a good require for the production you are boosting through the affiliate program – without circumstances of starved purchasers you won’t be making lots commission

Understandably there is a lot more to making decent money with affiliate programs merely several aiming affiliate marketer who disregards the above points does so at his peril.

So if the returns from your affiliate marketing effort are not just earth shattering always go back to the rudiments and revue your affiliate program military campaign.