Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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What a week!

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Wow. I can’t believe I went 6 days without writing in my blog. Blogs I should say – there’s several I haven’t done any writing in all week! I don’t think I’ve ever gone that long without writing!

Sorry! Life just got in the way.

During the first part of the week I was shopping and preparing for our trip to Las Vegas next week. Then, probably because I’ve been a lot more active lately I crashed!

I’ve been so sick from about Tuesday evening onward that I’ve barely been able to do a thing. Ain’t Crohn’s fun? Of course, this means that when I go to Vegas I’ll probably crash again while I’m there or right after I come back.

If you’re going to be at Blogworld or P0stiecon and you meet up with my husband and I, don’t let me overdo things, ok? Honestly. I can be really hyper and sometimes I need to just be told to sit down and take a break. You’ll be doing me a favor if you help make me rest. LOL Also, I’m a huge klutz so making me take it easy might save me from personal injury. Seriously!

Speaking of personal injury. The other day I was standing on the couch to pull our dark curtains shut. We’d run out of Halloween candy and shutting those dark curtains helps make our house look like no one’s home. Shhhh. Well, as I stood on the couch and stretched to reach the top of the curtain where it had become stuck I heard a pop in my right ankle. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but a few hours later my inner ankle, heel and the lower part of my calf started hurting.

I must have stretched or torn something because I’m still limping around the house a few days later! I think I really need to get me some whole life insurance or something … or wrap myself in bubble wrap as I once said I was going to do every time I went out!

I really am a class A klutz.





If you’re having a cosmetic surgery treatment make sure it’s with the best

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As you might remember, my husband and I have a PVR so we tape a lot of television shows and watch them when we have time. Well, last night we got around to watching the previous evenings episode of CSI New York. Did you see it? It was a great episode about a hit woman using Second Life to pick off her targets.

One of the things that caught my eye in that episode was that one of the characters, who ended up being the first victim on the show, had had cosmetic surgery to enhance her looks. I don’t even know if the procedure that she supposedly had done is even a real cosmetic surgery procedure or not, but apparently it was a special type of surgical thread used give her a minor face lift. If this is a real treatment it looks like it would be minimally invasive and as a result much easier and faster to have done!

At this point I can say that I’ve never had any cosmetic surgery done, but as the saying goes “never say never”. I mean, there are so many different cosmetic surgery procedures and treatments available these days that I’m sure more and more people have decided to have a little work done to either correct a flaw, enhance their looks or minimize the effects of aging.

Certainly if you are going to get any form of cosmetic surgery done you should be sure that you have your work done by a certified cosmetic surgeon. I mean it’s your body we’re talking about here – you want to have someone that specializes in the type of treatment you are having done and who has performed the procedure successfully time and time again. Right?

Take for example the medical staff at the SurgiCare clinic. This company has clinics throughout the UK and all of their doctors are GMC certified. SurgiCare employs some of the most respected surgeons in the UK. Looking at their site it sounds as if they put their patients first. They provide their patients with a thorough consultation that is meant to not only find out what the patient wants to have done and what their expectations are, but also to inform the patient of their choices and the total costs of the treatment.

The Surgicare Clinic website has quite a bit of information about all of the procedures and treatments that they specialize in. Looking through their site it looks like they do everything from Smart Lipo treatments to chemical skin peels, derma fillers, treatments for excessive sweating, facial contouring, acne treatments, laser hair removal, Lip enhancement, microdermabrasion, muscle relaxation treatments, semi permanent make up, teeth whitening, wrinkle treatment, weight loss surgery and an interesting sounding procedure called Non surgical 3D face lift.

If you’ve considered having a cosmetic surgery procedure done and you live in the UK do visit the SurgiCare website to see what they can do for you and to read up on the various treatments.

In the meantime I’m going to try to find out if the cosmetic surgery that I saw on CSI NY is really real. I’m intrigued!

Ultra Hal – make your computer talk and understand commands

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Did you hear the news? Ultra Hal, created by Zabaware, won the grand prize for “most human” computer of the year – this means that they’ve basically created the Smartest artificial intelligence software ever. The award was given out at the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence.

Their software gives your computer a personality with the ability to speak and understand the English language. Of course this means that when talk to your computer it really can talk back!

If you’d like to try the Ultra Hal Assistant 6.1 software you can download a free 30 day trial at the Zabaware website.

Zabaware’s Ultra Hal software won the “most human” computer of the year in the 17th annual Loebner Prize Competition for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The contest was held in New York City hosted by philanthropist Hugh Loebner.

