2006 November | Women Blog

A hair routine that has me totally hooked is a warm oil hair massage. The massage does wonders not just for my hair but for the rest of me too. I love surrendering my mane to the hands of the hair salon expert who weaves her magic into about 20 minutes of hair massage with warm oil.

With the slow sure touch on the scalp, you can feel your stresses slowly ebb away. The hair massage usually extends to the neck and upper back. To feel the warm oil seeping into the scalp, the pressure on the hairline and at the nape of the neck and the gentle pull on the hair roots lulls me into a peaceful state.

Benefits of hair oil massage are manifold:

• Instant revving up of the blood and lymphatic circulation
• Relief from stress and often headaches and migraine too
• Boost in circulation helps hair follicles thereby promoting hair growth
• Hair is conditioned and therefore more manageable
• Dry and damaged hair respond well to regular hair oil massage treatments

Choosing the oil for hair massage is based on individual choice, from the heavier almond or olive oil to herb-infused coconut oil. For ages, warm oil has been used in India for massaging the hair and body. Hair oil is infused with herbs and hibiscus flowers to promote healthy hair.

If you do not have the time for a leisurely hair massage at the salon, why not try one yourself at home. Doesn’t promise to be the real thing but nevertheless it sure does good! Take some oil in a bowl and place it in a pan of hot water. When it is comfortably warm to the touch, you can apply the oil to different areas of your scalp with a small wad of cotton. Part your hair so as to work it into all parts of the scalp. Then work it in with the fingers using slow circular movements. Continue this for a few minutes or as long as you can manage it without your arms screaming for help. Dip a towel in hot water, wring it out and wrap it round your head.

Whilst on hair oil massages and caring for hair and you, read up what we researched on these topic:

Faster hair growth - Tips on enhancing hair growth.

Damaged hair care - Managing damaged Hair.

It was just the other day that my friend Rhea called me over to look over and help her try out her new buy – a thermal hair straightener. With hair straightening taking women all over by storm, it wasn’t surprising that I took on her invitation right away. The hair straightener looked like a pair of flat tongs, each having a heating element within. The manual said that all you had to do was place your hair between the heated tongs and pull along till the end of the hair shaft…and voila! You should have ramrod straight locks!

Both of us had done our homework and read tons of material on temporary hair straighteners. My friend was forever lamenting that she didn’t like the look of her curly hair. Not wanting to subject her hair to chemical straightening treatments, it was decided that the hair straightener was the next best bet. So she was itching to get her hands on the hair straightener in the fond hope that it would lend the straight silky locks that she so desired.

The ceramic hair straightener offered the user the ability to control heat settings. Combining electrical, mechanical and thermal forces, this contraption offered to smoothen frizzy locks. The heat from the hair straightening iron causes temporary restructure of hair, thereby flattening it. The force applied by the tongs squeezes and realigns cuticles of the hair shaft so as to make it appear smooth and straight.

Applying hair moisturizer before using the hair straightener was good piece of advice. This prevented Rhea’s hair from turning excessively dry. It is not wise to use a hair straightener everyday, as the hair needs some time to recover from being subject to heat settings. It is essential to follow up regular hair straightening with deep conditioning so that the shine and bounce is maintained and flyaway hair is kept at bay. Do not use a hair straightener on wet hair for fear of singeing it.

What I have noticed is that hair straighteners tend to work best on those who have wavy hair. Extremely curly locks tend to get straightened but end up looking like coiled springs, ready to spring back to original condition. This often lends an unnatural appearance and the hair lacks natural bounce. So do we stick to the adage that its best to make the most of what nature has given us?

For those of you who want a refreshing hair treatment that is sure to perk you up and soothe away the stress, I will come back next week with interesting details on hair oil massage. In the meanwhile, I am sure our articles on various hair treatments will find favor with you:

Hair Straightening - Detailed article on hair straightening.

Blow Drying Hair - Traps and Tips on blow drying your Hair…

In this part we consider more tools which will be useful for any general purpose job around the house or in your garage. But primarily we will devote more attention on some of the basic precautions needed to work with or handle electrical circuits.

1. Spanners or Wrenches– They come in all sizes and shapes. The most versatile and the most abused spanner is the Adjustable Wrench. As we have said many times, always exercise caution in using them. Apply force only in the direction of the fixed jaw and not in the direction of the movable jaw. A movable joint takes a lot of punishment and eventually the grip loosens. If the nut or bolt slips, you run the risk of injury as well. Alternatively, any undue force applied can wreck the bolt or its head. Another type to work with pipes and pipe fittings comes with serrated jaws is called as Pipe wrench. Look for prime quality drop forged wrenches for long life – both for self and for the tools.

