Kickboxing London has a lot to offer you

David Fitness, Sports

Most people’s impression of the martial arts is still coloured by the well-known movies of the 1970s and 1980s. In these, the protagonist would study his particular style, usually through the torturous, painful and bizarre techniques of a master, or in a brutal and sadistic class at the hands of a semi-insane instructor. London kickboxing classes generally don’t follow this pattern, unless that’s what you’re hunting for – there’s generally something to fit most tastes if you look hard enough. Your average London kickboxing club teaches sparring and self-defence (probably using some of the same techniques, but some from other styles) in a friendly and informal yet disciplined and safe environment. You will be taught basic techniques – the kicks, punches, blocks and footwork that form the bread-and-butter of kickboxing – before being encouraged to spar in a controlled setting. Sparring is, in any case, optional. Some people study the style for fitness, some for competition, some for self-defence, and so on. You should not be pushed harder than you are comfortable with, although the best instructors will know how to get the most out of you. For kickboxing London has something for everyone.

Kickboxing is a relatively recent style, pieced together out of techniques that American soldiers found when stationed in Japan in the Second World War. They recognised the effectiveness of the traditional martial arts taught there, such as Karate, and simplified it for their own needs. This means that kickboxing encompasses almost endless variation – it is not a strictly codified style in its own right, but a collection of techniques and disciplines. Similarly, the ethos and direction of each class might be different. This adds to the variety which is on offer. Some people might be more interested in the complex techniques and patterns that derive from oriental styles; others will be happy to learn the basics of sparring and self defence. Obviously, there is a massive overlap, but each instructor and class will have its own take on things.

This means that if you are interested in trying kickboxing London is a great option. There are so many London kickboxing classes that it won’t take long to find one that suits you. Most have free introductory sessions to let you try before you buy. When you do settle on a London kickboxing club, you will probably need to spend a small amount of money on essentials – insurance, membership fees, and possibly pads and gloves at a later stage. But you will get lots out of your choice, as you learn a useful and energetic style with like-minded martial artists.

Please visit http://www.karmaa.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Sales presentations depend on more than a good idea

David Meetings, Sales

Powerpoint presentations are extremely easy to put together with a minimum of training. That is both their strength and their failing. sales presentations are complex undertakings that need effective communication of your idea. But as well as what you are communicating, you need to look at how it is communicated. Powerpoint design can either strengthen your presentation – adding to its impression and convincing your hearers of your ideas – or it can seriously detract from it. If that’s the case, it may not matter how good your ideas or competitive your package. If you lose your audience with a dull presentation, they’re not going to be interested.

That’s why Powerpoint has to be employed with a pinch of salt. It’s a fantastically useful program and, delivered well, it can add significantly to the effect you are hoping to transmit. However, it has become the expectation that sales presentations must be accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation. That adds a pressure to put something – anything – together, even if it is badly thought through. Needless to say, relying on an amateur slide presentation is a recipe for disaster.

Part of this is unfortunately our culture’s love of multimedia. The more parallel strands of information we can take in, the better. So a talk isn’t complete without visual representations of what you’re saying – pictures and, better still, video clips. The problem arises when these distract from the chief content rather than adding to it. Simplicity is key. But additionally, the presentation needs to contribute something of itself. We’ve all attended lectures where the spoken content is mirrored on the screen – and, quite likely, in a handout too. Thus the message is simply triplicated, and you could equally skim the handout in five minutes than sit through the hour of speech. It’s frustrating and a waste of time – and something to be avoided in your own presentations.