The Loebner Prize is an annual competition where software programs attempt to convince human judges that they are actually people. The format of the competition is called a Turing Test. In a Turing Test a judge talks with 2 “entities” simultaneously through a text-based instant messaging system. One entity is a human and the other is a computer. It is up to the judge to decide which is which by typing questions to both entities and receiving answers.

Zabaware is an Erie, Pennsylvania based company that specializes in artificial intelligence technology. The company’s mission “giving your computer the power of thought” once considered a futuristic pipe dream is becoming a 2007 reality.

It is one thing to talk to your computer it is quite another to have a conversation where you are exchanging information and the computer learns and utilizes the information in the future. Zabaware’s Ultra Hal technology and its associated brain are currently doing just that. The software can give your computer a personality using AI technology, speech recognition technology, and real-time animation. It can be used as an entertainment program, a companion, or an office assistant. It learns from conversations and evolves and improves the more it talks with a person. In addition to chat it can perform useful functions such as remembering and reminding of appointments, keeping an address book, dialing phone numbers, launching program, and more.

Zabaware’s Ultra Hal software runs on most standard Windows computers. The artificial intelligence software is available for download at www.zabaware.com as a free 30-day trial.

Cool photo-Morpher software

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Wow! I was given the opportunity to try a new photo morphing software earlier today and I must say I really enjoyed playing around with this software!

I went to the Zoombli website and downloaded a copy of their Morpheus Photo-Morpher application. I know a few other bloggers who have started using this software to morph photos from one thing into another and I thought it was about time I try it out myself.

The software was very easy to install. Once installed the program opened up right away. There were instructions on how to use the software properly in the right side of the Photo-Morpher application so it was easy to follow the directions to create my own photo morph.

bud.jpg As you are editing your photo morph you be able to view a time line window so that you can see every frame, just like when you are editing a movie or video file.

As you know I love taking photographs of the flowers in my garden. So I went searching through my photos and found a beautiful photo a perfect Graham Thomas English rose bud. I then found a lovely photo of this rose fully open. I thought it would be neat to see how the program morphed the two photos from bud to fully open flower.

rose.jpg Hey I might use this on my gardening blog! It would be very useful to show people the different stages a plant goes through as it grows.

I’m sure you could come up with hundreds of things to morph – perhaps a baby photo of your child to how they look right now?

The program renders the morphs in a variety of formats including flash. I chose to render my morph into an avi so that I could upload it to YouTube.

This is my bud to full blooming Graham Thomas English rose:

The full standard version of this software only costs $29.95 and there’s also a Pro version that will allow you to to have even more features than you already do with the Standard version. Check out the software for yourself. I’m sure you could think of all kinds of cool things to morph. Hey a morphed photo might even make an interesting present for someone you love.

Use a BrightBox to keep the symptoms of SAD away!

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Do you live in an the Northern Hemisphere? Do you find yourself becoming depressed, more tired that usual and or seem to lack energy through the winter months? Perhaps you even have cravings for foods that are high in carbs and sugars in the winter time?

If you suffer from any of the seasonal affective disorder symptoms I’ve listed it’s possible that you might be affected by a mild to severe form of seasonal affective disorder.

Recent studies have shown that up to 25% of the people who live above or below 30 degrees of the equator may suffer from at least a mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

You may or may not realize this, but exposure to light affects our bodies sleep/awake cycles as well as the secretion of the hormone Melatonin which is secreted by our pineal gland. Our Melatonin levels can also affect the actions of our pituitary gland as well as our adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine levels.

If we are only exposed to low levels of light for a period of time our bodies can begin to secrete too much Melatonin and since Melatonin is one of the hormones that brings on the desire to sleep we might have the desire to sleep more often than normal and our moods might be affected as well.

Excuse me if I got into hormones a little too much there. I find it fascinating how our bodies can be thrown off so easily simply by not being exposed to high enough light levels! I also find this topic fascinating because I keep reptiles (box turtles at the moment) and exposure to the full spectrum of light is very important to their health as well for a variety of reasons.

The symptoms of SAD can easily be relieved through the use of SAD light therapy. In fact, the symptoms of SAD can be dramatically reduced after just a few days of light therapy.

brightbox.gif A UK company has developed and thoroughly tested the BrightBox. It’s what is known as a SAD light box. On the left you’ll see an image of their easy to use and easy to transport light box.

People who suffer from SAD can use the BrightBox for 30 minutes a day in order to keep the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder at bay. If you look through the sites gallery you’ll see people using the Brightbox in front of computers, at their desks or even at the dinner table with their family!

If you are interested in learning more about Seasonal Affective Disorder, the BrightBox and or connecting with other SAD sufferers please visit the BrightBox site.

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