Konichiwa, dear readers. This morning, I was thinking how complicated life has become since we are now surrounded by every imaginable gadget that is supposed to make life  easier.

I seem to spend half my spare time visiting repair shops, talking to service personnel and generally getting frustrated with my refrigerator, toaster, shaver, microwave, television, remote control, telephone, computer, printer, fax machine, answering machine, alarm clock, mouse .. and the list goes on!
hEY aND tHAT caps-lock key just got me again!

It's lucky I'm not a real gadget freak otherwise I'd be surrounded by the little critters ..well, I mean ..you ..

And we won't get into a discussion on Software .. don't even go there!  (Gerry Springer fans know it).

Last night I was awoken at 3.15am by my car's horn tooting (beeping?). It was a false alarm as usual. It's happened before and I've worked out that it happens whenever the outside temperature drops below 3 degrees C.  Not very often around here. 

This Toyota behaves like a neglected Tamagotchi and it's tooting horn indicates that it's probably feeling cold and wants to come inside, or maybe it's just scared of the car thieves it imagined lurking in the shadows.

I guess that's a characteristic of Japanese cars, they come with so many extras these days, you need to spend a week reading the manual on how to set all the various functions. Well some of us are slow ..

But I must admit, Japanese VCR DVD manuals have improved quite a lot in the last 10 years! 
Please to read next instruction ..

In all reality though, I must say I am very happy with all these modern gadgets, life is much more fun now.
The Japanese have excelled in electronics and the world is thankful for their diligence and ingenuity.

It's good to see how much good has come out of Japan since the end of world war 2. 

I was sorry to hear how their economy is in such bad shape.  All we can do is wish them well and hope they have a quick recovery. We all depend on it.

That story enables me to introduce this week's feature on Japan including of course your monthly dose of MIDI music, chosen for listening pleasure of honorable guests. 

Now I can snooze off in front of the TV, remote control in hand, dreaming of a serene, gadget-free, cherry blossom garden in the Japanese countryside.
Ahhhh ...so .... Sayonara ..

Dr John K. Flynn B.D.Sc.
The Xerostar Times Editor 
"Caring for creative people"
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If MIDI music is new to you, then please read the article in the March edition of XT entitled:
"The 7 essentials to enjoy MIDI music." 
The article will show you how to set up your computer for maximum enjoyment of MIDI music.
Access the Archive page to read previous editions.
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Many teachers are finding creative ways to use the computer knowledge their children are bringing into the classroom, either to enhance the in-school learning environment or to strengthen the connection between home and school. If you're an educator who is looking for ways to link technology to teaching, Teaching Tips can point you in the right direction.

Another education-focused newsletter from family education.com, Teaching Tips sends ideas, advice, online tools, sites to visit and other key information once a month. Most of the material points to information on the Web site, but some can stand on its own, and all of it is worthwhile for those who need fresh ideas.   To subscribe Click Here

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Now you can start your own discussion thread or add comments. Please get started now.
Ask questions, provide answers. Have fun!
Be yourself or be anonymous it's up to you!
To view the message board:   Click Here
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The United States has the highest level of obesity of any country in the world.  American's dietary habits and choices are the main reason for this problem.  In countries where fruits and vegetables are the main staple of their diet, there are much lower instances of obesity, heart disease and certain forms of cancer.

There are a lot of great reasons to eat more fruit and
vegetables.  Fruit and vegetables are low in calories and low in fat.  They are high in fiber, vitamins and minerals.  Research studies have shown that people who eat at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day have a much lower risk for heart disease and some cancers.  The vitamins, minerals and other
components of fruits and vegetables are responsible for helping prevent these common deadly diseases.  Fruits and vegetables are nutrient-dense, vitamin-rich and are high in Vitamin A, B, C and fiber.

With today's hectic, fast-paced world, they are perfect for someone who is on the run and strapped for time.  Other than washing them and throwing them in tupperware or a plastic bag, there is little to no preparation time.  Vegetables and fruits are the perfect fast and easy food.

Keep fruit in sight in your refrigerator.  By keeping fruit and vegetables on your top shelf, rather than tucked away out of sight in a bottom drawer, it reminds you to eat healthy every time you open the refrigerator door.  Another great way to keep these healthy food items in sight is to keep a bowl of fruit on your counter.

