Being green and frugal

Happy New Years Eve everyone :)  Hope you have plans for tonight, mine are to go out for dinner with the husband and then back home to watch our TV shows until midnight then bed, boring I know but after my new years eve last year with my best mate and her crazy ex trying to throw himself out of her 3rd floor flat window, I will take boring every time...Thank god she is with a new bloke now who looks after her.

I  thought I would hit this blog post off on being green and frugal, since I would like to write about these topics plus the normal personal life dribble and new computer programs I find (saying that I have found a new one I would like to review but I will do that Saturday or something).

Being green is looking after the environment, you know recycling, turning off lights when your not in the room, using environment friendly product and growing your own food (that links in with being frugal too), and being frugal is all about living on the basics and not over spending.

Layout

After the layout is up I still have to update the footer, the side bar and just trying to figure out how to get my comments in a column next to the text but hopefully I will get it done tomorrow :)

BMI calculator coding

I am at this moment in time re-doing the layout for digital-damita.net with some new tips I have learnt (I hope!!), I have been researching different plug-ins and doing my normal researching of all the different blogs I know off (go to one of my favourite websites then visit all their links choose one and visit theirs, etc etc), I am also changing my style of this website, I think as well as my normal rubbish about my own personal life, I will be including reviews/research/tips regarding being green and being frugal (both I am very passionate about) and of course computer/internet related programs/websites.

Since I seem to be getting a lot of hits regarding my very old BMI calculator in visual basics, one I did about erm three years ago know, I thought I would put up the coding, so here you go google searchers.

2010 Goals

So it is about that time of years where I do the goals I want to reach by next December :)

So far I have come up with,

+ tone up (which I have started third day in the row I have used the running machine and done my 50 sit ups, I am going to increase the time and the amount slowly, like once a week).

+ Save £2,000 in our rainy day savings (£175 so far)

+ Save £2,000 for my car fund and lessons (£350 so far)

+ Save £900 for the summer (nothing so far).

+ Learn to drive

+ Pass 2nd year of university

+ Learn Java

The savings are need to be done by the June 2010, so 6 months, I have worked out we can do it :)

That's about it, I will try and keep updated about the goals every month, I have written on our whiteboard, where we are in the savings so the husband knows :)

What are yours?

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my lovely readers, loving you loads :)  (Pictures later)

It was a great day, in the morning the husband and me opened our presents to each other I did quite well :)  I got a magazine subscription to Web User which I love :) yay!  Loads of sweeties and chocolate, plus DVDs.

Then I went to my mums and he went to his (he goes alone as his gran has alzheimer and is blind, so she gets very confused), I opened presents at my rents with my brothers got in total £220 which is all going into my car fund.  Plus I still have some money left over from ebay and bits so I am buying myself some DVDs in the sale and some make up :)

Husband came over at 6pm, my grandparents were there and we all have a giggle, husband opened his presents from my family and we got home at 8pm, watched You, Me & Dupree and went to bed at 2am.

Here are some lovely photos



My mum and younger brother



The husband and me



My grandparents



Older brother and husband



Ha ha ha <3

It's boxing day now, I am currently working on more java and looking at the sales, the husband is creating a wicked dance track, we are off to my grandparents later for boxing day dinner plus my uncle and auntie will be there, yay!

Hope you all had fab day yesterday :)

Christmas Games

It is nearly Christmas and I have been trying to find some fun holiday games, you get them every year and here are a few I have found :) Gives you something to do on Boxing Day, unless you are like me and have to go to your grandparents for a meal that might possibly kill them. Oh the spirit of Christmas!

Track Santa

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html

This one I have is an old one but still a good one, not a game but gives you the access to track Santa on google earth, it is not up and running at the moment due to it not being Christmas Eve, but I thought this would be good for anyone who has kids or anyone who wants to see if Santa is coming near them ;)

Kristmas Kombat

http://www.flash-game.net/game/2209/christmas-combat.html

This game is a two player game, one of you takes over the a,s,w,d keys and the other takes over the arrow one, and the point of the game is a battle to the death.  I liked the practise section as I am not very good at video games even more flash one.  It is a little violent, and a bit repetitive but it is a good game to play if you are bored.

I am a ninja SNOWMAN!

I lost to the husband!

Light Up The Christmas Tree

http://www.multigames.com/game/Light_Up_the_Christmas_Tree_Puzzle-oNbDUEq1

Light up the Christmas tree by connecting all the wires and light bulbs to the electrical source. You can rotate the wires and the bulbs by clicking them.I really suck at this game, it seem to me that only some of the wires are a certain length so even if you rotate it over and over again it still does not reach which I found so annoying.

I only got up to here and then failed :(  Did you manage to connect them all?

Santa Racers

http://www.santaracers.com/

This is a fun game, you choose a Santa, the controls are up, left and right, up for speed, and you race another Santa around a track for five laps, sounds easy right? It is not the controls are crazy and sometimes the reindeer gets stuck under Santa and then you go the wrong way, to conclude I suck..

