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Seychelles What To Know Before You Go
by: Lucy Tucker (reading – 2.8. - 8.8.)The Seychelles are truly paradise, with extraordinary beaches on almost every island, and they are virtually deserted. The forests are beautifully lush and green, and the underwater sights are amazing with more fish than you could ever dream of, whilst the colors of the sea will leave you spellbound. Another wonderful think is the lack of high rise hotels, since buildings have to be lower than the palm trees.
In addition if you want to see Green and Hawksbill turtles, then at certain times of the year you can do just that. So if it is nature trails and hiking that fascinate you, then Silhouette Island with no roads, and lots of trails would be perfect for you, especially because the thick vegetation means lots of wildlife.
If fishing, especially fly fishing is your thing, then get yourself to the bonefish flats near Alphonse, where you will catch literally dozens of fish. Add to this the historic and famous coco de mer on Praslin at the Vallee de Mai, and the millions of sooty terns on Bird, and you can see this is a paradise for nature lovers.
On the other hand, if you love beaches, then some of the best beaches in the world are to be found in the Seychelles, and for me it’s a toss up between Anse Lazio on Praslin, Bird Island beach which goes all the way round and is almost deserted, and Anse Victorin on Fregate, which probably wins the vote due to the exclusivity of Fregate, and the white sand, turquoise sea, and the fact that it is cut off by rocky headlands on either side. These are just three, and you will realize it is difficult to set them apart when you have been there.
Whilst I personally don’t dive, but I do snorkel, I am reliably informed that the diving at Alphonse is just the best, but Desroches has the coral, and La Digue has the colourful fish, but to be truthful from the moment I walked into the water at Anse Lazio on Praslin and was immediately surrounded in knee deep water by hundreds of brightly coloured fish, I’ve never failed to be astounded by the snorkeling everywhere in the Seychelles.
Where you stay in the Seychelles is very dependent on your budget, and probably the greatest luxury is to be found at the resort on Fregate, home of the best beach too. Here you stay in a villa with views to die for with your own Jacuzzi overlooking the ocean, it is pure pampered luxury, but it is not the only island with only one resort. Alphonse, Bird, Desroches, and Silhouette are all like this, if you want crowds, go to Mahe.
Praslin, and La Digue are a halfway house with affordable hotels, and not many people.
People often ask about the food in the Seychelles, and what it’s like. It is a real fusion of flavours, best described as Creole. It features lots of coriander, chilies, ginger, lemongrass, pepper, and fresh herbs, blended into curries. Fish and seafood is in profusion, particularly look out for tuna, red snapper, kingfish, parrotfish, or octopus served raw and thinly sliced. It's great just book and go!
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About The Author Lucy Tucker loves the Seychelles, read more about the Seychelles at |
Google Earth - Zoom In!
by: Jakob Jelling (reading – 9.8. - 15.8.)Cartography, until some time ago, was the only way of mapping or charting the globe. Map-reading and map-making is a science, the subtleties of which might not be available to every lay person. However, commercial-use maps have been available for a long time now. They are especially useful for tourists and for drivers. The major drawback of paper 2-D maps was that they have always been location or area specific. While an atlas, in theory, is a collection of maps of the whole globe, minute details can never be divined from them.
Google Earth, the latest software application from the Internet giant Google, aims to change all this. One of the main features of this application is that it promises you minutely detailed maps of any location in this world. Even pictures of man-made building, trees, parks, mountains are available, if you so desire, in 3-D. It’s a method of information gathering for any specific location in this world. Google Earth is quite simply, an extraordinary technological feat. At a stroke, it has dominated the cartographical business. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection. Just download the software and you can discover the world from your desktop.
Google Earth employs the use of satellite imagery, conventional maps and extremely sophisticated streaming technology to deliver the data to your desktop. Just type in the location in the software (powered by the award-winning Google Search) and the map is immediately available to you. Also, Google Search makes available a list of local facts about your search object. This technology makes searching for schools, parks, apartment buildings, even hotels and restaurants anywhere in the world extremely easy. Not only does it make driving instructions available to you, location to location, the software also allows you to rotate and full tilt the maps. This makes it easier for you to explore the urban location or terrain in 3-D detail.
