Sink or Swim

I have a love and hate relationship with Best Buy Weekly Deals. I absolutely love all of the deals but I hate how my budget is always limited. For this week, I am eyeing this Samsung 42″  Plasma HDTV with Philips Upconverting DVD Player for $499.

How crazy is this deal? A plasma TV and DVD player? Where else can you buy something like this? I know we can’t find a deal as good as this from our local malls. People buy strollers or handbags more expensive than this! So why can’t I? Well, that’s the part that I hate the most. My lack of budget. The good thing here is that they have these kind of deals weekly, hence the section Weekly Deals. All I have to do is save up enough money so when the time comes that another deal such as this comes up, I’ll be more than happy to grab it.

My re-design project for a web site offering life insurance quotes online have taught me a lot of things when it comes to insurance. For one, I found out that I can get a cheaper life insurance called term life which can cover me for a specific period of time. It’s cheap, it’s convenient and perfect if you’re planning to travel for a few years and want to be covered.

Anyway, I’ve seen several health-related and sports web sites while working on this project. For inspiration, I’ve selected my top three favorites and showcased them here.

Till next design inspiration post.

I’ve always struggled with Drupal which makes me turn down projects that has to do with it. It’s more of a lack of experience than skills, I believe. I know that one or two designers out there are like me so let me share this great find to help people get started with one of the most popular CMS tools.

First, these two great sites use Drupal so that should say a lot.

By the end of this guide, you will:
Learn the benefits and disadvantages of using Drupal
Install Drupal
Understand the Drupal back-end
Learn about Drupal modules
Explore the Administer page
Create and publish content
Create custom content types with the Content Construction Kit
Create Views
Create Page view displays
Create Block view displays
Learn about Drupal themes

Pros of Using Drupal

Open source: Yes, Drupal is open source. This means you get all the benefits of using an open platform.

Highly customizable: The main power of Drupal lies in its flexible nature. You can mould it into any type of content-centered/user-generated site: from a social media site that allows users to submit and vote on content, a forum, a job board, to an image gallery or a service for deploying portfolio sites for designers — Drupal can get it done (with a little bit of work on your behalf, of course).

Cons of Using Drupal

Big learning curve: Yes, it’s a fact that Drupal is a bit harder to grok than other content management systems out there. I will not suggest you use Drupal if you want a website done in a week the first time you use it. It may take you some months to really understand Drupal, and as much as a month to be able to deploy a fully custom site the first time around. However, I should also note that you can deploy a basic site in less than a day’s worth of work (and that’s what we will be doing in this guide).

Complex for non-developers: Since developers’ needs are prioritized with Drupal, for those that aren’t very familiar with computing technologies, Drupal might take a while to get used to. This means that professionals that only dabble in web development might not find it easy to develop (or even administer) Drupal sites.

Complex user interface: Drupal’s admin interface is a bit difficult to understand; it’s not as user-friendly as it should be. (That’s going to change soon, though.)

Read the full article here.

Trying to make ends meet in between one payday to another is a common occurrence to most households. We’ve all been there – unexpected purchases for the house or school, medical emergencies that are outside our health insurance plans, car repairs, last-minute trips and many more. No matter how good we are at budgeting, there are some things that we just have no control especially if we only have enough to work with.

For short term or quick funds, there’s always cash advance payday loan to help you get by. It doesn’t have to be just for emergency, the funds can be used on just about anything; purchase of high ticket items, a much-deserved vacation, pay off a huge chunk of credit card debt or even start a home-based business.

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I was looking for the right way to describe a floor similar to the picture to the right.  Our floor inside the master’s bedroom have been destroyed due to constant moving and pushing of furniture so I’m planning of having it done. Thanks to the Internet, I learned about discount laminate flooring. I love how cheap it is, only $1.29 per sq. ft so it fits my budget perfectly. The color is nice too but I’m choosing between this or OAK retro which is similar to what we have now. The new floor will complement my new computer table and our sofa bed – giving our old, battered room a new makeover. After visualizing how it will look like for days, I now can’t wait to get a quote from our contractor.

When everyone thinks about technology, they automatically picture computers, smartphones, and other electronics. But technology encompasses a wider range of things. Anything that has improved the way people live can be classified as technology. You might not think it, but a lot of new technology has been put into clothing and how it is made.

There is a lot of manmade fabric that is used in clothing today. People no longer have to rely on cotton and natural blends. The fabric today is more durable and flexible than it ever was in the past. This is all made possible because of technology changes in the way that fabric is made. Spandex, for instance, is one of the best technological inventions ever thought of. Many fabrics use a blend of spandex to increase their durability and flexibility. And spandex has a lot of other properties that make it great on top of that. It is washable, fade resistant, and inexpensive.

