Schizophasia Blog

Of all the things you need to do, buy and organize in preparation for your wedding, wedding stationery is something that must be planned ahead. After all, you need to let your guests know well in advance of your forthcoming big day. Your wedding invitation and accessories set the tone for your special day firmly establishing your style and taste. It is the first official message about your wedding that a guest will receive from you, so make it special. If wedding etiquette is important to you, then make a start with your wedding stationery.

The Use of the Internet

The Internet has opened up new avenues for anyone planning a wedding. All your research can literally be done online and this also applies to finding your stationery items. There are hundreds of online stationery and wedding related websites that display all types of wedding invitations and accessories for you to choose from. Today many brides do their wedding research online as you can become quickly informed of the latest trends and new products available. You can either buy your wedding stationery directly over the Internet, or collect ideas and samples and take these to your local stationery store to implement. Most online stores actually send you a sample in the post to let you look and feel the stationery items before you purchase them.

Custom Stationery

Every bride wants her wedding to be as unique as can be. A good place to start is with custom wedding stationery. The great advantage with custom stationery is that you can enter your own wording, select the typeface, text size and color. No matter what theme you have set for your wedding, you will surely be able to customize your stationery to compliment the tone. Wedding invitations and accessories can be bought in various styles such as classic, contemporary, floral, embossed, layered and religious.

On a Budget?

If you’re on a budget and looking for cheaper wedding stationery items, then you might like to consider print-at-home wedding invitations. Save money and impress your guests when you personalize and print your wedding invitations at home using free online services that are available from some major online stationery stores. You pay for the paper and envelopes and then use their software to print directly from your own PC. With sophisticated customization tools, you’ll be able to enter your text, tweak it, preview it, and print it. No mistakes, no hassles, no wasted cards - and its cheap!

Choose a Theme

The theme of your stationery should coincide with the overall theme of your wedding. For example, if you are having a garden wedding then you may choose to have a floral print on your stationery items. There are many accessory items available to help you tie your stationery in with the theme of your wedding. For example, ribbons, hearts, rings, white doves etc.. The same applies to the color of your invitations. This is normally decided upon by the color of your bridesmaids dresses.

Stationery Items

You would be surprised at how many wedding stationery items there are. While your wedding invitation is the most prominent item of stationery, you can find complimentary stationery accessories to match your wedding invitations:-

• Wedding Invitations

• Wedding Programs

• Announcements

• Engagement Announcements & Invitations

• Save-the-Date Cards

• Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

• Bridal Shower Invitations

• Wedding Accessories (menu cards, thank you notes etc..)

Plan Head

Your wedding invitation is the first official message about your wedding and your guests need to know about their invite in plenty of time. Here is a checklist to help you plan ahead and be organised:-

• Double-check that the wording in your invitation is correct. Ask a friend or family member to also look through the invitation for you;

• Order your invitations as soon as your date, time and place have been confirmed. Three to six months before the ceremony is what most expert planners suggest;

• To calculate the number of invitations to order remember to count one invitation per single guest, couple and family;

• After calculating the number of invitations add approximately 25 invitations to your order: 10-12 more for keepsakes, plus extras for the last-minute guests. Also, depending on how large your order is, add 25 to 50 additional envelopes in case of mistakes in addressing;

• Most established wedding planners agree that you should plan to mail your invitations six weeks before the wedding. This gives the quest plenty of time to respond;

• Make sure you have one completely assembled invitation weighed at the post office to determine the correct postage.

Wedding invitations set the tone for your wedding and tell your guests what type of style and theme you have chosen for your wedding.

Summary

Don’t underestimate the important of your wedding stationery. It sets the tone and style of your wedding and portrays the image you want to set. Wedding stationery should tie in with the overall theme of your wedding. Invitations and announcements can be bought on a budget by using specialty software to print from your PC.