Top your cereal, waffles, or pancakes with fruit.  Fruit is the perfect natural sweetener and a great addition to most breakfast meals.

Fruit is the perfect quick, easy snack.  Instead of snacking on cookies, pretzels or chips, grab a piece of fruit.  It is a great source of healthy carbohydrates that will provide you with the energy you need to get through the day.

Eat a garden salad for lunch.  A salad is another healthy meal that is easy to prepare.  You can make a large salad in just a few minutes time.  This will keep you eating fresh healthy vegetables for days.  Bag it, put it in the refrigerator, and it's ready when you are.  You can also add protein to your salad
like tuna, chicken, turkey, beans, etc. . .

Fruit is a quick, healthy, easy dessert.  Instead of eating ice cream, cake, or pie, have a piece of fruit instead.  It's sweet, delicious, and most important - a healthy end to your meal.

Dr. Osgoodby was a finalist in the "EAS Body for Life" Contest. Stop by his web page to see his before and after pictures and subscribe to his monthly newsletter.  http://bestbodyever.com

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Have you thought about publishing a book?
Did you give up because it all seemed too difficult?

At MIDI-eBooks.com we can publish your book on our web pages and it will be on sale to the public within a short time. How much will it cost?
You don't pay anything up front and we only charge 15% of the revenue from sales. 

To find out more about how easy it is to have your book published, just   Click Here
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Choose from a range of beautiful pictures including themes on nature, cars and cartoons. Send a personal postcard to your friends and loved ones.

Big Web Pages is an online web site builder that enables anyone to design a professional looking web site in 15 minutes. There is no need for any special software or web design experience . Just type, and your site will be created automatically! There are over a hundred of pre-made business styles to choose from along with an extensive gallery of clip art and photos. You can also upload your own photos. 
Over 100 styles to choose from.
View sample sites and more! Click Here
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Country name: Japan (Nihon)
Area: 377,435 sq km (234,010 sq mi)
Population: 126.5 million
Capital city: Tokyo (pop 11 million)
People: Japanese (including indigenous Ainu & Okinawans), Korean
Language: Japanese
Religion: Shinto, Buddhist, Christian
Government: Constitutional monarchy
Head of State: Emperor Akihito
Prime Minister: Junichiro Koizumi
GDP: US$4.2 trillion
GDP per head: US$23,400
Annual growth:0.2%
Inflation: 2%
Major industries: High-tech electronic products, motor vehicles, office machinery, chemicals
Major trading partners: USA, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, China

To find out more about Japan -  Click Here
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Sorry if any of you were sent off to the wrong URL
last month.  Here are the correct addresses:

Visit the Book Shop at http://www.e-books-n-music.com
Click Here
Join Us At The Inkwell Writers Forum
http://www.delphi.com/inkwellwriters/start
Click Here
Publish Your Articles: 
Inspirational or Any Subject of Interest To You!
MIDI & Great Articles: http://home.earthlink.net/~rosemuse
Click Here
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Hardware Store: 
Men's favorite shop, similar to a black hole in space - If he goes in, he isn't coming out anytime soon .. 
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Michael concentrates on writing World Wide Words and providing citations and advice for the Oxford English Dictionary. He also wrote a third of the entries for the second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of New Words and for a while compiled a weekly New Words column in the Daily Telegraph. He has a book coming out from Oxford sometime in 2002. For more info: Click Here
 .Cl

Play alone, with friends, or against your computer in this memory game.

Find pairs of identical cards. Play alone, with friends, computer or even your youngest kids. 
Your children can play with animal cards or Pokemon cards or large Disney cards. 

Improve your memory by playing with your favorite pictures. You can play from the age of 3 to 103. 
If your memory is really good, increase the difficulty and make groups of three or more identical cards. 

Each month you can get new sets at the web site. You can also create your own sets and send them in, they will be added to the web site. 
Easy Memory is freeware. Available languages : 
English, French and Dutch, requires IE4 or Netscape 

To download the game please Click Here
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They don't look like conventional hovercraft at all, but the hovercraft depicted in that movie "Back to the Future II" served as an inspiration to Kevin Inkster, who has invented the world's first commercial hoverboard scooter, called the Airboard. 

