Archive for June 17th, 2007

How To Filet A Fish

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

I have been an avid fisherman since I was a child, which was
quite awhile ago. I have been fishing regularly for over 30
years and I have seen a lot of people who cannot properly clean
their fish after catching it so I thought I might offer a little
guidance.

First, it is absolutely crucial that you have a very sharp
knife. I personally use an electric filet knife a lot, but you
really have to have some experience to be able to use one
properly. Using a standard filet knife, I prefer to use one with
about an eight inch blade unless I am filleting a large gamefish
in which case I will break out my “Crocodile Dundee” Alaskan
Filet knife.

To begin filleting the fish, place it on a sturdy surface
preferably about waist high for comfort. Take the tip of the
knife and insert it along the dorsal fin of the fish and make
small cuts towards the head keeping the blade against the bones
of the fin. Now make a deep cut right behind the gill plate from
the belly vertically up to the back of the fish meeting the cut
you made along the spine.

Now, go back to the spine area where you made your fist cuts and
now take deeper cuts following along the spine and ribcage and
then work your way towards the tail. Stop short of the tail
leaving that intact so that the filet you have is still attached
to the rest of the fish at that point. Turn the fish so that the
belly is towards you now and make any cuts to separate your
filet in that area, then flip the filet over so that the scales
are down and the meat side is up. This is where you really need
to be sure your knife is sharp, starting near the tail hold the
blade of your knife close as possible to the skin of the fish
and begin to slide the blade back and forth towards the shoulder
of the fish until you have completely removed the meat from the
skin.

The final step for this side of the fish is to check the lateral
line for small bones and cartilage and the bloodline. Some fish
such as amberjack will have a large bloodline which you will
want to remove for optimum taste. After you are sure all the
bones and bloodline have been removed place this filet to the
side and start on the next side. Doing it in this order is a
personal preference, you can also complete the filleting of the
other side first and then do the fine tuning of removing the
bloodline and small bones.

Introduction to Bollinger Bands; A Great Help In FOREX Trading

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Forex trading has become one of the most looked after occupation for many persons around the world. This is due to its great advantages over other capital markets and its high potential profitability; among these advantages we can find its extremely easy accessibility thanks to the internet and its high liquidity and high leverage.

But in Forex as in all other speculative activities in the capital markets there is a major problem new and experienced traders will face every time they open their forex trading stations. This is how to predict the behavior of the Forex market over time in order to make the highest amount of profits and with the less risk possible.

One of the techniques used to predict the Forex market behavior is that based on Bollinger Bands.

These Bollinger Bands are what is called a technical trading tool used in the capital markets (including Forex) created by John Bollinger in the early 1980s. These technique was formulated based on the need for adaptive trading bands and the discovery that the volatility of the markets was a dynamic phenomena, not a static one as was widely believed at the time.

The first thing you should notice about Bollinger Bands is that they consist of a set of three curves drawn in a forex chart in relation to the currency prices. The middle band in the forex chart represents the intermediate-term trend, and it is usually a simple moving average, that serves as the reference base for the upper and lower bands. The interval separating the upper and lower bands from the middle band is calculated by using the volatility of the market; typically the standard deviation of the same data that were used for the average.

The default parameters used with these analysis technique is 20 periods for the average and two standard deviations for the gap between the bands. These parameters may be adjusted to suit your particular trading purposes.

In a future article I will talk about how these bands will give you a very good prediction on what the market will do next, based on the parameters and statistics built in the Bollinger Bands.

Adrian Pablo is a Forex freelance writer with articles published in a number of places. Get a free report on Fibonacci Trading and learn more about the world of trading , visit:

=> http://www.1-forex.com

Apples in American Culture - Why, Apples are as Amercian as Apple Pie!

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Here in the United States, though, we have many traditional fruits. Of course, perhaps the most popular and most traditional fruit that we grow is the apple. In fact, apples are such traditional fruits that they have become ingrained in our culture.

Take a look at some of the ways in which apples have moved off the tree and into our language, games, and stories:

It is a very common in our culture for someone to say, “That is like comparing apples and oranges,” Meaning that you are trying to compare two things that are incomparable.

Apples have even made it into our folklore: most kids know the story of Johnny Appleseed, the boy who traveled across the United States with an upside down pot on his head, dispersing apple seeds.

And everyone knows that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Although this proverb has some merit, most still just pass it off as an old wive’s tale. An apple a day will not keep the doctor away if you do not also eat right, exercise, and refrain from excesses such as smoking and drinking a lot!

A phrase that really shows how apples have become a major part of our society is, “that is as American as apple pie!” Apples are completely ingrained in our culture, and apple pies are an American icon, reminiscent the “happy” years in the United States.

A rotten or bad apple is not just a piece of bad fruit. This idiom describes the one “bad” or “rotten” person in a group.

Other popular phrases that we often use in our culture are: “the apple of my eye” and “how do you like them apples!”

As you can see, there are many ways in which apples are fully ingrained into our culture. In fact, it is likely that no other fruit is nearly as important to our American culture as the apple is.

The apple is truly a traditional fruit in the United States, and it is a fruit that seems to have many traditions associated with it.

For instance, “bobbing for apples.” This is a game that is especially popular around the autumn months and Halloween. In this game, a large bucket or cauldron is filled with water, and apples are place in it to float. Participants must bob for the apples, trying to catch one in their teeth, without using their hands.