About The Author

Claire Bowes is a freelance write and owner of http://www.1st-for-greeting-cards.com where you will find further tips and advice on invitation cards ( http://www.1st-for-greeting-cards.com/invitation-cards.html) and personalized stationery ( http://www.1st-for-greeting-cards.com/personalized-stationery.html).

Comments Off

With brand new technological developments including digital TV, High Definition Television, Freesat & home cinema audio, if you’re current television set is greater than five years old, then it is an excellent time to get a brand new telly. But, as equipment changes almost day after day, acquiring a brand new TV machine might be for the most part difficult & bewildering.

This TV guide tries to provides an insight on all the new advancements that will promise to take your television enjoyment to a wonderful new intensity.

High-Def TV: Conceivably argued as one of the most major development to television since the creation of colour technology, Hi Def (HD) TV provides detail, clarity & colour, with pictures normally 4 times as sharp as many usual television devices. To witness the benefit from High-Def television programmes you have got to have a HD Ready TV. Sky and Freesat have already started to provide hi-def TV series therefore you can now get pleasure from an array of your favourite programmes, films and sporting events with outstanding life-like pictures. John Lewis sells Cheap TVs from top brands such as Sony and Panasonic.

Incorporated Digital Tuner: A TV with built in digital tuner (generally known as idTV) allows you to lay your hands on all free to air digital channels, such as: E4, BBC3, Sky News & to name a few without the demand for a second set-top box.

Freesat: A brand new digital satellite TV service provided via a partnership between the BBC & ITV, supplying you free High-Def Television programmes at no added price. Freesat has no yearly contract, no subscription, just one solitary cost for the television, satellite dish and installation. And because Freesat is transmitted via satellite, it is available to almost each and every home in the United Kingdom. Freesat TV is at present only accessible through Panasonic tellies.

LCD or Plasma TVs: Even though LCD and Plasma TVs work in completely different ways, the advantages of both are particularly alike. Yet, it’s key to consider that when opting between a Plasma or LCD telly it’s in fact merely a question of size. LCD is at its greatest performance up to and including 32 inches, while Plasma televisions offer greatest performance at 37″ and bigger. For that reason, if you are wishing to get a small flat panel television, then (short for Liquid Crystal Display) provides the superior performance, yet on the other hand if you are wanting a larger panel size, Plasma is easily the greatest option.

In conclusion, its imperative to consider when selecting the right telly for you, to think about your actual funds, your viewing distance, the look you want & if it is to be an LCD or Plasma telly.

Comments Off

Microsoft CRM and IBM Lotus Notes Domino seem to be taking completely different paths and if company is Microsoft oriented - we see MS CRM, MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, SharePoint, etc. In the case of Lotus Domino - it is opposite - Lotus is corporate Information Media and could technically play CRM role with internal messaging coming through Lotus Domino server. However realities of modern corporation give us multiple examples when Microsoft CRM and Lotus Domino should coexist in compromise. There are several reasons why corporation doesn’t like to stick to one platform:

1. Balancing several platforms not to be trapped to the one-vendor solution. Imagine, that you placed all the eggs into one basket and then this basket went into the trouble (lawsuit, bankruptcy, mismanagement, hostile takeover - to name a few in the life of the modern American corporation)

2. Legacy-dependence. If your corporation uses such product as Lotus Notes/Domino for 10 plus years - you can expect that majority of documents are stored in the Lotus databases. Just conversion of this legacy database is multi-million dollars project. And again - we could not predict the future accurately - who will win or lose - IBM or Microsoft - or maybe they will merge

3. Procedures and flowcharts. Nowadays corporation works and builds its business model around computer business system, consider things like users training, functional flowcharts/diagrams, reporting to investors, IDE with company vendors and customer. And we’d dare to say that these things are computer application platform dependent (even being designed in the heads of corporation founding leaders as abstract business processes - then they were placed into the computer platform and had to fit to its pluses and minuses)

Considering these arguments and having multiple requests from Microsoft Business Solutions and directly from our prospects and customer, we have realized the connector, which allows Microsoft CRM use Lotus Domino email server with similar messaging functionality as Microsoft Exchange 2003/2000
Microsoft CRM Exchange connector needs to be installed and its DLL based functionality is superceded by our own DLL, which communicates with Lotus Domino server via Java Agents

You can always have us help you with the integration and customization. Call us: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918.

