A Time of Magic » Culture

Getting rid of that unwanted tattoo

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:04:15 +0000

Even if you’ve put a lot of thought into the idea of having a tattoo before considering things like the design and placement, it’s still possible that at some point in the future that you will want to think about removing it.

But what does a tattoo remover actually get up to?

The problem is that a tattoo is basically designed to be permanent. It’ll certainly change over the years as your skin changes but the ink will remain within your skin essentially forever. Or, in short, it ain’t going to be an easy thing to remove.

So what the tattoo removers do is basically to erase the whole area of the design. Since the ink is within your skin this means that it’s generally going to leave a scar broadly overwriting the are where the tattoo used to be. Thus, small tattoos are easier to get rid of than large ones and the young lady’s tattoo shown here wouldn’t realistically be possible to remove.

Definitely a case of think a lot then think some more before deciding to get that tattoo.

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U2 touring far from home

admin — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 09:55:10 +0000

U2 is a fairly local band coming from Dublin though, as usual, I’ve not gotten around to buying any U2 tickets as yet.

That’s the funny thing with local heroes isn’t it? They’re so close that you figure that you can go and see them any time but somehow or other that “any time” never quite comes around.

Their latest tour is taking in Australia, New Zealand and America which is a teensy bit far for me to venture at the moment.

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A fancy name for a walkway

admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:14:33 +0000

Greenways are the in thing these days basically because they let councils show an eco friendly face, use what would ordinarily be waste land and collect lots of grant money.

That said, they do provide genuine advantages to the communities through which they run. For instance, the disused railway embankment behind our house had became largely a muddy path surrounded by weeds which were regularly set fire to over the summer. That was maybe a decade or so ago when they decided that it should be a greenway.

Over a fairly short period of time, the muddy path was replaced by a tarmac one, the weeds were cut back and trees were planted along the route. We all thought that the burning would continue but in fact it’s never happened since.

The only downside now is that the greenway was put in a little bit too soon as it doesn’t have the lighting that later ones have so you can’t really use it at night. In fact, that’s just one of a whole raft of improvements that we’ll see in a second similar scheme that’s being created as from this November. I’ve walked along parts of what’ll be the new route and they seriously need a cleaning out but in a few years time that’ll all change.

A bit of a gimmic name-wise, but one that’s worth having for all the plus points that it attracts.

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End of line discount clothing

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:57:08 +0000

Whilst the fashion industry might have us believe that fashions change completely every year, in reality they don’t change all that much from one year to the next.

That being the case there’s big money to be saved through looking at wholesale apparel as the seasons change. Obviously you can’t run with the truly fashionable as seen on catwalk models but you definitely can do really well in terms of clothing essentials if you basically shop a year in advance.

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Ye olde filing systems

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:53:02 +0000

Our solicitor recently moved offices and, of course, needed to move all the old wills and whatnot that accumulate in the offices of solicitors over the years.

One of the problems with such filing is that there’s rarely a computer record maintained over the years as, frankly, it’s not realistic to do that over what could potentially be a period stretching over many decades. Think about the changes that even your own personal computer systems have gone through over the last 30 years or so. Back in the mid 70s chances were that you would have one of a number of totally incompatible systems but let’s assume that you were lucky in your choice and chanced upon one of the two standard systems of that era. You’d have chosen either an Apple 2 or something based on CP/M. If you’ve any discs from then, you wouldn’t be able to read them with todays equipment as 8″ floppy drives haven’t been available for decades.

But suppose you copied them onto the latest IBM PC system when that came out in the early 80s. There at least you would be ahead as you can still get systems that’ll read the 3.5″ discs introduced by the mid-80s. However, if you merely copied your Visicalc spreadsheets or Wordstar documents you’d not be able to read them in Excel or Word unless you’d converted them into 123 or an early version of Word as used on the IBM then. Even Excel and Word are themselves a problem as they used a number of different file formats over the years.

Thus ye olde filing systems use paper.

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Recording the holidays for posterity

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:42:46 +0000

Just about everyone has a camera phone these days but they’re not really up to recording your memories of a holiday as they basically don’t have enough memory nor have they the flexibility to do that.

For that you need to start trawling through the camcorder reviews where you’ll come across a whole new world of acronyms and technologies. However, it’s not nearly so complicated as it first appears.

To begin with you need to think about whether you want to use a card, DVD or tape based camcorder. The DVD ones get quite bad press sometimes basically because not all DVD players can cope with the small DVDs that these camcorders use and there’s the issue about how long they could be expected to last. The tape based ones have been around a long time and use the miniDV standard which will hold about an hour of video. They’re larger than the card based devices and you’ll need to use cables to copy the movies on to your computer.

The other consideration is whether to use standard or HD video. In practical terms there’s not much of a difference in cost these days and HD will almost always be your best choice. This will use up more cards but doesn’t require any space on the tape as compression is used with the miniDV standard.

Finally, there’s the issue of what to do with the used media. With miniDV you may as well keep the original tapes as they’re very cheap but the cards can become quite expensive. If the only copy you’re keeping it that on your computer, don’t forget to keep backup copies as otherwise you’re sure to lose your movies at some point in the future.

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Are you a Canon, Nikon or Fuji owner?

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:23:25 +0000

We’ve all three makes in our household and you’d think that it would be easy enough to switch between them, at least at the level of a compact camera but it isn’t.

Whilst I don’t have any problems changing between the Canon camera and the Nikons, when I try to take a photo on the Fujis it just never seems to turn out quite as I was expecting it to. Oh, the menus are different for sure but the cameras are basically set up for point and shoot so you’d think that would work quite well. Still, at least it makes Wendy’s camera hers and mine, mine

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It’s summer so it’s BBQ time

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:12:00 +0000

You know that it’s Spring when the shelves of the supermarket start to groan under the weight of all kinds of outdoor cooking equipment so it’s almost time for the sales of such things to begin.

Most people opt for BBQ style gear with anything from simple charcoal based items through gas fired versions through to outdoor electric grills with loads of variation in between. What’s best to go for depends on the use that you’re intending to put it to. If it’s a once a year effort you’d not go far wrong with one of the disposable versions, move to weekly and it’s generally charcoal or gas but if you’re into BBQ at home then electric grills are worth considering too.

All you need to add is decent weather…

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Naming clothing trends

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:05:12 +0000

Clothing trends can originate just about everywhere these days with styles traceable back to anything from a pop star to a dance style.

That can lead to an annoyingly confusing range of names for styles that can differ quite markedly from what the origins where for any given style. Thus hip hop clothes become urban clothes and acquire a slightly different range of styling. Similarly, the Lady Ga Ga inspiring clothing has moved away from simply copying her outfits and on to using her overall styles as inspiration for something quite different.

Where the next set of names will come from is anyone’s guess and even the style magazines can’t tell you although that won’t stop them trying.

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The season for scrambling machines

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:03:57 +0000

With the arrival of more dependable good weather, the sound of atv machines is in the air just about everywhere you go.

It’s not so bad when properly licensed vehicles and drivers drive their vehicles on the roads but given the size of these vehicles it’s quite common to see unlicensed vehicles on the road too and some incredibly iffy driving I’ve seen indicates that the drivers aren’t licensed either.

However, even though a license isn’t required for off-road use, quite often these vehicles are seen racing over tracks that normal pedestrians are travelling along too. I’m sure that in many cases that’s an accident just waiting to happen given the lack of care that many of the drivers take.

And, of course, there’s the noise!

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