Okay if I find any more I will post :) Enjoy, and Merry Christmas but I am sure I'll post before then :)

Digsby

I have decided to start reviewing some of  the internet products I use and find really helpful :)

(Note, I am not paid for these)

So today I am doing digsby which is a program which is only available on PCs right now but will be released on MACs and Linux in the future, basically the idea is to have all your emails, instant messager and any social networks you belong to in one place.  It is really easy to use all you do is download it and then set up an account with them.

This is my account, your user name has nothing to do with your social networks so call it whatever you want, also you have the option for it to load when your computer is turned on, I personally don't do this just because it slows down the how turning on process unless you have windows 7 which I have yet  to upgrade to because I am scared of losing all my documents and pictures plus all the "free" programs I have on this machine.

Once it loads up, you add your accounts by going to digsby then to my account and enter all your account information, like I have here:

Instant messager accounts you have a choice of facebook, msn, yahoo, aim, googletalk, myspace, ICQ & jabber, I only have two but I should set up the others.  Handy tip my friend gave me on the main screen you can drag and drop the same contact say you have a friend on facebook, msn and aim, you can join them all together so if they sign on facebook then aim, your conversation still gets carried across.

E-mail accounts you can choose from are gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, AOL, and even better your own email accounts you have set up via your websites, you know admin@digital-damita.net, always a good thing because I never set these up and this would help me to keep on track of everything.

Social networks, twitter, facebook, myspace and linkin (don't know what linkin is but will have to look into it).  I like having twitter on here as my twitter feed that is suppose to be on my firefox has disappeared and won't come back!

Okay so after you have filled all your information in, you have all the icons at the bottom of your screen like so, when you click on one you can see what the new notification is.

You see according to digsby I have an email received via gmail, you click on the e-mail icon and it shows you this:

You can then read it which opens up your internet browser or you can delete it there and then.  Same goes for twitter which tells me I have 23 new twitters recieved also the tweets come up in the corner of your screen, which you can either reply to or just ignore and they will disappear and up date the twitter icon to say how many you have now.

Once it pops up you can reply to that message or simply re-tweet it if it is interesting :)

If you double click on the digsby icon, you will get all the instant messager contacts which you can talk to from all the different accounts.  Another cool thing about digsby is you can have a widget on your website which is linked to digsby and people can talk to you via the widget on your website, for example, my friend has one on his website it looks like this:

He's not on-line at the moment but we have tested it to see if it works :)

That's about it really, easy to use and all the applications in one place, makes my life easier, I would like them to add an RSS feed maybe as well and flickr to the social network bit and maybe a forum you post at regularly but I am unsure how that would work unless you went by the forum's RSS.

Snow!

So we have a snow day today not as bad as back in February this year - Snow, snow and more snow & Britain set for heavy snowstorms. But it was quite impressive, husband cannot get into work as the trains are all delayed and well I was off anyway due to Christmas holidays...

Other things happening this week our bathroom has started to be tiled and updated which is very exciting and it will be nice to have a shower at last and tiles on the wall!  Oh and made 30 reindeer shortbread biscuits for the husbands team at work, what you think? I had to fix some of them as they broke in half with icing which was interesting, I think it worked.

Christmas Holidays!

Woooooooooohoooooooo!!!! Christmas holidays have started! I have been so looking forward to these four weeks off since 3 weeks into my autumn term, ha ha! So yesterday I managed to get to a better point in my assignment than last time I handed it in, I am pleased about it :)

Started moving my bedroom around, I don't know if I posted about moving the office and living room around (I should post pictures once I have finished it), we moved a armchair downstairs to the living room to make it more of a living room so we can now seat 4 people down here :) And the office I got rid of the horrible dark wooden display unit (had to put 120 lead marvel figures in the loft and 100 other marvel figures bendy ones up to the loft in boxes) and moved a wooden bookcase upstairs. It looks lovely :)

The bedroom I am trying to get rid of all the rubbish and I now wait for it OPEN MY WARDROBE!! First time in about a year, I didn't know I had these clothes or shoes, ha ha! Got to finish it today, I am getting a dressing table, I am so excited.

Also yesterday I went with my mum and stepdad to buy some floor tiles for my bathroom got 4 square meters for only 15 quid in chocolate brown, I am trying to decide what colour wall tiles to have with the white ones I am having so like a dash of colour somewhere in there.

Other great news, my beloved husband got a promotion, I am so proud of him, also extra money a month not a lot but it is for us when we are poor :)

Still no Christmas tree up but we are doing it tomorrow, I am so excited about Christmas?!!? Oh and my brother is home for Christmas and we had a great family dinner on Tuesday evening :)

I'm off to finish this bedroom :) Also mini nova is dead now any one know any good free torrents sites?

Drained

Sooooo I didn't get the scholarship which is really disappointed, I found out on Monday but haven't had a free second to come and blog, it's a bit rubbish as I cannot apply next year as I am third year student then :( Oh well, it was worth a try.

In other news (good that is) I managed to get a 65% for my algorithms assignment and even bigger shocked I got 78% for my last database assignment, that puts me in a 2:1 or 1:1 (so a first or a second hons degree) which is what I have been trying to work for this term, trying to get my marks up to 60% so far it hasn't gone that well I have passed my assignments (40%) but not the marks I want but oh hum, this term has been a bitch.

Friday night was fab, it was one of my best mates birthday, she is 24! Now as old as me :P

Pictures under the more tag :)