Fixed Wrenches are available in many forms too – Open ended, combination or socket types ( box spanners). Ideally box spanners enable the application of maximum force with minimum damage. Buy a set of spanners - with various sizes.

2 . Line Tester – A small screwdriver which has a built in neon bulb that lights up when the tip comes in contact with a live wire. You must touch the back end of the tester while testing for live wire. That provides the return path to the neon bulb’s electric circuit. This tester is the basic tool to identify the live wire when you are working with mains supply.

Working with mains electricity:

When working with mains supply it is essential to be highly cautious. A normal household supply in the US is 110 Volts while in Europe it is 220 Volts. The higher the voltage the higher is the possibility of passing higher currents. “It is the mills that kills and volts that jolts” goes an old saying about electricity. The mills here represent the milli amperes. Ampere is the unit of current. As low as 8 milliampere can result in fatality when it passes through our body.

In a dry environment, most individuals exhibit skin resistance of around 100 K Ohms. Ohms is the unit of resistance. However, when the skin is in contact with moisture or liquid, the resistance drops to less than a few K Ohms, which will allow dangerous currents to pass through bodies. This is one of the main reasons why restrooms and bathrooms are veritable death traps when you come in contact with the mains supply.

Always turn off the power supply before you undertake any repair. When you are rigging up power to outside the house, use a suitably rated 1:1 isolation transformer for better safety. Normally a household mains supply is configured with a live (Red wire) and a neutral (black wire) between which there exists a 110 Volts potential difference. The neutral connection is referenced to the ground and hence anyone touching a live wire standing on the ground poses the fatal return path to the mains supply. Adding an isolation transformer makes the electrical supply floating without any reference to the ground. Next time when you rig up the outdoor Christmas lightings, add an adequately rated isolation transformer.

Most households these days invest in residual current circuit breaker or residual current device or Ground fault Circuit Interrupter or Earth leakage circuit breaker – which all refer to the device which trips the power supply when there is a residual leakage current from a faulty appliance. These devices trip the power supply within a few milliseconds. Still it is prudent not to depend on them always when you draw power to exposed regions outside the house.

Disclaimer: This series of articles contains general information on home maintenance of household machinery. This is not an exhaustive list of service procedures. A lay user can only attend to general maintenance with limited skills and tools. All electrical and electronic machines operate at lethal voltages and can CAUSE serious damage or even electrocution or shock hazard to self and home. It is positively dangerous to even attempt to repair any electrical machine without the required skills or knowledge. Always refer servicing to qualified technicians or the dealer. For detailed troubleshooting, refer to owner’s manual and service manual if available. The information contained herein is only for general reference and does not carry any warranty implied or otherwise. You use the information provided here at your own risk.

We have covered hundreds of articles on Home Improvement and home appliance care in our women portal – Targetwoman. It dawned on us last week – when our front office lock jammed and held us captive inside for a few hours until an enterprising colleague decided to take matters into her hand and released the lock by unscrewing the lock’s outer bezel … that women can be very handy too as much as their male counterparts – only if they had the right knowledge and tools.

With that enlightenment, a consensus was arrived to the immediate effect that some kind of detailed information and steps to become a “handywoman” must be included in our repertoire.

Our Admin who has over 10 years of experience as an electronics bench service engineer in his earlier avatar was roped in to write about this series on – Handywoman.

We will cover some easy hands-on projects in this section as well to illustrate that anyone can attempt and complete successfully easy household tasks and home maintenance with the right information and right tools. It is not rocket science and all you need is a bit of patience to learn a few basic skills.

With that as the prelude to this section, we start with the basic hand tools.

Tools last a lifetime if you buy the right quality tools. Generally speaking hand tools are made of forged steel and should last for generations. Do not buy cheap quality tools. They can cause potential injury and invariably useless. Buy only the best quality tools and working with them can be a pleasure. And most importantly use a tool for what it was intended. Never try to substitute a tool for another most appropriate tool.

Any toolkit worthy of its name should at least include all of the following:

1. Screw Drivers - A set of straight bladed - slotted (old fashioned but still in use ) and cross slotted (Philips and Pozidriv). The most versatile for home use is the screw driver set with detachable head and various bits. Still you may need a long bladed straight blade screwdriver to reach inside some cabinets. Screw drivers come in all sizes – from small miniature jewel- makers screw driver set to standard sizes. Use the right size bit for the size of the head of the screw. A wrong bit can chip away the head and you will be stuck with it.

If the screw refuses to budge, leave a drop of penetrating oil to slacken it.

Some battery operated (electric) screwdriver sets are available which makes life easy when you need to fix many screws in a short time. For occasional use, you will be better off with a manual set of screwdrivers. Battery operated power tools, as we will see later in this series, pose some limitations. You need to keep the batteries in a charged state at all times. Nickel cadmium batteries or the heavier lead-acid storage batteries do not take kindly to long periods of discharged conditions.

