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0809 - Welcome to One Cool's newsletter - first edition!
This issue has
Have Sum Fun! 10 Holiday Ideas for the Summer
Have you heard "I'm BORED!" repeated six times over, until you want to scream and say "I'm a parent get me OUT OF HERE"? Or even heard yourself say "these aren't even my kids, get THEM out of here"?
Summer can be an expensive and difficult time of the year, especially as the weather is not always at its best. Quite often there comes a time when you run short of ideas for things to do, in or out of doors.
To help reduce the boredom factor, we have found the perfect web site to come to your aid (www.familyeducation.com). Below are a few ideas from this resourceful site!
- Get printables
- Watch a film and do a quiz afterwards on what they have just watched
- Keep fit, play back garden sports (football, badminton or cricket)
- Get you children to do "How energy efficient is you home?"
- Making a Giant bubble wand
- Travel Games
- Create a butterfly garden. See how?
- Make some homemade silly putty. Click here to see how to make it.
- Go and do some fruit picking and make a delicious desert with your findings
- Take a quiz
As you may have noticed, the site is for adults too. Share your ideas on the site about how you are coping with the fuel price hike. You may get ideas of how to save money. This web site is full of resources, giving you a full range of ideas for your summer holiday.
Useful Resources - on a more serious note
How to increase your broadband speed
There are 5 easy steps to improving your broadband experience:
- In your router, set your MTU to a lower value than 1500. Try 1492. On some ISP's networks, 1484 can also improve speed further. Experiment, a little!
- In your router, turn off all services that are not used, such as port forwarding, port activation, content filtering, even wireless (if you use a wired connection only). Do the same for your computer.
- If you use a Windows PC, which antivirus are you using? It might be less efficient than a competing product.
- If you are planning a network around the home, this is a great starting point for greener computing. Use Small Net Builder as a starting point for further research.
- Try Mozilla's Firefox web browser, which offers a more responsive, more configurable web browsing experience. To boost the speed even further, why not try FasterFox!
Go green...don't replace your current PC!
Do you really need a (whole) new PC? You might be sold on the idea that it's more energy efficient, but weigh up the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing, packaging, transportation and storage of a new machine (not to mention disposal of your "old" one), and then you may not feel quite so green (environmentally speaking). So, why not...
- Buy some new memory instead? See Crucial for a top quality upgrade.
- Use some parts of your old machine with newer components or upgrade those components in your old machine. Check Aria for cheap upgrades!
- Use a more efficient operating system. Get Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, or any other manner of GNU/Linux operating system. Most, if not all, are listed here.
- Turn if off at night. If you need a machine on for P2P sharing (e.g. using BitTorrent), do you need your main PC to do that? Buy a second, lower power machine. Try a machine built to mini- or micro-ITX format.
- If you really need to replace your PC, seek out more energy efficient models that use either AMD's Geode CPU or Intel's equivalent, called Atom. These ultra-low power processors save roughly 80-100W of power when in use, compared to modern PC CPU architecture.
What's Hot, What's Not...
HOT: The Wiggles, O3Spaces, MoneySavingExpert.com, Solar panels, Ronnie Montrose
NOT: UK ID cards, Bird Flu, Food wastage, that the new Battlestar Gallactica is only 4 seasons long...
One Cool Limited
Steve Dowe, Director of One Cool Limited has worked in information technology for 10 years, in telecoms, financial services and general service sectors. Fortunately, with so many good things happening, he doesn't feel old... yet. Contact Steve directly with article ideas, questions, issues, topics... pretty much anything you want to see covered in a future issue.
The themes expressed in the newsletter do not necessarily represent the opinions of One Cool Limited. One Cool assumes no responsibility for the content of third party web sites and requests that the reader exercise caution when browsing the web at all times.