If, though, you take a look at another culture, a culture in another region of the world, they will likely have far different traditional fruits. And along with their different traditional fruits, they will likely have different idioms, stories, and games based on those fruits, wound into their culture.

Anne Clarke writes numerous articles for websites on gardening, parenting, fashion, and home decor. Her background includes teaching and gardening. For more of her articles on fruit and/or culture, please visit Fresh Fruit Baskets.

A Simple Guide To Wikis

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

A wiki is an editable text-based website. But you don’t need to understand any complex HTML, or anything like that to use a wiki. A wiki is really only a little bit more complex than a word-processor, but MUCH more powerful, because instead of only being 1 page, it can be lots of pages, all linked up together.

I’ll show you how easy it is to use a wiki later, but first I’d like to tell you why wikis are so useful.

Wikis are useful, because they let you setup any data you want, in any way that you
want. Rather than constrain you with a specific way of structuring things, you can
link things together in any way that you want. This means you can set things up as
simple, or as complex as you like.

Because they are so flexible, there are literally millions of uses for wikis. Some uses
include:

  • Keeping a daily journal
  • Brainstorming
  • Managing investment properties
  • Implementing a GTD system (As described by David Allen)
  • Research
  • Running a business.

Some wikis also let multiple users share an edit the same data. An interesting
example of this online is the Wiki Encyclopedia where a group of people are collaborating to
make a free online encyclopedia.

Perhaps the best way to show how a wiki works is with an example.
Let’s say you have a page, called “HomePage” that says “Hello, this is my first wiki
page.”

We want to change it, by making the word “first” in bold.

Start by clicking the edit button. You will see the following:

Hello, this is my first wiki page.

Using the keyboard, change the text to look like this:

Hello, this is my *first* wiki page.

When you save the changes, you will see that the word first has become bolded.
That’s because any text surrounded by ‘*” becomes bold.

Now, we’d like to add a new page with a link. In HTML this can be quite complex,
but in a wiki, it’s really easy.

Click edit, and change the text to this:

Hello, this is my *first* wiki page.

And this is a link to my [second page]

When you save, you will see that the words “second page” have become a link.
That’s because any text surrounded by square brackets becomes a link.

To change “second page”, just click on the link. If “second page” already existed, we
would now see the contents of that page. But it doesn’t exist yet, so the wiki makes
a blank page called “second page” for us, and then shows us that page. We can
change that page by clicking edit, like before.

Lets change “second page”, to say this:

And a link to a page about [oranges]

When we save, there will be a link to an “oranges” page. Click on the oranges link,
and click edit to say:

My favorite fruit.

We have now created three pages:

  • The first page, called “HomePage”
  • The second page, called “second page”
  • The third page, called “oranges”.

Lets add a link from the HomePage to the oranges page.

Go back to the HomePage, and click edit. You will see:


Hello, this is my *first* wiki page.

And this is a link to my [second page]

Now, lets add a third line, so the page becomes:


Hello, this is my *first* wiki page.

And this is a link to my [second page]

And, don’t forget the [oranges] page.

When we save, we now have a link to the oranges page from the HomePage. If we
click on the “oranges” link, this time it doesn’t take us to a blank page. That’s
because there is already a page called “oranges”. It takes us to the existing
“oranges” page that says “My favorite fruit.”

See how simple it is! In no time at all, we have made 3 pages. It’s really that simple,
just use square brackets to create links!There is a lot more to wikis, but the
fundamental concept is the link creation.

Dan Fletcher is a developer at dogMelon.

They make NoteStudio, an
easy-to-use wiki-tool, being used on Palms, PC’s, and Macs.

Bingo Just Gets Better

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

A few years ago when you thought “Bingo” you thought of wrinkly old ladies with blue or pink rinses in their hair sitting down in the local social club for a nights entertainment. Where newcomers to playing bingo were few and far between and unless you were completely silent and knew exactly how to play, then you were better staying away.

Times change, thank goodness, and now bingo is more popular than ever with a wide range of ages playing. The games in the social clubs are certainly still there but there is a now a range of players playing with people of all ages, race and even sex.

Why the sudden change? Well certainly the larger bingo halls, dedicated to the game, are much more welcoming and offer more incentives for newcomers to try out playing bingo. The smaller drab bingo halls are being replaced with complexes similar to cinemas – bright and entertaining.

Online bingo playing has certainly helped as well and, over the past few years, the growth in online bingo has been massive with many different bingo sites now available to play in. There are many different bingo site themes as well so you can choose a theme that you can relate to and this can add to your online enjoyment.

With the internet now becoming pretty much accepted as a safe place to transact money, so long as your dealing with trusted and respectable sites, and this has helped immensely, especially with the non-computer generation, who a few years ago would have often scoffed at even turning a computer on. The older generation are now enjoying playing online bingo as much as anyone and it’s great if you can’t get down to the local bingo hall like you used to.

Bingo online can also be played at any time of the day – morning, noon or night. You don’t need to dress for the occasion either, get a coffee and your slippers on and your away, playing for jackpot prizes from only a few pence a game. With the chat facilities available in all of the online bingo halls, you can even get a natter when playing. What a great way to relax!

Ian Ross is a regular contributor to various sites covering topics such as Gambling, Marketing and Website Design.

This article may be published in part or in full providing a link to http://www.bingo-uk.co.uk is included either within or below the article contents.