So, Powerpoint presentations must complement, not replicate the content of your sales presentations. Careful Powerpoint design will enable you to communicate more effectively, rather than distracting from your spoken message. This is vital, since the expectation that a talk will be accompanied by overheads can push well-meaning but misguided speakers into hamstringing themselves and losing their audience on what would otherwise have been a fascinating talk. If that costs you a contract, then it’s easy to see that a little training or outsourcing can be an investment that is worth making and can pay for itself over and over.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Brise soleil: their role and importance

David Sun Protection

Every decent architect or builder should be familiar with certain important terms, and anybody who wants his or her designs to be amongst the best buildings of today certainly needs to know his brise-soleil from his glass louvres.  One need not be put off by the sophisticatedly confusing sounding French names – these structures are essentially fairly simple, and as soon as you get your head around them they are likely to be very useful.  This article aims to give a succinct explanation of these key architectural terms, so that next time external louvres come up in conversation with a builder or architect, you will know what they mean.

The word ‘brise soleil’ is from the French, meaning ‘sun breaker’.  The term refers to a variety of permanent sun-shading techniques, and the beauty of the technique is the range of architectural strategies that come under this umbrella.  They span from basic patterned walls to the impressive mechanical, pattern-creating devices of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.  In its classic form, this sun breaker is a horizontal projection extending from the sun-side façade of a building.  Façades with a large amount of glass can be in danger of overheating during the summer, and using a brise-soleil is a very effective way of stopping this from happening.  The structure can be further modified by incorporating louvres, which prevent high-angle summer sun falling on the façade, and allow low angle winter sun to provide passive solar heating.

Glass is one of the most useful and multifunctional building products there is.  It can be used formany different purposes, from creating striking glass façades to elegant internal screen solutions.  Glass louvres are used to control solar heat gain within buildings, and have traditionally been tinted to create the desired effect.  More elaborate finishes are available, too.  Ceramic frits, for example, involve baking a type of paint onto the glass.  These type of finishes create a more unusual appearance while reflecting the sun’s heat and helping to maintain a comfortable interior temperature.  Presently, glass louvres are taking on a more active role in buildings than ever before, with light redirection and photovoltaic systems allowing for various different functions.  These louvres can offer building owners and specifiers realistic solutions in terms of creating environmentally friendly buildings by lessening the need for air conditioning while providing renewable energy sources as well as shading.

Basic external louvres, on the other hand, are usually mounted in the vertical, with a row of horizontal blades shaped and positioned to minimise the ingress of water.  With relatively simple functions such as providing shade from the sun, brise-soleil, glass louvres and the like should not provoke confusion.  Once you know what they are and how they work, it should be fairly straightforward to assess which solution would be right for your project.

Please visit http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Shop for sale in London -€“ a promising business opportunity?

Mary Property

For commercial property London is one of the top places in the world to be hunting. The market dropped sharply during the financial crisis, with values for some of the most high profile buildings such as office space being chopped in half. Rents fell, though not as far. As a result, yields were considered very good and when the bounce occurred investors piled in to take advantage of the bargains on offer. The comparatively weak pound meant that foreign money flooded in from Europe and the Middle East, since these currencies could buy more. Commercial property comes in a number of forms (offices, industrial, retail), and specific agents may deal with some or all aspects of it. Those offering small shops to let in North London may or may not be able to secure a good rent on several thousand square feet of grade A office space – since the type of outfit looking for a shop for sale in london or somewhere to rent is likely to be different from a big multinational looking to relocate its headquarters.

At the same time, depending on the nature of your business, there can be great benefits in going to an agency that deals with a wide cross-section of the property market, since many companies will need more than one sub-sector. If you’re after several shops to rent in North London, there’s a good chance you’ll need warehouses to keep your stock in and office space to administrate your business. It’s easier and cheaper to find all of these through the same agency than it is to look around and pick them up piecemeal.

London is a great prospect for commercial property at the moment – a growth area that led the country’s uptick in the sector. The rebound from recession has not been as fast as hoped, but the capital has tended to do better than other cities, partly due to the dearth of new developments, meaning a bottleneck in coming years and bumping up prices through the simple law of supply and demand. If you’re looking for a shop for sale in london or other sorts of commercial property London is still promising in terms of the potential for return. However, regardless of whether you are looking for industrial property on the outskirts or shops to let in North London, making sure you have the right agent can make a big difference in the cost and suitability of the space you lease or buy.

