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Making sure that your home is insured against flooding is more important in todays changing climate than ever before. There are more changes in our weather now and one year is very different to the last so ensuring that your belongings are insured is very important.

The UK has gone from having the warmest summer on record to the most rain ever recorded for three consecutive months. This has lead to not only flash floods but whole towns under water for weeks.

This has left homes and businesses in compete devastation with families having to start rebuilding their homes and businesses without customers and not being able to fulfill orders. Towns have been cut off and supplies of both water and electricity have been effected.

People are worried about health and livelihood but the government has has offered reassurance in the form of funds to help rebuild the towns and informing the insurance companies that they will pay out on policies where people have them.

It is common for people to have house insurance for their property but many see content insurance as not completely necessary and skip this to make a monthly saving. This in todays climate is a false economy. Imagine paying out tens of thousands of pounds to replace everything that you own inside your property compared to a few hundred to have peace of mind that you are covered should the worse happen.

Home Flood insurance is commonly known as Home Content insurance and it is no matter what people think important to make sure that you are covered just in case something should happen.

Find more valuable information from Home Flood Insurance and make sure that you are not caught by the next major weather event.

// posted by 91850 @ 3:29 PM 0 comments

Finally, theyre all here. The xbox 360 has had the next generation gaming market to itself for a year. Now its two competitors, the Playstation 3 and nintendo Wii, are here. No more speculating about speed. No more guessing about memory. Now we can take a look and see exactly how they stack up compared to each other.

Let the console wars begin again.

Price

The ps3 has two configurations much like the Xbox 360. The ps3 comes in a $499 version that comes with a 20 GB hard drive and a $599 version that comes with a 60 GB hard drive; Wi-Fi; and memory stick, SD, and Compact Flash slots.

The xbox 360 has two configurations. It comes in a $299 core version and a $399 version that comes with a 20GB hard drive.

The nintendo Wii is the cheapest of the bunch with just one configuration that costs $250.

Processing power

The Playstation 3 comes with its Cell processor. Its a PowerPC based core that runs at 3.2 GHz that also have seven DSPs that run at 3.2 GHz. This configuration can do about 2 Teraflops.

The xbox 360 has a Custom IBM PowerPC processor. This processor also runs at 3.2 GHz. However, xbox went with a true 3 core processor compared to the one general processor of the Cell and seven additional DSPs. This configuration can do about 1 Teraflop.

The nintendo Wii includes its Broadway processor, a PowerPC based processor running at 729 MHz.

Disc Media

Part of the reason the ps3 is so much more expensive than the Xbox 360 is because the Sony decided to include a Blu-ray drive on the system. The drive can play both Blu-ray movies and regular DVDs. The xbox 360 comes with a DVD player and an HD-DVD add-on is planned. The nintendo Wii uses a DVD drive; however, the system will not work for playback of movies, just nintendo games.

Backwards Compatibility

The Playstation 3 is just like the PS2 was. Youll be able to play both PS2 and PSone games on the ps3. nintendo is taking things a bit further. Their system will be compatible with the Gamecube games and also the Gamecube controllers since the two systems use very different controllers. Not only that, but the Wii will also have the ability to download games from the original nintendo (NES), Super nintendo (SNES), and the nintendo 64.

Sweet Features

If you want high definition gaming, then the ps3 is the way to go. It comes with a Blu-ray drive built in and can output in 1080p. Although the ps3 controller may look familiar, its had some updates. The controller is now motion sensing so in some games youll be able to move your character or fly a plane just by moving the controller.

The xbox 360 was built to work with Windows XP media center. If you have a computer that already has media center on it, youll be able to view pictures, videos, and even recorded TV by using your xbox. You wont need to put your PC in your living room to take advantage of having a Media Center PC.

The Nintendo Wii decided to completely change the way gaming controllers are built. In the past, one controller was always held with both hands. The Wiis controller looks more like a TV remote control than a game controller. It has a built in motion sensor so, for example, to swing a sword, you simply move you hand just like you were really swinging a sword.

Hopefully this review has helped you compare the three next generation gaming systems. Each has its pluses and minuses, and feature that are unique to it. Ultimately, your decision will likely come down to which system has the games that most appeal to you. And that is a decision that only you can make when deciding on a system to buy.

Gary Ruplinger is the editor of http://www.ps3asap.com, a resource for getting the in demand PS3 system. He also is a writer for http://www.gamesystemreviews.com where you can learn about all of the next generation systems.

// posted by 91850 @ 9:32 AM 0 comments

Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, a Tibetan yogi often compared to the great Milarepa, when addressing the issue of Yidam practice within the Vajrayana vehicle of Tibetan Buddhism, has said: It is the blissful body of the yogi or yogini that is the true Deity. So what might this mean? And how, if at all, is it (or could it be) related to the practice of yoga asana? Lets explore

Yidam practice unfolds in two stages: (1) The Generation or Creation Stage, in which the specific deity that one is working with is created, i.e. given a form within the imagination of the practitioner; and (2) The Completion Stage, in which that created form of the deity is dissolved: resolved into emptiness, and (its residue, its true intelligence) light/radiance. The practice also, over time, evolves from one in which the deity is merely a conceptual projection, to one in which the natural deity appears, non-conceptually, before the practitioner, as a visible aspect of his/her own radiance.

