Many people remember a fallen soldier as a person in uniform. Sometimes that soldiers the four-legged friend who saved your life by being a bomb sniffing dog that finds an IED and warns you about it before it explodes. This is a sad but beautiful picture of pure respect for two fallen heroes
Hey, have you got your own website by any chance?
Fancy making a little bit of pocket money?
Well, I just might be able to help you there.
I'm sure you've heard of something called "Google AdSense"?
Ever thought about putting a few adverts on your website and then let other people make money for you?
I know this sounds like one of those "if it's too good to be true then it probably is" schemes, but I promise you Google AdSense can be quite lucrative if setup properly.
I have been using Google AdSense on all of my websites for the last couple of years. Whereas I don't earn a fortune, certainly not enough to go by myself my own desert island, it certainly enough to pay for the running of my websites with a little extra left over. I have created various tutorials that give you my take on setting up Google AdSense and how to implement it on your own website. Remember that it's not just a case of plonking ads anywhere, they have to be placed in the correct area of your website to maximise clicks from your visitors. It may be that you have to experiment until your click rate starts going up. One important factor is the amount of people you get visiting your website. In order for you to make a reasonable amount of money you will need to optimise your website so that you have a decent amount of people visiting you on a daily basis. It's really no good if you get a few visitors every day, you need hundreds of visitors to make it worthwhile. My advice would be forget about Google AdSense until you have got plenty of people visiting your website every day, you're wasting your time unless there are people there who are going to click on your Google adverts.
A photograph or picture always looks nice with a frame around it, I think it's nice to emphasise a photo sometimes. Okay, the majority of photos on my website are frameless, but they are photos that are integrated into a paragraph of text. Framing a photograph using Photo shop is very easy and only takes a few minutes. There are many different ways to add a frame around a picture or photograph using photo shop, this is just my take on how to do it
Sometimes you may have a photo that you want to chop down, maybe want to remove some of the unwanted background, or remove a couple of people from the photograph. If you wanted to do this with a standard photograph then you would use a pair of scissors to alter the size of the photo and cut out anything you don't want, you can do a very similar task in photo shop using the "crop tool". This tutorial will show you how
Most people who take digital photos only do so so they can view the photos on their computer, there really is not any need to edit the photos. Nowadays most people have got fast Internet connections so it's even possible to send large photos over the e-mail without any problems.
However, occasionally you may want to edit a photograph to make it a little bit smaller, maybe you want to put it onto a forum, or even add it to your webpage. There are online programs that will do this for you, but if you have got a program called Photoshop, then this task is really easy. You can resize the photo to whatever size you require, but also compress the file size so that when you put it on your web site, anyone looking at that page with the photo on doesn't have to sit there for ages waiting for the page to download. Rather than me explain and write down in words how to do it, I have made a short YouTube video, I hope this helps you understand how to resize and compress a photo using photo shop.
I was watching the news today and a news item came on which absolutely infuriated me. You can have a look at the news page yourself by clicking on the link at the bottom, however basically, the government has sent one of their questionnaires which assesses disabled people to find out whether they are capable of work to a young lad who suffers from Williams syndrome and has the mental age of a three-year-old. I'm not surprised that his father is angry, I can fully understand where he is coming from. His son's situation is not going to change, not now, not in 10 years time, the government should make a note of this and stop sending these questionnaires, not only are they wasting their own time and money, but they are wasting the time of people who do not need this hassle.
The government have computers don't they? Is it too difficult for them to make a list of all the people whose situation is not going to change, people like myself, I'm still going to be paralysed from the neck down in 10 years time, I'm not going to make a miraculous recovery which will enable me to go back to work on the trawlers.
May I suggest that the government look at the situation carefully, instead of harassing disabled people trying to find any excuse to stop giving them the money they need, why don't they concentrate on weeding out all these scumbags who are receiving benefits when they absolutely don't deserve it. Without naming names, I know of one heroin addict who receives nearly £200 every two weeks, he collects his money on Wednesday and by lunchtime he's got absolutely nothing left, are you seriously telling me that this waste of space deserves to be given benefits when you've got genuine people out there who are absolutely desperate for money. It's just not fair, millions and millions of pounds could be saved if the government went after the people who really don't deserve to be given benefits.
I got a total shock today when I picked up the local paper, there was a photograph of Jon Boyce on the front of the Herald Express. By all accounts him and a friend were out late last Saturday evening when Jon was attacked by somebody who may have either punched or pushed him. Either way, Jon hit his head on the wall and then the pavement and has now sustained serious head injuries. He is now down Derriford Hospital in Plymouth which is a specialist hospital for head injuries. I can only hope that Jon makes a speedy recovery and is back on its feet very soon.
Ironically, Jon was one of four friends who was with me when I had my accident back in 1986 at Shoalstone swimming pool here in Brixham. Jon jumped into the water and I dived over as head, that is when I had my accident. I haven't spoken to Jon and quite a few years, although I've seen them from a distance a couple of times. I first met him way back in the early 80s when I used to come over to see my two cousins, Nick and Matt, Jon is the same age as both myself and my cousin Nick and was a very good friend of Nick. What can you say about Jon? A really funny guy, always the first person to have a smile on his face and to crack a joke, he made me laugh and more than one occasion. I remember the first time I met him, I was going through my skinhead phase and I was wearing a pair of 14 hole Dr Martens boots and a pair of bleached jeans. In between the top of my jeans and the top of my boots you could see my white rugby socks which needed darning. As quick as a flash Jon asked me if my socks were "believers", obviously with a puzzled look on my face I asked him what he was talking about, he then said that my socks were "wholy" as in holy. That was the first time I met him and he made me laugh my holy socks off.
I really hope that he's okay very soon and I wish him and his family all the best
I travelled up to Boatability near Southampton today to have a look at the wheelchair accessible fishing boat that I am contemplating purchasing. I met up with Nick and he took me for a nice ride on the NAB 23 Dory. It was an absolutely beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and really warm, after all the horrible weather we've had it was just perfect weather for getting out there and turning up the throttle, God does this boat shift, a whopping 26 kn it will do.
As for the boat itself, it definitely exceeded my expectations, it was stable, fast and very spacious, absolutely what I'm looking for in a small inshore fishing boat that will be perfect for people in wheelchairs.
My mom took a couple of photos and a little bit of video, unfortunately not a lot but it's better than nothing and shows you the boat.