A great number of customization tools are available for the individual user. You can bookmark or save your favorite searches and share them with family and friends. Google Earth also makes use of KML. It is a data exchange format which allows the user to add their annotations to the map or the view and also enables the sharing of this information. The map is formatted in the form of layers-with some features characteristic to each layer. For example, a specific layer would shoe the geographical features, while another will make information regarding schools, hospitals, shopping and airports available to you.
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About The Author Jakob Jelling is the founder of www.sitetube.com . Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites. |
Audio And Web Conferencing
by: Daniel Davis (reading – 16.8. - 22.8.)Thirty years ago, business owners wondered how they ever got by without the telephone. Twenty years ago, it was the fax machine. Just ten years ago, corporate players marveled at life before email and today, successful business people can't imagine life without audio and web conferencing.
This latest technological breakthrough has had a huge impact on the corporate scene. Unlike typical conference calls, audio and web conferencing offers a full-featured solution for conducting on-demand meetings anywhere in the world, at any time. It is now feasible and affordable for companies to exchange ideas and get valuable real-time input, without the inordinate expenses or hassles of travel.
The Basics
Before delving into the finer aspects of audio and web conferencing, it is important to understand a few terms. "Conferencing" refers to a discussion that occurs between a group of individuals, where ideas are exchanged and data are shared via a communication technology. The phrase "web conferencing" means that the whole conferencing system is hosted or conducted in a web environment, specifically a web server or application.
Audio inputs are a basic feature of web conferencing. Peripheral devices are added to the computer in order to facilitate voice communication between conference participants. Devices like headphones and microphones soon gave birth to a type of communication called audio and web conferencing.
An audio and web conferencing system behaves basically like a telephone setup. It is a more economical version of phone or conference calling, but rather than establishing complicated telephone systems to confer with your staff in different office locations, you can now make use of the audio and web conferencing system. This is an economical way to keep your business moving while minimizing lost time and expensive travel and meeting room costs.
There are a number of key features in using an audio and web conferencing system.
The first and most obvious benefit is the easy-to-use audio controls. Most audio and web conferencing vendors will offer intuitive controls for audio, allowing you to easily control your audio meeting using your telephone keypad or a form of web-based audio control panel. You are given a wide range of options including the ability to mute lines, take roll call and lock or terminate the conference.
Not all audio and web conferencing programs utilize the existing telephone system, but some do. With integrated, low-cost phone systems, these audio and web conferencing applications allow you to use your phone to discuss, share, negotiate and collaborate with your clients and fellow employees.
Many audio and web conferencing tools offer easy setup, and most are intuitive with user-oriented interfaces. Some are integrated into popular desktop items, such as Microsoft Outlook email programs.
Meetings on demand have never been easier. For some, they've never been possible. Now, thanks to audio and web conferencing, with a click of the mouse you can launch a meeting right when you need it.
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About The Author Daniel Davis contributes to several Internet magazines, including www.zylep.com and www.bekad.com . |
Analysis of Self-Portraits of Vincent van Gogh
by: Elizabeth Harding (reading – 23.8. - 29.8.)Vincent – Model, Myth & Human Being
"…it is difficult to know yourself, but it isn’t easy to paint oneself either." –Vincent van Gogh
From 1885 through 1890, van Gogh painted at least 30 self-portraits, an amazing number of likenesses to complete in such a short time span. They represent his most active years as a master artist, and all carry the distinctive van Gogh intensity with which every picture he ever made was imbued.
Many of his early self-portraits resemble the great self-portraits carried out by Rembrandt van Rijn in the 1600's. A comparison between the two elicits several points of similarities, such as the serious demeanor, elegant and dramatic lighting and a certain likeness in the visage itself. These are portraits of two master Dutch artists from vastly different times, but a viewer making such comparisons tends to feel the two would have probably been great friends.
A tour through Vincent's many self-portraits displays not only his ability to paint character in an intensely personal way, but also his comfort with different styles. During his brief but almost supernaturally productive ten years as an artist, van Gogh made the transition from realism to impressionism (especially pointalism) to expressionism with nary a glitch. His own style was quite firmly in place by the last few years of his life, and is now either labeled "expressionistic" or "post-impressionist."
Two of his most famous self-portraits would never have been painted were it not for his friend and eventual nemesis, Paul Gauguin. One is a haunting and disquieting painting called "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin," and the other is simply titled "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear."