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

Comments Off

If you’re planning a wedding, you may be tempted to just buy a cute white dress for your flower girl, and have her carry a bouquet that matches yours. After all, she’s just a kid, right? And if she looks adorable, the guests will be pleasantly pleased.

Well there’s a bit more to it than that. Let’s first take a quick look at the flower girl tradition.

Starting with the middle ages, flower girls were assigned a special job; to walk down the wedding aisle ahead of the bride and groom and spread grain (not flowers) in order to pave the way for a new beginnings, fertility and happiness in the marriage.

Today’s flowers girls usually carry rose petals, and while they aren’t believed to have special powers that will grant the new couple a harmonious relationship, they do tend to set the tone for a wedding.

Think about the last wedding you attended. If the flower girls came out in formal dark colored dresses, you quickly understood that the wedding would have a formal tone. On the other hand, if they came out in wispy flower girl dresses with roses laced into their hair, you knew that you would experience a more whimsical wedding.

In other words, the flower girls are generally the first part of the wedding party to walk down the isle, and because of that, they will make a strong first impression on your guests.

How will you dress your flower girls?

Here are some flower girl dress ideas for the most popular wedding themes around:

Cinderella Wedding Theme

If you are planning a Cinderella wedding theme, then extravagance and beauty should be a part of everything. And since your flower girls will be the first to appear, they need to set the tone boldly. For this theme, you should have more than one flower girl-three or four would be ideal-and then dress them spectacularly. Choose frilly white dresses with huge skirts and satin bows. You can tie in some of your wedding colors by adding fresh pale pink, yellow or blue flowers to their hair. In addition, they should wear satin ballerina slippers. Have them carry baskets decorated to match their dresses and throw tons of soft rose petals along the isle.

Beach Wedding Theme

Depending on the type of beach wedding that you want, you will have various choices with your flower girl dresses. If you want a romantic beach wedding, then put your flower girls in soft pastel tones or white, and use lots of fresh flowers-both in their hair and for them to throw. The flower girl wedding dresses can be shorter than in a formal wedding, and appropriate sandals would set the tone nicely. Instead of a basket, they could carry a pastel painted beach bucket filled to the rim with wildflowers to scatter along the isle.

If you have a stronger, more colorful beach wedding planned, why not have some fun with the flower girl dresses? Putting them in typical beach dresses to match your wedding décor would immediately let the wedding guests know that your wedding will be fun and adventurous.

Roaring 20’s Wedding

Imagine a black and white wedding, wing tips shoes and ostrich feathers. That’s the idea behind a roaring 20 wedding theme, and as you can imagine, a precious frilly flower girl dress simply won’t fit the bill. With this type of gutsy wedding, you will have to get imaginative with them. Why not dress your flower girls in white satin flapper girl dresses, with bands around their hair and beads around the hemline? With this type of dress, you will certainly hear ooh and ahs from the crowd!

Garden Party Wedding

If you dream of an outdoor wedding surrounded by blooming flowers and ivy-laced arches, then your flower girl dresses should take on an entirely different style. White, off-white or pale pastel linen would be an ideal choice. In addition, a beautiful soft cotton dress with a muted flower pattern would be lovely, tied with a large solid satin bow in the back. Add lace up satin sandals and an armful of colorful tulips, and your guests won’t be likely to forget your flower girls for some time to come.

As you can see, your flower girl dresses will set the mood of your entire event. Don’t just automatically dress your flower girls in the typical dress, but instead get creative. What is the first thing you want your guest to see?

Comments Off

Think you’re ready to start building your website traffic? Before you start spending time and money on getting visitors to your site, be sure your site is ready for them. Is your sales copy complete? Is there a clear way to purchasing your products/services? Do you have all the information available that your visitors require?