2. Pliers – Cutting pliers or combination pliers and a long nosed pliers. Get the pliers with thick plastic wrapped handles for working on electric circuits. Comes easy on your hands too.

3. Hammer – A claw hammer is preferable over a ball-peen hammer. The latter which has a hemispherical head is more useful for tapping punches and rivets. A claw hammer comes in handy to pull nails. Check your hammers before you use them as any loose head or damaged handle can result in catastrophic injury to anyone nearby. Wear thick padded gloves and safety goggles when you use a heavy hammer to avoid injury.

We will add more tools to our kit as we go along ….

It is interesting to look back at Thanksgiving history and understand the significance of this uniquely American tradition. Thanksgiving history can be traced back to 1621 when the colonists reaped a bountiful Fall harvest after a harsh winter.

The Pilgrims that had set sail for the New World faced many a trial and tribulation. With the help of the local Native Americans, they cultivated corn and native vegetables to keep them alive. A grand community feast was held to celebrate this, replete with corn, barley, pumpkins and peas, mashed potatoes and gravy, fowl, deer and wild turkey. The Thanksgiving feast is in commemoration of the thankful community feast partaken by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

But a couple of years later, there was drought and the Pilgrims fasted and prayed for rain. As their prayers were answered, they continued to follow the tradition of thanksgiving. It was much later in 1789 that President George Washington declared Thanksgiving as a holiday for all colonies. After much lobbying and debate, it was decided that the fourth Thursday of November would be celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in the United States. A national holiday proved to be one of the effective tools in promoting national unity during the colonial times.

Today Thanksgiving Day is a day of family togetherness, where the traditional turkey and the rest of the meal are savored with near and dear ones. Thanksgiving Day, as the name suggests is a day of prayer to thank God for his bounties. It is also a day to thank those who care for us and enrich our lives with their love. Prayers and church services are held for people to contemplate on their blessings and thank the Lord for them.

Fruits, flowers and vegetables are used to decorate churches. Homes may have a traditional cornucopia, to symbolize the abundance of Thanksgiving. Even today, the turkey finds pride of place on the Thanksgiving dinner menu. You can find corn in some form of the other, be it as bread or side dish. Thanksgiving meal also includes breadcrumb stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes. Traditionally pecan pie or pumpkin pie finds it way into the Thanksgiving menu.

In keeping with the thanksgiving spirit, our special articles on decorating your home with Thanksgiving crafts and planning the Thanksgiving meal are sure to find favor with you!

The definition of fuzzy logic might appear as fuzzy to most, but fuzzy logic forms the basis of control parameters from your washing machine to making movies like Lord of the Rings. We are not going to look too closely at the mathematical fuzzy sets and their operations as developed by Prof. Lofti Zadeh.

What we will see in this blog instead is how the concept of fuzzy logic helps us to submit more effectively to internet directories. To start with, let us chip away the theory bit from this logic and view things in a practical light.

In microprocessor-controlled appliances/applications, you cannot define all variables with precise quantities all the time. You need to allocate certain parameters as dependant on other variables, which will loop back to the earlier ones. Things are not always in black and white – some can come in shades of grey too. Accept this and factor in these in to your overall scheme of things.

That sums up albeit briefly what the fuzzy logic is all about in simple terms. Your washing machine’s microcontroller chip ‘estimates’ the load quantity and calculates the resources (water, detergent and additives if any) based on sensors. It decides the best washing option using fuzzy logic and issues commands to electrical components accordingly.

Fuzzy Logic plays a major role in computer software too. Most of the applications in real world will need to adjust to real world situations. The software must factor in unknown and unpredictable situation in order to be stable. For example, our own Athena health engine uses pattern recognition and uses past accumulated data to arrive at the essence of what the user wants.

Some of the techniques and logic used in many computer algorithms are too fuzzy to be described as anything but fuzzy.

Most webmasters know that getting quality IBLs (inbound links) is essential to make their sites visible in the search engines. To some extent, it also adds to the traffic as you get thematically grouped links under each category. By their own right, many niche directories offer decent amount of targeted traffic to the sites linked.

Most would also know that it takes quite an investment in terms of the time needed to identify, read the guidelines, search for the right category and submit your site. However, always some who look for a quick way out of this. There is no short cut to this process of directory submission. The bottom line is the editor of the directory goes through a painful process of weeding out thousands of spam submissions every day. For a volunteer editor, this unfortunately takes away the time required for editing and adding many useful submissions.

All editors of human edited directories face this problem. Targetwoman directory gets a ton of useless submissions everyday. Unfortunately, the few tens of useful, carefully submitted genuine websites are drowned out in the sea of spam.