The incident which caused van Gogh to slice off most of an earlobe is possibly the most famous in art history. During a violent disagreement with his friend Gauguin, Vincent heard the words "Kill him" in that ear, which he opted to remove rather than obey. This great artist suffered throughout his life from unruly emotional seizures and great mental strife which led him to enter an asylum for a year and then to commit suicide.
It is easy to romanticize such a bigger-than life character whose work consistently creates enormous impact in the viewer's heart and mind. We say, "Oh you were misunderstood, but we understand, Vincent." And indeed, we do understand. The fact is, his greatest gift was the ability to make paintings that are at once tremendously moving and also simple enough to communicate with diamondlike clarity.
Though largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Van Gogh believed himself to be a true artist. His 37 years on this planet were not easy nor pleasant, being full of depressive and violent episodes. But if his body of self-portraits tell us anything, it is that he knew, loved and accepted himself as much as the beloved friends and peasants he depicted with so
much care and compassion.
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About The Author Elizabeth Harding |
Drinking Tea
by: Kadence Buchanan (reading – 30.8. - 5.9.)The second most consumed beverage after water is tea. Interestingly enough the 3,200,000 tonnes of tea produced worldwide come from only one plant species, named "camellia sinensis." But how a plant becomes a beverage? Tea is made by steeping processed leaves, buds, or twigs of the tea bush in hot water for a few minutes, a great variety of tea tastes, aromas and colors can excite even the more skeptical drinker. If you do like tea drinking, but simply never had the opportunity to learn more about it beyond the fact that you enjoy it, you should know that there are thousands of kinds of tea offered on today's market. Shades in flavor derive from the region of cultivation and the method of processing the tea leaves. It is the processing techniques that produce the four simple tea categories are considered the art of tea making. In its most basic form, processing is the taking of the raw green leaves and deciding whether or not, and how much oxidation (or fermentation) should take place before drying them out. Oxidation is the reaction of the enzymes contained in tea leaves when they are broken, bruised or crushed.
The first category is that of black tea. Black tea is nothing more than the leaves of the camellia sinensis after being exposed to 8-24 hours of open air. After the leaves are picked they are spread out to let the water they contain evaporate. You have probably witnessed it happening to a flower that is left without being watered. The foliage curls up and begins to dry. After this part of the process, the tea leaves are balled into rolls that encourage oxidization. When fully oxidized, the leaves turn into a rich black color. Tea producers then put the tea leaves into the final drying period before sorting and packaging them.
Oolong tea is another tea category and is considered to be the most difficult of the four types of teas to process. The best way to describe oolong tea is that it is somewhere in between green and black tea. This is because the leaves are only partially oxidized during the processing. As with black tea, the leaves are spread out to dry for 8-24 hours, but after that, they are tossed about in a basket in order to create a bruising and partial exposure to the air. The final step involves steaming the leaves, which neutralizes the enzymes in the tea and prevents further oxidization.
Green teas, like white teas, are closer to tasting like fresh leaves of grass that the other two tea categories. This type of tea is also lower in caffeine and has higher antioxidant properties. The whole process of creating green tea revolves around preventing oxidization from taking place in the leaves. Though the tea leaves are sometimes laid out to dry for a few hours, then, in order to neutralize the enzymes and prevent further oxidation, the leaves are steamed or pan fried. It is this very technique which results in the preservation of the enzymes which have recently become the focus of medical research. After steaming, the leaves are rolled up, still quite green in color.
Finally, white tea has recently become a popular item in the west as it is the least processed tea and thus tastes mostly like fresh leaves or grass. White tea is made of the little buds of the tea plant. Again like green tea, white tea is steamed or pan fried to prevent any kind of oxidization, and great care is taken to avoid bruising or crushing the tea. The dried buds have a silver-like appearance because the tiny white hairs of new growth are still present.
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About The Author Kadence Buchanan writes articles for www.letstalkaboutfood.com/ - In addition, Kadence also writes articles for www.ifitnesscentral.com/ and www.totallytraveling.net/ . |
AJ Online Magazín - ZÁŘÍ - formát pdf, včetně slovní zásoby
AJ Online Magazín - ZÁŘÍ - obsahuje texty "Reading" z minulého měsíce(2.8. - 8.8. / 9.8. - 15.8. / 16.8. - 22.8. / 23.8. - 29.8. / 30.8. - 5.9.)
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