How to Plan and Enjoy the Ultimate Family Vacation

We will never be bored of travelling, and this enthusiasm for discovering new places will never diminish. For thousands of centuries, man has been exploring the world and it seems a never ending ordeal. Everyone desires to go on a nice holiday in between work to revitalize them. Now c'mon, barring a few workaholics, everyone needs a bit of rest now and then.

Singapore, though a small city state, it is one the most developed countries in Asia with numerous tourist destinations. The place has so much to offer; whether you are looking to upgrade to some flash packer luxury for a while or trying to stick to a tight budget.

The roots of the traditional inlay work can be found in Italy and Iran - This inlay art in local terms is known as Pacchikari work and in Italian terms as Pietra-Dura work. Pietra meaning stone and Dura signifying as tough. Earlier this work was done by glazed tiles as well in same buildings of Turkey, Uzbekistan and Iran. Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor summoned the best Inlayers from distant parts and gave them space in Agra in the modern Taj Ganj and Gokulpura areas of Agra City.

Coming home from a vacation can be tough. Not only are you going back to work, but you know it is going to be three, six, or even twelve months until your next trip. But for people who can't take extra time off from work, there is always the option of the weekend getaway. Here are three suggestions for the next time you need to get out of the house but only have a couple of days.

Madaraka Day is a public holiday in Kenya and usually marked by a long weekend that gives Kenyans a chance to travel. It is at the tail-end of the rainy season as well, giving Kenyans all the more reason to get out of town and enjoy a holiday. Rhino Charge, an incredible 4x4 rally in isolated bushland, is held on Madaraka Day weekend each year. Even for non-competitors it is a fun event: camping out, watching some amazing driving feats, and enjoying the party each night. In 2015, the Lake Turkana Cultural Festival was also held on the Madaraka Day weekend, but it is not yet confirmed whether it will remain on these dates next year.

Traveling is one of the greatest things a person can do, there's nothing like meeting people in far off lands with different cultural backgrounds, taking in epic sights and trekking though majestic landscapes on foreign soil and eating exotic dishes.

Inside the Macworld Vault: A hidden collection of vintage Macs

Indian telecom operators said they are committed to work with the government on tackling the problem of call drops and are keen to undertake the joint exercise with the Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cells to address the issue.

"At the outset, we would like to submit that all our member operators are committed to work the DoT (Department of Telecom) and are keen to undertake the joint exercise with the TERM cell to address the issue of the call drops," said the Cellular Operators' Association of India and the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India in a joint letter to the DoT. A copy of the letter dated July 30 which is available with IANS.

The DoT wrote a letter to the service providers on July 17 asking them to submit report on call drop issue by July 31.

Though the various speedruns, creative exploits, and super-creative challenges (including cooperative runs and blindfold runs) have been fun to watch over the past week, the crux of Summer Games Done Quick really centers on its fundraising efforts. The gaming marathon officially hit its donation goal of one million dollars on its final day of streaming, and ended up reaching a total of $1,232,747.90/Rs 7.88 crore (thanks to 28,474 donations). The average donation sat at just around $43/Rs 2,750, and the largest donation topped $21K/Rs 13.42 lakh—not bad at all.

"You have helped change the world. Keep helping others," continued Games Done Quick on Twitter.

As for the games, it's hard to narrow down to what we'd consider highlights, given that just about every game played during the seven days had something interested about it as a result of the focus on speed (or other crazy challenges).

But if you’re upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows 7 or 8.1, be aware that one feature won’t be available any more in the new version. Microsoft said earlier this year that Windows Media Center was dead, and indeed, there’s no direct replacement for it in Windows 10.

However, those who used to have Media Center will get a free Windows DVD Player app – although if you ever perform a clean install of Windows 10, you’ll lose the free app, and will have to buy it instead. And considering the new app offers only a small subset of Media Center’s features, we wouldn’t be surprised if some users consider it to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Oh, right, the Macalope and others. How silly. What a crazy thing to say and then say again as if to draw further attention to it. The Macalope regrets over-emphasizing the point that this was entirely knowable before the fact.

Disclaimer: He does not actually regret over-emphasizing that point.

Here’s where it takes a turn, though. Because despite what you might have read in the papers, history didn’t end last year. While Apple continues to sell iPhones like they’re whatever the Chinese equivalent of hot cakes is, Xiaomi’s fortunes are not assured, either.