If your site is really ready then you need to get yourself some traffic, here’s some basic information on getting started:

There are many many ways to get traffic to your website. Which method you will use will depend on what you are promoting on your site and how much you can afford to spend on promotion.

It is important that your traffic is targeted, there is no point in getting 100,000 people to a site that sells something they are not interested in. You are much better off getting 100 people to a site that are looking for that product, they will be much more likely to want what your site has to offer them.

Here are some common methods for getting more visitors to your website:

Many questions arise in connection with this subject. Should the wife obey her husband? What should be the attitude toward an unbelieving partner in marriage? These and many related questions arise from time to time as people seek to find some set of rules by which to live the Christian life.

In the first place, we do not have detailed laws today as did the Jews. We have to find for ourselves the good works which were before ordained that we should walk in them. The secret of success in the Christian life is to make ourselves available to and for Christ so that He can work thru us.

Nowhere does it say that the wife should obey the husband. She is to voluntarily submit. God has said so. We must take it that this is the best course to follow. Who are we to question God? But God also has a purpose for everything He says and does. We need to be on the watch for what may be the reason.

There is a mystery spoken of in Ephesians 5:32. Some, who are not careful in their reading, read into this that the church which is the body of Christ is the bride of Christ. The Word nowhere mentions a bride of Christ. The unity expressed by the husband and wife being one flesh manifests the unity of Christ and His church. This is the theme in this passage.

Since the church is today manifesting the manifold wisdom of God to principalities and powers in the heavenlies (Ephesians 3:10), how well this perfect relationship of husband and wife sets that wisdom forth. It is indeed a mystery that husband and wife are one flesh, no longer two.

Not only is the wife to submit, but the husband is to love. This gives a practical exposition of the unity of the one body of Christ.

In this relationship where the wife is never told to obey, children and servants are to obey. But the parents have a responsibility toward the children, and the master should be careful with the servant. He also has a Master! To the world, and also to the unseen powers, the Christian home can be a manifestation of the one body and show that it does touch the earth in its walk.

These truths also give new motive and zest to the family relationships. All the members of the family can feel that their duties and relationships reach right up into heavenly places where their citizenship is. Let the husband remember that his love, even though it be to an unsubmissive wife, shows forth the love of Christ for His church. And the wife, by being submissive, even to an unloving husband, can be a model of the church which is the body of Christ.

The obedience of the children, even as the Lord was subject to His parents (until 30 years old!), can add to this harmony and witness. And parents can also show forth the love of the Father in heaven by loving and bringing up the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Servants are to do service as unto the Lord, making for greater harmony. And the master should be careful with the servant, not mistreating or withholding wages.

Truly the home can be a great witness to truth. Let us all remember that we are members of one another.

Comments Off

Decorations to your ceremony site can provide a personal feeling to you and your guests. The location of your ceremony is going to determine how much or how little decoration is allowed for. During the planning process, you should familiarize yourself with the location to learn what can and can’t be done. Some venues may be more liberal than others when it comes to decorations. The manager of the property should be able to advise you of any restrictions. You should insist to have any restrictions and rules included in the contract.

If you are lucky, decorations may already be included in the site fee. Event facilities specializing normally include items such as chairs, aisle runners, kneeling benches, candelabras, unity candleholders, and bridal archways in the site fee. If you choose a facility that does not, or only provides certain d©cor, than you’ll need provide your own decoration. Your wedding planner should be able to recommend local rental companies. Be sure that the decoration compliments the location and the style of your wedding.

When considering a ceremony location you should ask the following questions:

What are the fees, and what is included?

How much time is allowed for the ceremony? Is there are ceremony before or after yours?

Are their any restrictions regarding ceremony attire?

How many people will the venue hold? Is the venue insured?

How much are the cleanup fees, in case rice, birdseed, or rose petals be thrown?

Is there a changing room available?