Please visit http://www.claridges-commercial.co.uk for further information about this topic.

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Bacs software has many upsides for a business

Paul Software

bacs software has been around for some time, but lots of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still don’t have it. After all, they may have been ok with cheques and cash before that for years, and not had any difficulties. Depending on the nature of business, there may be costs involved, such as buying or upgrading computers to deal with the software that takes care of bacs payments. But bacs (short for bankers’ automated clearing system) has a number of advantages and goes far beyond being able to make a direct transfer of cash from one bank account to another, as you would with regular online banking. Even for a small business, the benefits can be significant, since one of the things it can do is reduce error and improve time-keeping, meaning that everyone is paid on-time – including you.

There are a range of advantages, with bacs software making lots of processes easier. Bacs transfers are quick, efficient and safe (especially compared to writing out reams of cheques or having a huge bag of money sitting around to pay staff, as it used to be done). If you need a faster option – bacs usually takes three working days, though it can be nearly instant – then there are faster variants. It can streamline cross-border transfers with a similar function for international payments. Integrated with specialist software, it can ensure that you don’t make a mistake in payments by validating the account number and sort codes that you enter – thereby reducing the trouble of reclaiming (or writing off) money that you send to the wrong person. When it comes to other parties paying you, there are direct debit collection arrangements. These are set up once and then left to run. The advantages of this are plain: instead of invoicing someone every month and waiting for them to process the request – perhaps with numerous reminders – the money is taken straight from their bank account on the agreed day, meaning that you never have to consider late payment again.

All in all, bacs software offers so many advantages that it’s tough to see why any organisation would pass over the benefits that bacs payments systems can bring. Bacs is increasingly being used across all sizes of business for good reason. It’s fast, efficient and safe, and it reduces error and delays. In uncertain times, those are all welcome reassurances to have since they will inevitably improve your bottom line.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Cash Genie: letting you save money and get back on your feet

David Loans

Inflation has been running at high levels recently, with numerous things pushing up the cost of living disproportionately. These ‘one off factors’, as they have been called by politicians and economists, don’t seem to be going anywhere fast. The rate of inflation – currently around 5 percent, depending on how you calculate it – has been predicted to fall for months now, but unexpected factors have kept it high. Cash Genie offers some ideas for how to bring down your own personal inflation level.

Inflation is really a measure of how much your money is worth. If £100 buys you 100 loaves of bread in January 2010 but you need £105 to buy the same number in January 2011, then inflation is 5 percent. Five percent doesn’t look like much, but if you multiply that total across all your spending for the year, it could end up equalling £1,000 or more for the average taxpayer. But it’s worth noticing that the inflation figures are one-size-fits-all numbers that don’t look at much of what goes on under the surface. There’s some difference between RPI and CPI indexes – one takes into account mortgage payments, the other doesn’t – but besides that they are pretty blunt instruments. Cash Genie argues that inflation is more complex and personal than this. After all, no two shopping lists for the month are the same, which means that a month-to-month comparison of how much more you are spending than the same time last year will be different for everyone.

So, think about your personal inflation figure and how you can bring that down. What are the areas of spending for you that have added disproportionate expense? Fuel is one clear one for many people, since oil prices have been driven up by problems in the Middle East. However, other categories like household equipment, cleaning products and furniture reduced the average. In other words, Cash Genie argues that to make the best impact on your spending, find the categories that have pushed it up the most. You will be able to save far more by economising on fuel/travel, alcohol and tobacco than on other areas. If you want to get the largest bang for your buck without cutting back on every single area (which isn’t much fun) then it’s worth being a little more smart about which things you try to economise on.