Yidam practice as a whole is based, in large part, upon a productive use of the imagination. It takes that capacity (and strong tendency) most of us have to make mental pictures, and uses this as a tool to align us with, open us to, a reality that is deeper, more profound, and truer than the one were habitually tuned into. The imagined forms of the deities have the quality of being able, potentially, to act as portals, or gateways into these deeper realities to put us in touch, directly, with aspects of awakened mind.

Now its important to notice the distinction between ~ on the one hand ~ this Yidam-practice way of using our imagination (as a very specific form of mental training, which ultimately can liberate us), and ~ on the other hand ~ a use of the imagination which amounts to no more than (habitual, and often largely unconscious) fantasizing. To engage in fantasy is ~ from the perspective of Buddha Dharma ~ a non-productive use of the imagination: one that takes us further into the territory of conceptualization, mental elaboration, and as such further and further away from a reality which has the potential to liberate us.

So how does any of this relate to the practice of yoga asana? We could, first of all, consider each specific asana as a deity-form: something we construct/project (a la the Creation Stage) and then dissolve (a la the Completion Stage). And certainly asana practice is based largely upon a distinction between productive and non-productive alignments/uses of the body. The productive alignments (a la the productive uses of mental imagination) are those which have the potential to open us into a reality deeper than the mere physical, e.g. to the level of the central Channel/Shushumna Nadi, and the subsequent conscious flow of that awakened energy outward, into the whole network of nadis within the subtle body of the yogi or yogini. The non-productive alignments (a la fantasies), on the other hand, simply keep the energy of our subtle bodies circulating unconsciously (divorced from the truth of the Shushumna Nadi) in old samskaric patterns, i.e. keep us circling on the wheel of bith-and-death which in Buddhism is called Samsara.

And in the same way that in deity practice there is an evolution from the deity as a mere conceptual projection (though a potentially productive one!) to the non-conceptual appearance of the natural deity; just so in our asana practice we often begin with a rather outside-in approach, in which the asana is actually a form of conceptual projection, i.e. its an idea we have (from our teacher, or books, or whatever) that we put forth in the form of an arrangement of (the appearance of) bones, muscles, etc. but its not yet real or natural. As our asana practice matures, more and more were able to work from the inside-out, in which the asanas emerge spontaneously, non-conceptually, as aspects of our natural intelligence/radiance. Our movements in and out of the asanas are infused with the spirit of what in Taoism is called Wu Wei: an effortless effort which quite naturally produces the correct alignments (as opposed to imposing those alignments based upon some external moral code of asana practice).

So how then do we progress from a conceptual to a natural way of expressing our asana practice? From the poses as mere conceptual projections to expressions of an awakened bodymind? A practitioner of the Generation Stage of Yidam practice might move in this direction by finding the Completion Stage within the Creation Stage, by finding the dissolution of the form as an inherent aspect of the form itself (much as ~ in Taoist theory/practice ~ Yang is an inherent aspect of Yin: they inter-are). In this same way, our asana practice might re-member the dissolution of form within every form/asana taken. And might ~ to extend the principle ~ put into conscious and ever-evolving relationship all opposing movements So little by little our ideas about the right way to do the pose are replaced by an ever-more-subtle tremoring which spontaneously aligns us in a way that allows our conceptually projected body to dissolve into the blissful body of the deity: an aspect of our own radiance, pouring forth, shedding itself continuously, for the benefit of all living beings.

One of the initial trainings in dream yoga ~ once the practitioner is able to be lucid (i.e. awake) within the dream ~ is to transform the body: to change the shape of ones body into the body of a bird; into an airplane (and fly to Paris!); or ~ relevant to our current exploration ~ into the shape of a deity, which ~ in the context of dreaming ~ is quite easy to experience and understand as being an empty form, i.e. a form made only of color, light & energy (much like a rainbow). In this same way, our vinyasa ~ our movement in and out of asanas, upon the thread of our awakened breath ~ might become, with practice, a kind of Rainbow Painting (Ive borrowed the phrase from a book with this same title written by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche): merely a play in color, light and energy, a toggling back and forth between the display of empty forms (the specific asanas), and the bliss which is the residue of their dissolution.

And this, perhaps, represents ~ simultaneously ~ the waking up of the dream of our asana practice, and the waking up of the dream of our Yidam practice; represents the waking up from the dream/fantasy of religious practice into the blissful radiance of the Present Moment Amen and Sobeit.

Elizabeth Reninger has been exploring yoga ~ in its Hindu, Buddhist & Taoist forms ~ for more than twenty years, and is a student of Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. She is also a published poet, and currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. For more essays on yoga-related topics, please visit her website at: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger

// posted by 91850 @ 2:48 AM 0 comments