Windows 10. Tomorrow's launch isn't the end of the road

The process of delivering and servicing Windows 10 will operate at a massive scale, with the potential to run as a continually updated set of services on a billion devices in two or three years.

The only ecosystem that comes close to this scale is Apple's combined OS X and iOS installed base. The Android ecosystem is probably bigger, but Google only runs the Google Play store and its own set of services. It doesn't deliver continuous operating system updates to those billion-plus devices.

With software at this scale, I expect there will be hiccups with Windows 10. Some will be annoying and frustrating, and the law of large numbers says even a small percentage of unhappy early upgraders will be able to make a lot of noise.

The nine-month-long Windows Insider program has done a decent job at its primary mission of providing feedback to influence feature designs and telemetry to measure and improve reliability. It's also established that those bugs can be fixed fairly quickly.

But there's nothing like shipping to millions of devices for the first time to discover the handful issues you missed completely.

The next two or three months should be interesting. We will read a lot of stories about bugs and problems in Windows 10's early days, you can be sure. I'll be monitoring forums and hearing from long-time correspondents (and even some new ones) via e-mail.

I've been documenting Windows 10's development through the Windows Insider program for the past nine months. Starting now, I get to monitor the public release of Windows 10 as well as what's coming up next.

Effective with the official launch, anyone who's been on the Insider program can bow and out and go back to the official release channels. You can also stay, and expect the next preview wave to start in a few weeks.

This Windows 10 milestone is important. For consumers and owners of existing PCs, it starts the clock on Microsoft's free-upgrade offer (only 364 days left!), and it also represents the first Long Term Servicing Branch release, not that very many Enterprise edition customers are going to opt in except for pilot projects.

Today's release is primarily about consumer markets and consumer devices. There's an enterprise case to be made for Windows 10, eventually. Those features will take time (a year, at least) and a lot of testing before enterprise customers are ready to consider deploying Windows 10 in any significant numbers.

But it's not the end of the road by any stretch of the imagination. With that thought in mind, here's my review of the first release of Windows 10.

It looks great, it works well, and it's good enough to satisfy the Windows 8 haters.

Windows 10 is not a complete repudiation of Windows 8, but it certainly downplays several of the signature features of Windows 8. The Charms bar is completely gone. A Start menu is built in, combining the general layout of the Windows 7 Start menu with Windows 8-style live tiles, which are smaller and confined to a restricted space on the Start menu.

The Start screen is gone unless you have a tablet, and even then the menu parts of the Start menu are still accessible.

First, to offer a high level of security, it uses the two-key method: users must have a private key and a public key. To send an email to someone, the sender must have the receiver's public key, which is published in a directory. The receiver then decodes the email using their private key, which is known only to them.

Such keys have been available in Germany for about 18 years. However, the agency that provides them charges about €100 for the service. Fraunhofer intends to remove this hurdle by providing keys for free.

The institute is making a no-cost app available on its website which will generate keys with a high-security key length of 2,000 bits. "The NSA can't break a key like that," Herbert said.

Ask the audience: How crowdsourcing can help you tailor your messages

I'm giving a presentation on WordPress to our local Web Developers group in a few weeks. In the past I've given 60 min. talks geared towards users, but this is aimed at a more technical audience. I'd like to cover installation, theme development, plug-ins and other functionality, but I also realize that 90 min. isn't really enough time to cover the breadth and depth of the WordPress Codex. So I want to focus on whatever points would be most useful to a Web developer (someone comfortable with HTML, CSS and a bit of PHP) who is about to do his/her first WordPress site.

If you're thinking about using WP and haven't yet, what would be helpful to you? Or if you're already comfortable with WordPress, what do you wish someone had told you before you did your first WordPress installation? Thanks for your input!

In return I received 13 answers suggesting topics including:

§  Security

§  Search Engine Optimization

§  Parent/Child Themes

§  Theme Frameworks

§  Spam prevention

§  Hosting Requirements

§  Theme Customization

§  Client Training

§  Categories

§  Plug-ins

Trying your hand at a little Web development work? The task probably seems pretty daunting, as experienced developers are typically entrenched in a sea of scripting languages that make the layperson wrinkle their eyebrows in utter confusion. But hey, anyone can do it if they set their mind to it—and if you set your mind to learning one language at a time, it’s more than do-able for the average tech enthusiast who has an ample amount of fortitude.