A singular solution to the long-suffering editors needed to be found and someone suggested that some fuzzy logic concept is roped in for this. So we decided to implement a bit of this into our ‘add URL’ page.

The whole idea itself is a bit fuzzy. It is all based on our observation of so many thousands of spam submissions.

Point No.1 - A typical spam submitter hardly ever reads the submission guidelines. Many people embed a hidden secret word somewhere in the copy of the submission guideline as is commonly done by some Awards site.

But it takes more time to hunt for the word for the normal genuine submitters.

Point No.2 – A typical spam submitter almost always submits many URLs at the same time. So send the submission page to limbo when the page is loaded with more than one URL.

Point No.3 – A typical spammer types or copies and pastes several lines in the description column. Raise a red flag if such signs are detected for any other column.

Point No.4 – Another trick of a spammer is to type superlatives. Our guidelines strictly forbid using hyperbole or superlatives in the description. Most directories edit out your descriptions if they contain marketing hype. So raise a flag if this point is detected as well.

Point No.5 – Some spammers test the water by submitting gibberish at first. Good thing is check for gibberish.

So we will implement all the above points in the scripts handling the directory submission as soon as we make sense of the logic which is so fuzzy.

In our articles we have talked at length about various hairstyles, be it celebrity hairstyles and braid hairstyles, hair updos or bridal hairstyles. When you have a head of healthy hair, it shows! The luster, bounce and shine of healthy hair never fail to catch anyone’s attention. With the plethora of hair care products available these days, we are never in dearth of hair shampoos, conditioners, mousses, gels and what have you!

Today I wish to draw attention to simple yet effective natural hair care products, items that are easily available in most homes. From fruits and eggs to limes and oil massages, you can use many an item from the kitchen shelf to work on your hair. What is essential is to understand your hair type and what kind of natural products would suit it.

Fruits come choc-a-bloc with nutrition and health. While you always knew that they did wonders for your health and skin, did you know that you could use them on your hair too?

Mash an avocado and use it as a hair conditioner. You can blend it to a paste with lemon juice and pure aloe extract. If left on the hair for about 15 - 20 minutes and then washed off with a mild shampoo, your hair would emerge conditioned and soft to the touch. Whilst on the topic of natural hair conditioners, I will talk of another home treatment.

I for one haven’t tried it but have read about it in most hair care books. Mayonnaise, yes you read right, mayonnaise can be applied to freshly washed hair and left for about 15 - 20 minutes.

Honey is considered an effective natural hair care product. Mixed with warm water and applied to freshly washed hair, it is said to leave a shine and sheen on your hair. Grandma’s tip to apply a couple of eggs on the hair still works well. Mixed with a few teaspoons of olive oil, this natural hair care treatment adds shine and strength to your hair.

Hair masks made with blended fruit and yogurt serve as excellent natural hair conditioners. Beer, vinegar or limejuice when added to the final rinsing of your hair can leave your hair well conditioned and shining.

When talking of natural hair care treatments, we cannot but ignore the beneficial effects of warm oil massage. When warm oils are well massaged into the scalp, it stimulates hair follicles, boosts circulation and provides the hair with much-needed nourishment…. and the relaxed feeling it leaves you with is by itself worth the effort. Wrap a towel dipped in hot water around the head a few times and leave on for about 30 minutes.

After all, a bit of care and we can keep our healthy mane well nourished and going strong for years! Take some time off to pamper your hair and yourself!

I have some interesting collection of articles just for your hair -

It’s Halloween season once again and dark devilish costumes, implements and decorations add to the eerie atmosphere. Google celebrates this season with its Scary Stories.

Google’s Book search, as part of the grandiose scheme of indexing millions of books with the help of the leading American and British libraries, shows snippets of the pages with due links to where to source the books.

A look at the page shows some links to the Master of Gothic Horror Tales – Edgar Allan Poe and many other authors of this genre. The immensely dark poem about the Raven – a chilling portender of Evil and spooky short stories like The Fall of the House of Usher and The Premature Burial can easily send shivers down your spine.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) donned many roles though he earned acclaim for his role as a poet, author of short stories (mostly about Gothic tales – tales of thunder and gore),literary critic and one of the leaders of American Romantic Movement. He strongly believed in short prose often describing macabre tales instead of voluminous works of fiction.

Many of the works of classic authors are available for download from many sources which Google identifies a few. What is shown in Google’s Book search points to links where you can buy from multiple sources.

As an aside, we have a couple of articles too to celebrate the spooky occasion as here:

Halloween Costume
Revel in the Halloween spirit with the right Halloween costume. Check out adult Halloween costumes and Halloween costume ideas for kids and couples.

Halloween Decoration
It’s Halloween time once again; time to create the spookiest house on the block to scare away the visitors and treaters. Read on to find out how you can decorate your home with the Halloween spirit.