Please visit http://www.cashgenieblog.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Suggestions for looking for your first kickboxing club

Paul Fitness, Martial Arts

If you need a workout that will tone up your body, teach you new techniques and give you the skills to defend yourself, kickboxing might be the right activity for you.  With kickboxing London you can increase your stamina, flexibility and strength while listening to your favourite music, and get rid of your stress and anxiety at the same time.  If you are looking for a kickboxing club, there are a few things to be aware of, to make sure your new favourite sport gets off to the best possible start.

Kickboxing is a centuries old sport, which was first practised in Asia around 2,000 years ago.  The activity as we know it, though, kicked off in the 1970s, when American karate experts arranged competitions to bring in the full-contact kicks and punches that had been banned from karate.  As one might expect, some health and safety concerns accompanied this change, and so padding, protective clothing and safety rules were introduced into the sport over the years.  This slightly altered, safety-conscious form is the one that is around today.  Still, there are a few different forms, which vary principally according to the amount of physical contact that is allowed between the combatants.

For those who are more interested in the aerobic than the contact element, there is aerobic, or cardiovascular kickboxing, also known as boxercise.  This combines the techniques of boxing and martial arts with the physical characteristics of an aerobics class, so it provides full conditioning and toning as well as teaching new skills.  It involves no physical contact between the kickboxers – rather, it is a cardiovascular workout that is done because of its many benefits to the body.

Kickboxing proper, though, does involve real contact with opponents, and some new starters find it intimidating for this reason.  It is important to appreciate that there is no competition – you can just take it at your own pace, and do not need to face an opponent until you feel it is the right time.  You will increase your feeling of comfort if you warm up your muscles and joints for a good few minutes first. After that, it is usually best to start with upper body moves, learning jabs or punches.  Combining these with kicks can come after a few weeks.

When you first get involved with a kickboxing club, it is sensible to limit your visits to one or two a week, while your body gets used to kickboxing.  There are so many different clubs and people in the kickboxing London scene that there ought to be something that works for everyone.

Please visit http://www.zendokickboxing.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Hospitality jobs Singapore – a safe work prospect in Asia

David Employment, Services

Dubai has picked up some quite worrying headlines over the last two or three years, after its economy nosedived with the global financial crisis. With its building vision on ice, there were serious uncertainties over what the immediate future held for the area. Now, however, Dubai is viewed as a haven of stability in a fast-changing world. Since it appears all but immune from the Arab Spring, hotel jobs Dubai have received a confidence boost as investment and interest turns back there. If you’re interested in working in the hospitality industry in Asia but have wondered about Dubai’s future, you might like to add it back to you list along with hospitality jobs singapore, China and the Philippines. For hotel jobs, Gulf locations have to be considered carefully, but this is one that once again appears promising.

The Arab Spring has significantly impacted the Middle East and Gulf region. Although its effects might one day be enormously beneficial, as the popular uprisings bring democracy to a list of states that are essentially family mafias, in the short term there is little but uncertainty. The early days of Tunisia and Egypt were promising, with dictators swiftly thrown from power. Now, the ongoing and increasingly violent conflicts in Libya and Syria seem to buck that early trend, with leaders doggedly clinging onto power, even in the face of international criticism and military action.

But there are some areas that the Arab Spring will not damage – Dubai being one. A recent report from HSBC says that ‘confidence in political stability and security remains undimmed’ in the UAE and Qatar. The population is small and quite wealthy, thanks to oil exports and the good service sector, meaning that the grievances of their neighbours do not apply. In fact, Dubai may well benefit from the wider uncertainty of the Gulf, since it is in the stable minority.

This means that for hotel jobs, Dubai seems to have a promising future. Hotel jobs Gulf-wide should hopefully lift with economic recovery, but due to its political stability Dubai is now better placed than some. If you’re looking for a career in the service sector and are worried about the state of other economies, then it might be time to cast the net further afield. There are dedicated job agencies that collect opportunities from different region around the world and more specifically, from hospitality jobs singapore to chef vacancies in Mauritius – a quick search will uncover an array of possibilities.