Fortunately, the same technology that has made Web development such an essential part of the world today has also made it possible for skilled development gurus to share their tactics with the world at large through blogs. And there are plenty of developers who have chosen to share their hacks and tricks for the benefit of newbie developers. We’ve rounded up 25 of the most useful resources for beginning developers which include tricks, step-by-step instructions and a plethora of other essential information. Most of these blogs talk in easy-to-understand language, so even if you’re not up to par with developer lingo and you’re trying to figure out how to code a specific project, you can probably follow along. Listed in no particular order of importance, here are 25 blogs we suggest for beginner developers. Oh, and a little bonus section with five useful tutorial sites.

Lotus – An Open Source Framework for Ruby

Some people think that working for free or for very cheap is always the same as working on spec. This is most certainly not the case, and here’s why: when you work on spec, you’re providing the same level of service that you ordinarily would charge for.

                       

This is bad. Really, really bad.

Designers who do this are not only devaluing their work, they’re also stunting the growth of their entire careers. When a client realizes that they can get thousands of dollars worth of work from you for mere hundreds, there’s a mentality that develops in their head about you, and about designers in general. Basically, they start to believe that your work just isn’t worth thousands of dollars, and you will be forever branded as a cheap, low-end designer.

Type design is visually complex as well as highly technical – however it is easier to begin making type now than ever, partly because of the availability of free tools like FontForge. FontForge is a free (libre) font editor for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU+Linux. Use it to create, edit and convert fonts in OpenType, TrueType, UFO, CID-keyed, Multiple Master, and many other formats. While being a handy tool with which to begin, FontForge is not just for beginners. It has an advanced toolset and is rapidly improving at the time this book is being written.

FontForge aims to offer technical help and general insight into planning a type design project, and also offers advice about how to make your workflow more efficient. If you wish to help them, you can contribute to making FontForge better by giving feedback or even by contributing content and fixes on GitHub.

The key, like being on a diet or pushing yourself to finish a long, tedious project, is to think of free or low-paying work as a temporary arrangement, rather than an indefinite circumstance. If you give it all away for free or for very cheap, or you continue working for low rates for longer than is necessary to build your client network, your clients will never consider you for higher level work.

Why would they? If you’re lodged in the client’s mind as a $200 designer, why on earth would they automatically think of you when they have a $5,000 or $10,000 project? It’s just not going to happen.

On the other hand, if you’ve been providing your client with an appropriate amount of work for that $200, and they know you’ve been holding back on certain deliverables, they’ll be much more likely to consider you for higher paying work.

Tips to Follow While Dating Online

Online dating sites serve as one of the quickest and easiest ways for one to get closer to a dream date. It is obvious that these sites work as online forums where men and women meet to visualize their dreams of finding the right match. Unfortunately at times, the end results are unsuccessful; however, it is important to note that in most of the cases people do manage to find their dream partner through these sites.

Through online dating can bring you many rewards, it can come with some risk factors, so you should stay a little careful and conscious. Here are some easy steps that you can take to enhance your security and safety while dating online.

Whether you are dating online or chatting with a person in a chat room, the first rule for online dating that you should always keep in mind is "Take it Slow".

Use Dating Sites That Are Safe:

There are many dating sites on the web, most of which ask you to begin by completing your profile. Before filling up the profile, make sure that you read the privacy policy of that website properly. Some people are not very honest; they don't give exact information about them in their profiles. Although, the experts ask you to stay honest because some people might stretch this fake truth a little.

Some websites have taken serious steps against these filthy acts. They are now making sure that people who are registering themselves is being honest. Before making a match, they are first checking the candidate's background. Always remember that online websites can find you a perfect match, but you need to judge him correctly. Make use of your common senses and take things a little slow.

Secure Your Identity:

Do not include your personal information on your profile, unless you know that the website secures all your information with itself. Never put out your phone number, your address or your real name on the profile, until the website you are using to date a reliable one. In place of your real identity, you can use a nickname because revealing personal information is not always a good idea.

Demand for a Photograph:

Appearance of a person matters a lot, especially when you are dating online. Picture of a person helps you a lot to decide whether the person you are talking to is the same one you see in the picture.

If he or she isn't sending you any pictures, stop corresponding with him or her. Do not think that the person you are talking to is always telling you the truth.

These are some important tips that you should keep in mind while dating online. Your love of life is in their on the web, you just need to search a little.