Powered by a small engine, the boards hover 4 inches above the ground and are capable of 15 mph. Supported and propelled by a cushion of air, riders steer by using the throttle and shifting weight.
The Airboard was featured at the Olympic Games held in Sydney last year.

To find out more Click Here

Nowadays, it seems as if e-mail newsletters are the new "web sites". Let me explain that seemingly ill worded sentence. In 1996, everyone was proclaiming that if you had a company Web site your business would increase ten-fold and your customers would remain loyal. Now Internet marketing gurus are preaching in a similar way about the benefits of having your own e-mail newsletter. 

In this series of articles, I'm going to explain what a newsletter is, what you can achieve with one, how to develop a concept and content for your newsletter, as well as how to promote it and build up your readership. I hope you can use this information to develop your own high-yield newsletter that benefits your business greatly, just as a Web site did back in 1996.

Since I installed AD-aware it, it has removed a minimum of 5 unauthorized SPY-WARE cookies that have been sent to my computer every day!

The program Zone Alarm (mentioned in last month's XT) has prevented most of them from ever getting onto my hard drive in the first place. You can still download Zone Alarm for FREE:  Click Here

These illegal cookies are designed to report back to the source every time you log on to the internet and inform the spies what you are looking at, to build up a profile of "you" as a prospective target for advertising.

Any self respecting computer user will agree that this form of data collection is a major invasion of privacy and should be stopped. 
Download the Ad-aware program FREE from our web site now!       Click Here
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The Tour del Sur is a 25,000 mile two year cycle touring adventure around the perimeter of Mexico, Central America and South America. 
The journey is being made by - Lisa and Chris. The reason for the trip... just for fun! This site contains information about all aspects of undertaking an adventure of this type. You can find out about their gear, their route, a little about who they are and information about some of the good things they hope to accomplish while on this trek. 

You can receive regular updates by subscribing to their newsletter and you can also email them directly. To see their web site, please Click Here
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This is the very first in-depth critique of George Harrison's solo career since the break-up of 
The Beatles.  Download this amazing book now !

To find out more about this book  Click Here
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This is ezine is packed with unusual and ingenious ideas for ways to increase the number of visitors to your web site. Best ideas can win $1000.

Do you enjoy word puzzles or playing with words?
Are you a Scrabble®  fan?
This fascinating program will help you solve the
most difficult word puzzles. The manipulation of English words is taken to a new level. 
To read all about it. Click  Here
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Free Classified Ads can now be viewed or posted at
www.MIDI-eBooks.com and www.xerotron.com
16 Categories to choose from!.....Click Here
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In a previous article, 'Let Go My Logo,' I explained the importance of never using a standard font. The last thing a company wants is to see their font being used by a competitor. It's the equivalent of a woman going to a party in a new designer dress and looking across the room and seeing another woman in the same outfit. 

The best way to avoid this calamity (with a font, not the dress) is to create your own font. You can of course edit your company name and/or tag line in a program like Adobe Illustrator, but that can be too limiting. If you create your own font, you can use it for logos, tag lines, buttons on your Web site, reports, or anywhere else you may need it. Not only that, it's sort of cool to have a font called - Acme Bold - or whatever your company name might be.
For the complete article that show you how:

Increase your chances of a win by 40 to 45 times!
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Find out more about this amazing system.
See a powerful flash presentation that will explain how the Oz Power system works.

The Web has become a gateway to an immense 
collection of satellite images of Earth, a place where you can zoom in your favorite Central Asian city or your own backyard in a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Images of Antarctic icebergs, the desert in 
California's Death Valley and virtually anything else on Earth can be found at an array of Web sites, from government space agencies like NASA (news - web sites) and private companies such as SPACE.com.

Easy access to images previously available only to the government is made possible, in part, by the Ikonos satellite, launched by a Colorado based company two years ago.

From its perch in space, Ikonos can make out objects as small as cars and trees. And because Ikonos is owned by a private company, there are no restrictions on the kinds of photographs it can take.