Please visit http://www.asiacaterer.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Duplicate payments can be a distant memory if you embrace recovery audit technology

Paul Software

An Accounts Payable audit is a very important part of most workplaces.  However expert and careful accounts teams might be, duplicate payments often happen, and these can incur major costs. Lots of companies call in the services of professional recovery auditors, but this can be an very expensive way of doing things.  If you can teach your own in-house Accounts Payable teams to deal with the recovery auditing, this can be a great way to save money and improve internal processes.  Performing an in-house audit is now a fairly relaxed affair thanks to the development of recovery audit software.

With this software, you can pre-process your upcoming payments, which means that you should never have to pay a duplicate invoice again.  It is possible to audit all your past payment data in one easy step, and regain any money that you have gained back, which often substantially increases your surplus.  Crucially, the software tells you the reason for each duplicate, which means that the audit becomes a way of improving processes rather than just finding individual errors, so that they are unlikely to happen another time.  Taking control of your accounts payable audit process if often a positive thing.  It can be nice to see an outside team of experts come in and handle the entire task, but the knowledge and overview that can be gained from  this process in-house is often worthwhile.

This program finds duplicate payments, invoicing errors, compliance issues and supplier fraud.  As it can be used by Accounts Payable teams, it not only increases control but also improves processes, thus preventing future errors from happening.  Using a combination of search algorithms and pattern matching technology, the software generates a detailed report of potential duplicate payments and errors that may have been made.  The benefits of using this technology are surely clear.

In addition, fairly little training is needed to use the software.  Usually everybody in an Accounts Payable team can use it, without need for any auditing or accounting qualifications.  This is another cost-saving factor, as it means there are no expenses involved in training staff. The installation of this software also tends to incur fairly little by way of cost.  It is a particularly swift process, and designed to work immediately.  Free online training is provided annually, which keeps running costs at a fairly low level.

For many businesses, recovery audit software makes a major difference to the accounts payable audit process. Much can be learnt from the process of looking for duplicate payments, particularly in terms of how the accounts payable department works and any weaknesses it might have, so using your existing team to find these errors is often a wise business decision.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Phono amp is the component that will make your LPs sound great again

Paul Audio Visual

People collect vinyl for a number of reasons. Some music lovers believe that it sounds better than modern music storage systems; the digitisation process can result in music sounding too ‘clean’, whereas the analogue method used by LPs is more ‘real’. Others may have a large record collection left over from the era before tapes, CDs and mp3s took off. Either way, if you want to listen to your record collection – and get good sound quality out of it – then you will want some specialist equipment. A phono stage (also known as a phono preamp or a phono amp) is the missing link that you can use to hook up a turntable to modern stereo equipment. If you’re a music lover, then you will appreciate that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link; you can’t expect to play good music on a bad stereo set and like the result.

This can present problems if you’ve spent a lot of money on cutting-edge equipment. Mostly, modern stereo sets are designed to play CDs and mp3s, and maybe tapes. What they are not designed to do is play vinyl. There may be a plug in the back for you to connect your turntable, but that in itself doesn’t ensure a good listening experience. The problem is that the signal that comes off a turntable is much lower than the signal that you get from a CD player.

You can get around this by turning the volume up high, but you will swiftly realise that this doesn’t sound good. As well as amplifying the low-level signal of the music, you will also amplify all the hiss and crackle. The result will be your favourite records, spoiled by static. Old amplifiers, intended to be used with turntables, took this into account. Modern stereos do not – and most won’t have a built-in adaptor, since it’s not economically viable. Why bother, when comparatively few people listen to vinyl any more?

The solution is a phono stage – an extra component that plugs in between your turntable and stereo amplifier and speakers. This phono amp boosts the signal from the record deck and makes it usable to the stereo – meaning that you don’t get the crackle that occurs when you turn the volume up high. It is therefore crucial for rehabilitating your old LP collection, and if you have a good stereo then it’s worth investing in a decent phono amp, too.

Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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