Motivational Monday

Posted on June 29, 2009 by

I don’t know about you dear kind reader but I sometimes find it slow going on a Monday morning. It can be hard to get motivated to do anything constructive, especially if I’ve had an active weekend doing non work related activities.

Possibly spurred on my previous post (great video, watch it!) I have decided that every Monday morning I will post something that I find to be useful in motivating or inspiring me to be the best that I can. This is mainly for my own selfish reasons to get myself going, but hopefully you will find something useful.

First up, this post by Elaine Rogers written a month ago but worth highlighting again.

This video is great for anybody feeling the strain and wondering why they even got out of bed this morning.

I could go on but then you could spend your whole Monday morning watching videos and reading motivational articles which would defeat the whole purpose. If you have a favourite quote or anything else you’d like to add please leave a comment.

I have to throw this in though;  ‘I don’t like Mondays’ by The Boomtown Rats starring House MD, might bring a smile to your face :)

Posted in Motivational | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Achievement in Action by Brian Tracy

Posted on June 24, 2009 by

I came across this video and just had to share it. It’s a powerful video from Brian Tracy (you can follow him on Twitter). If you do nothing else today watch this video.

He finishes the talk with this famous poem

Don’t Quit

Anonymous

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and its turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When they might have won, had they stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit!
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EU Health Prize for Journalists

Posted on June 5, 2009 by

Any journalists wishing to win a prize for writing on a health related topic read on. This is an email I received earlier today. Best of luck!

For all journalists writing on health (even occasionally)

Dear journalists,

Working at the European Commission, I would like to  inform you a new EU Health Prize for Journalists with deadline : 15th of June 2009

The articles published in newspapers or online, each journalist can submit until 3 articles  (there will a competition in each of the 27 countries of European Union and an european competition with all national winners.

The articles should be focused on one (or several) of the 10 topics of the campaign “Europe for Patients”:

patients’ rights in cross-border health care, patient safety, rare diseases, organ donation and transplantation, cancer, health workforce, flu and childhood vaccination, mental health and prudent use of antibiotics.

To send your article online or for some information in english or in all other european languages :  http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/europe_for_patients/index_en.htm

Here a link to the first Press release (Launch of the prize from the EU Commissar in February  2009 :  http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/272&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Best regards,

Hélène Le Borgne

SANCO C – European Commission
HITEC
L-2920 Luxembourg
Tel: + 352 43 01 32827

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Catholic Church in Ireland

Posted on May 23, 2009 by
I generally try to avoid negativity of all sorts and therefore avoid the news as much as possible. During the past week the Child Abuse Commission has released it’s report into the atrocious acts of sexual, physical and mental abuse to children in industrial schools run by the Catholic Church in Ireland throughout the 1900′s. You can’t get much worse.
In order for this report not to be forgotten about and buried, like the abusive acts themselves, Damien Mulley made a suggestion. This post and video is my contribution.

Update: the following video is an excerpt from a recent episode of Questions and Answers where one of the victims speaks about what happened to him.

Posted in News | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Heroes need all the help they can get

Posted on May 19, 2009 by

Tuesday Push – Decisions For Heroes

Decisions For Heroes - Rescue team management and analytics.

Decisions for Heroes is an online reporting and analytics tool for search and rescue teams. eg. Coast Guard, Mountain Rescue, Lifeboat etc.

This is from the companies factsheet and will explain it better than I could:

  • Decisions For Heroes is a web application that saves lives, it does this by helping rescue teams record and analyze their rescue operations and training.
  • Decisions For Heroes was trialled for 8 months with 1,800 rescuers in 5 countries.
  • The system has a ‘baked-in’ feedback system, that allows users leave improvement suggestions against each page.
  • There is no software to download. Users access the tool as a web application through their internet browser.
  • Typical users include Mountain Rescue, Coast Guard, Search & Resuce Dogs, Sheriff Depts., Lifeboats, and Urban Search & Rescue teams.
  • Users sign-in after each incident or training exercise to type in their activity report. Decisions For Heroes automatically adds their data to their teams records, and updates their stats.
  • Rescue teams pay a monthly subscription to gain access to the service.
  • The initial Decisions For Heroes service was built by founder Robin Blandford in 2008.
  • Robin Blandford saw the global use of this service having developed a prototype version of the software for his own rescue team. The resulting data was so good, that he decided there was a business in it.
  • Having initially worked abroad, Robin Blandford now lives and works from Ireland, Europe.

The new company ByteSurgery Ltd is being launched today (May 19th 2009) to commercialise and expand Decisions For Heroes to emergency services around the world from local fire brigade to alpine ski patrols.

They also have a Facebook page to help keep you up to date with all the happenings.

It’s fantastic to see such a great initiative which will aid in so many search and rescue training exercises and missions and ultimately save lives. I think it deserves all the exposure it can get.

Posted in Tuesday Push | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Blogging by email

Posted on May 12, 2009 by

I spotted in WordPress’ own blog earlier a post about writing blog posts by email. So here I am testing it out, typing away on my BlackBerry (with the laptop on my lap of course). This could be extremely useful as I occasionally find myself waiting somewhere and often think “I must write about that”. Now I’ll have no excuse! You can also post pictures, embed videos and more by email. Hitting send now, so fingers crossed. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

Update: It worked! Note though that the message/signature you have on your device when you send an email also appears (ie. Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld) So if you have it set as your email signature, with contact details etc. this is what will show. I’m also putting in the links via the web as I don’t know how to do it on the phone.

Posted in Uncategorized, Useful Tools | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Bad times can lead to Good things

Posted on April 28, 2009 by

Very often it is in times of crisis when we are at our most creative. We can’t afford the luxury of sitting back and allowing things to happen around us. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say. A number of new initiatives have caught my attention in recent times. Three of which I mention here.

The Greenhouse Incubator in Limerick was set up in February by Evert Bopp in response to the closure of the Dell factory. It offers an innovative opportunity for new start ups to get off the ground without getting bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy.

From the site; -”The GreenHouse has been started up now to combat the ongoing economic downturn. While there are a number of admirable government initiatives going on, the only real way for the economy to recover is by an increase of private sector activity. The recent and future redundancies by large, small & medium sized companies create a huge pool of talent. With the right guidance & support a percentage of these people are perfect candidates for developing their own ventures.“

TalentTank.ie is an exciting initiative linking employers and employees in a new and different way that can only be of benefit to everyone. I’ll allow them explain:- “Talent Tank is a website that provides Individuals and Employers the platform on which to have a direct influence on the speed in which we recover from the recession. The concept is simple, talented Individuals offer their skills and experience for free, for a couple of hours or days and Employers avail of this free skills offer.” You can read the press release here.

As we have recently embarked on a new publication and can do with all the help we can get I registered on the site and posted my details. I received a reply fairly quickly from John Jennings who offered to produce a video advert for us. A couple of emails were sent over and back, with good suggestions from John (as I didn’t really have any plan as to what I wanted) the finished product is below. It won’t have the same viral effect as Susan Boyle’s now famous video but I do quiet like it and found John great to work with.


Swop-o-nomics.com offers the chance to barter for products and services. Personally I love this way of doing business and have been known to swap advertising for a TV, photography sessions, IT support, general labour, diving gear and other things I can’t think of right now. I think it makes great sense as the cost of supplying a product or service is less than what someone would pay to buy it from you. Both parties forgo the profit on the transaction and the only cost is your time or the wholesale value of the goods. Although the market value of the goods should be used as the ‘exchange rate’. We all need different goods and services over time and it’s great to see this site up and running. You can read their press release here.

Posted in Business, Life and Fitness, Publicity | Tagged , , | 1 Comment