Are there any restrictions regarding flowers or candles?

What are the rules regarding photography?

Are there any noise or music related restrictions?

Is there enough parking?

Does it have a view?

Be sure to get everything in writing. You may verbally agree on something, but requirements and concerns written in your contract are going to be more effective in case of any disputes.

George Meszaros www.sweet-reflections.com

Comments Off

For the majority of non-Asian travelers, Thailand represents an exotic land about which they don’t know much but which they’d love to explore. Did you ever dream of visiting interesting temples or exploring mysterious small cities? Do you like Thai food but really want to experience what the real Thai dishes smell and taste like? Or maybe you have always wanted a romantic escape to an exotic land. Then a vacation in Thailand is exactly what you should be booking. The country is incredible and offers plenty of opportunities to learn about the local culture and explore interesting places.

Such packages generally bundle the hotel and flight but in many cases you can find a very cheap hotel but the flight is not offered. In such cases, you need to look for some cheap international airfare to get to Thailand. Thankfully, the capital - Bangkok- is served by plenty of Asian carriers. In general, you might need to change planes somewhere along the way but the price is not that high.

The vacations in Thailand focus on an array of things to do. You can choose to visit temples or take long hikes in the forest. You might want to explore some of the beaches or spend endless hours checking out the traditional markets. No mater what your traveling styling is, there’s always something exciting to do in Thailand. And, of course, one of the best things about such an experience is the incredible Thai cuisine. The best thing about Thailand though, is that the country has always been a very cheap destination and a favorite among the budget travelers.

Comments Off

Wedding Arrangements one of the most difficult & creative work in world. You put all your efforts to make your wedding, the best day of your life. You have to arrange everything from wedding planner, wedding rings, florists & flowers, dresses, catering, photographers, wedding venue, wedding invitations, limousine to honeymoon almost everything.

Everything needs very carefull investigation, price comparision, best quality etc. and all these things need loots of time. Here are few tips to lower the burden of all these work: 1) Make a list of all your friends & relatives, who can help you for your wedding arrangements. Make a list of work or arrangements you need & assign work to the person best suitable for that task.

2) Before choosing any vendor consult your friends or relatives who get married recently. They can provide you best guidance about good & bad things, do & donts, tips etc.

3) Start planning several months ago, create a list of all tasks & assign completion date for each task.

4) Try to make yourself always free, engage yourself for monitoring & selection purpose only.

5) If you need more time for your own then you may consult the wedding planners. They will do all the arrangements for you, so that you can spend more time with your friends & relatives.

These are few tips. I will keep posting some more good articles soon.

Comments Off

Testing a website for accessibility can be a time-consuming and laborious process. The free Web Accessibility Toolbar can do most of the hard work for you though and is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in accessibility.

The toolbar is not an automated testing tool so does require manual work from you. It’s therefore able to avoid the many problems with automated accessibility testing tools. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge so even the biggest technophobe can check their website for accessibility!

Installing the Web Accessibility Toolbar

You can download the toolbar for free from http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar, and after you install it, it will sit in the toolbar area of Internet Explorer. The total file size is just 550kb so the download won’t take too long.

The toolbar only works on Internet Explorer on Windows, so if Internet Explorer isn’t your first-choice browser you’ll have to switch browsers when using it. (Alternatively, you can download the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox which offers similar, but not identical, functionality.)

Using the Web Accessibility Toolbar

Now you’ve downloaded and installed the Web Accessibility Toolbar you can start using it! There are 12 buttons in total on the toolbar, each with a down arrow to the right of the text. If you click on the down arrow for any of these buttons then a dropdown menu appears with all the available options (alternatively you can use the keyboard shortcut keys assigned to each button).

Checking for document structure

One of the most useful buttons is the seventh, Structure. It’s essential that the structure within the HTML code accurately reflects the visual structure of the page. This is so that visually impaired web users using screen readers can gain an understanding of the page structure.