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I’m currently working on a fantasy web design and these reflective photographs are perfect to give me the inspiration that I need.

More here.

If there’s one thing that I’d love to splurge money on, it’s vacations. I love how with a few bucks (or thousands depending on where you’re going), you can escape to any place that you want to go. Whether you’re escaping from work, the loving but sometimes can be too much relatives, kids’ squabbles or just simply need a time alone, vacation will never fail to give you that much needed downtime.

Choosing the perfect getaway always depends on the budget and time/schedule. If my wallet is overflowing with cash, I bring the whole family to a 4-5 days trip outside the country. If I only have the weekend, we usually go out of town and check in at a nice hotel or bed and breakfast for two nights. It could be anywhere as long as it’s near nature. Last summer, we went ahead and tried one of those affordable vacation rentals being offered online. I was hesitant at first for fear that we are being scammed. It’s because on some cases, it’s the owner of the house whose advertising and you have no way of checking if it’s the real deal. Still, we glad that we booked our first rental house.

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I’ve never been one to play with dolls but that was back then when the options are limited to Barbie dolls and their expensive separate outfits. Because of the cost and the limited selection, I used to make clothes for my dolls but even that got boring and hard, at most times. If only I had access to 18 inch doll dress such as these (see below), I’m pretty sure I’ll be addicted to them just like my daughter and soon, I know, her baby sister too.

Isn’t this the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen – a ‘Wildcats’ cheerleader uniform? I’m lovin’ their hair and I’m an adult so it’s no surprise that kids go crazy dressing up these lovely dolls.

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If ever I’ll learn how to drive, I’ll definitely get one of those roadside assistance plans. Too many of my women friends have experienced being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no help at all. It’s one of the reasons why I choose not to drive. With my sense of direction, who knows where I’ll end up?

Anyway, the roadside assistance that I’m talking about is for RVs or Motorhomes. I learned about it from a friend who recently bought an SUV and got an offer to sign up for emergency road service plan. It’s highly recommended as it can pay 100% of your towing fees, get immediate help during flat tire situations and have access to 24/7 toll-free roadside repairs. If interested, check out the link above and read about the other benefits that you can get from different plans. One can never be too careful when it comes to safety.

A friend was looking for Adobe Lightroom presets and upon checking Google, I came across presetsheaven.com. It’s a resource web site for free high quality presets that both newbies and professional photographers can use. There are featured presets everyday with plenty of contributions from other users as well. Take a quick look at my fave below and you’ll see just how nice they are.

The best things in life are indeed, free.

Preset 1

Preset 2

Preset 3

Preset 4

My baby’s baptism party is in a few weeks and I still don’t have giveaways to my guests. I don’t want the usual dust gatherers, i.e. figurines, frames so I’m looking at promotional items instead. I saw some really useable items from US Imprints like custom journals, bike bottles, aluminum coffee mugs and eco-friendly totes. But what I liked most are these cute non-alcoholic hand sanitizer sprays. They are costly if you buy just a few but for a minimum of 250 items, you could get them for as low as $1.06. I’ll have to check if you can have different logos per spray because my client is planning on purchasing these for a promotional tour this December. I could ask him to get me extra fifty items so I can hand it out to my guests as well.

Speaking of unexpected purchases, I saw a memory foam mattress sale online and it’s all I can do not to get my credit card and buy one. The terms are so affordable and we know there’s no way I can afford it at a normal price. However, we really need to save for the rainy days and I mean that in the most literal way. Turned out we’re not only having four typhoons but a total of nineteen in the next four months. Multiply that to two or three night’s hotel stay and you’re looking at a huge dent on our savings.

I’m still hoping that the typhoons won’t be as bad as Ondoy. After all, not having power and water supply is nothing compared to lives lost.

I was supposed to buy a new ceiling fan but I learned that we’re expecting four typhoons in the next few weeks or so. Whenever there’s a typhoon, a blackout almost always follows. And if we’re really unlucky, water supply goes away as well. So instead of purchasing the ceiling fan that I’m eyeing on at the mall, we decided to invest on three rechargeable fans/radios instead. With the baby in the house to think about, we just can’t leave it to chance anymore. I just hope that when the power goes out, we’ll still have enough water supply. If not, we really have to book in an affordable hotel just like last year during a huge storm. This will be way too costly if we’re talking about more than four typhoons this year.

Stumbled upon these really cool shirts for half-geeks such as myself.

I could definitely see myself in this. I’m a closet nerd, that’s why.

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