The easiest way to see a sampling of Ikonos images is to go to the Web site of the satellite's owner, Space Imaging. (http://www.spaceimaging.com)

How many times have you been designing a web site and struggled to get a good set of matching colors that look good with your background or logo? 
Well, struggle no more! With Palette Master, you can select a base color and at the click of a button, instantly generate a 42 color palette that is perfectly complimentary to your base color!
This is a tool that can't be found anywhere else on the net! Nebulus Designs of Ireland allow visitors to use it online free of charge.

To try the Palette Master please Click Here
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Barbershop singing is four part A cappella harmony. There are a few international organizations dedicated to preserving this style of singing.

Thousands of people enjoy this wonderful way of expressing themselves while in good company.
Competitions around the world ensure the attainment of extraordinarily high standards in harmonizing.

The art of singing in groups can extend to partic- ipation in Choirs and Glee Clubs as well as related specialists such as whistling, with many offering courses and lessons to their new members.

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America is the men's version while Sweet Adelines International and Harmony Incorporated are two of the popular female organizations. 

For Information on Barbershop Harmony in the USA
with links to many related web sites Click Here
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A mother wants to learn graphic design software applications while staying at home with her young children. A busy manager seeks a degree in graphic design without taking time off from his job. A woman studies for a degree in desktop publishing while her husband is employed overseas. 

What do all these degree seekers have in common? Online learning. Virtual classrooms are filling a lifestyle gap for individuals in many different stages of life and career. For a busy professional who wants to stay ahead of the curve and acquire new skills, the e-classroom offers convenience. For a mother, online learning is an opportunity to sharpen professional skills for re-entry into the job market without leaving home. 

In the past few years, the quality, variety and accessibility of online learning programs has burgeoned. More than two million students will be enrolled in distance learning programs in the U.S. by 2002, according to International Data Corporation. Lee Park, vice president and director of technology of The Art Institute Online explains, " E-learning has so much to offer. Many online learning programs can truly mimic the interactive elements of a physical classroom, with the added bonuses of convenience and accessibility." 

Recognizing the need for flexible educational environments that fit a variety of lifestyles, The Art Institutes' nationwide system of educational institutions created The Art Institute Online, which launched last spring. The Art Institute Online provides timely, accessible and professional development programs for those seeking to enhance skills, further professional careers or prepare for eventual re-entry into the job market. The Art Institute Online was the first school to offer a bachelor's degree in graphic design online, and now also offers a bachelor's in digital design. Class sessions are available year round, and course offerings range from the basics, such as fundamentals of the web and fundamentals of design, to more advanced, including corporate identity design and web page scripting. 

A virtual campus tour also is available, and includes a course catalog, a description of faculty members, student orientation, a demo course and more. 

Because there are many online learning opportunities available, educators agree that it's important to pick the right program for you. The Art Institute Online offers a few simple guidelines:

- Choose a program or area of study that has a direct application to what you do, or one you are passionate about. Without a compelling need for the course, you're more likely to drop the ball and miss a valuable opportunity. 

- Choose a learning institution that offers an asynchronous learning model. You should be able to check into the class at any time and follow along. 

- Look closely at the institution's learning model. Some offer independent study in which students receive instruction, assignments and tests to complete by themselves. Others offer a facilitator lead model which involves direct communication with the instructor and classmates. For some, this interaction is key to making the online learning experience approximate the give and take of a physical classroom. 

Both online students and faculty advise online students to take responsibility for their own learning, and stay motivated and determined to make e-learning work. If they do, they'll find the experience gratifying, productive and personally rewarding. 

The Art Institute Online, a division of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, is a virtual learning platform offering Internet-delivered education. The Art Institute Online offers courses leading to the Bachelor of Science degree program in Graphic Design, the Associate of Science degree program in Graphic Design, and the diploma program in Digital Design. Students may take a demonstration course by visiting The Art Institute Online. For more information.  Click Here

Courtesy of ARA Content, www.ARAcontent.com, e-mail: info@ARAcontent.com 
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We are building a new web site called 
"FreebieGenie.com" and we need lots of genuine freebies to give away. This is free advertising!

If you have a freebies that you would like to add to our new web site please visit.       Click Here
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