Some of the most useful items in the Structure dropdown menu include:

Headings - Shows which items on the page are labelled as headings within the HTML code. The main page heading should be a heading level one and other headings should be heading level two. Any sub-heading of a heading level two should be a heading level three, then heading level four and so on. Heading numbers should always be sequential - a heading level four shouldn’t follow a heading level two if there’s no heading level three. Headings are especially useful for screen reader users as they can call up a list of headings and jump straight to the section in which they’re most interested.

List items - Shows which items on the page are labelled as lists within the HTML code, by displaying < li > next to any list item. Lists can be horizontal or vertical, and all navigation should be marked up as a list item. Lists are very useful for screen reader users as the screen reader will announce the number of items in the list before reading the list items.

Fieldset / Label - Shows which items on the page are called labels within the HTML code. After selecting Fieldset / Label, the text next to each form should say the word label next to it - if not, that text hasn’t been called a label in the code.

Table border - Places a border around each table. Nested tables within tables can cause huge difficulties for screen reader users. After selecting this item, the first table will have a black border the second blue, then green, yellow, orange, red and purple. If you see any of these last four colours it’s time to take a good look at the code behind the page.

Table cell order - Shows the order in which the page is read out to screen reader users (if a table is used for layout). Hopefully, the order should be reasonably logical.

Checking the site works under all circumstances

It’s important that your website doesn’t depend on any one type of technology, or users whose browsers don’t support that technology may be unable to access your site. You can check to see if your site depends on any one technology:

Images > Toggle Image/Alt - One of the most useful functions on the toolbar, replaces images with their ALT, or alternative, text. Alt text is read out to screen reader users or displayed to web users with images turned off, instead of the image itself (e.g. users on dial-up modems may turn off images to speed up the download time of pages). It’s essential that the ALT text provides an adequate description of the image.

IE Options > Toggle JavaScript - Turns off JavaScript. After selecting this option, work through the pages on your website - is the whole site still accessible to you?

IE Options > Toggle ActiveX - Turns off ActiveX controls. Again, after selecting this, work through your website to see if the whole site is still accessible to you.

IE Options > Toggle CSS - Turns off CSS. Are pages still legible? If CSS is used for layout then you will see the page content in the order that it’s read out to screen reader users. (If you toggle image/alt after this, you’ll have a complete visual representation of what screen reader users will hear.)

Other useful accessibility checks

There’s a huge amount of functionality available on the Web Accessibility Toolbar, but some of the other most important accessibility checks you can carry out with the toolbar include:

Validate > W3C HTML validator > Validate HTML - Checks whether the page is based on valid HTML or not. If the page is not valid, you’ll be told why.

CSS > Deprecated HTML > Deprecated elements & attributes - Checks for code that shouldn’t be used and is being phased out. A new window will open containing the HTML code - anything in red is deprecated and should be removed.

Doc info > Page speed report - Examines all the files used to display the web page and prepares a report on the average download speed for that page for different Internet connections.

Doc info > List links - Displays a list of all on-page links. Screen reader users can call up a list of links and jump straight to the page in which they’re most interested, so it’s essential that link text makes sense out of context. Link text such as ‘click here’ should be avoided at all costs!

Colour > Greyscale - Shows the page in greyscale. Great for checking colour contrast.
Other functionality

Other functionality

The Web Accessibility Toolbar offers some other interesting functionality:

Resize - See how your website looks for users on 640 x 480px, 800 x 600px and 1024 x 768px screen resolutions.

Tools > Simulations - Put yourself in the shoes of a special needs users with these fascinating simulations.

Conclusion

The Web Accessibility Toolbar offers an enormous amount of functionality. Download it for free from http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar and start using it. Without any technical expertise, you can perform a mini-accessibility audit on any site in just a couple of minutes.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton’s crazy about web accessibility and usability - so crazy that he went and started his own web accessibility and usability consultancy ( Webcredible - www.webcredible.co.uk ) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He also knows an awful lot about the Disability Discrimination Act.

Comments Off