2006 December | Women Blog

The festive season is round the corner and everyone seems to be thronging the stores in a flurry of frenzied shopping. After all, Christmas is the season for giving and sharing… and telling people you love how much they mean to you. What better way to say this than by selecting a unique Christmas gift with care!

As I was busying up getting my gift list ready, the touching story of caring and gifting came to my mind, flashing back from the days of my childhood when I had first read this short story ‘Gift of the Magi’ by O. Henry. It never fails to fill me with a warm feeling each time I read it. Allow me to present a short synopsis here since it would definitely serve as chicken soup for the shopping souls.

It is the story of a poor couple Jim and Della who didn’t have enough money to buy each other a gift for Christmas. They lived in impoverished conditions and all that they had to be proud of was Jim’s gold watch, given to him by his grandfather. Della had beautiful hair, hair that would have put Rapunzel to shame.

Della had tried to save a few pennies but that could hardly have got her anything for Jim. She checked out a thin gold chain that would look perfect on Jim’s gold watch. The price deterred her. As she was peering through the crowded storefront, she caught sight of her beautiful hair in the window. She made up her mind at once. She sold her mane to a hair store that bought it for a good price. Clutching the gold chain in hand, she walked back home, eager to show Jim the gift.

As she walked in home, James gave a look of dismay when he saw her. In her enthusiasm, Della didn’t notice it and showed him the beautiful gold chain. She asked to see his watch so that the new chain could be fastened. Jim didn’t have it as he had sold the watch to buy Della a gift for Christmas. The gaily-wrapped gift was still in his hand. When opened, it revealed a set of exquisite tortoise shell combs for Della’s long hair.

The story is named after the Biblical Magi, who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ. In modern times, we all need to pick up unique Christmas gifts, gifts that will bring a smile, gifts that will gladden the heart. In much the same way, pick up unique Christmas gift ideas from our informative articles:

Christmas shopping online - Shop for Gifts online

Holiday Gift Basket - Holiday season Gifts

Corporate Christmas gift idea - Business Gift Idea

We have covered the basic but most essential tools earlier. The list is not exhaustive and a whole lot depends on the type of job you plan to undertake. For most household repairs and the odd job in your car, you can make do with the tools we list here.

Utility Knives: Utility Knife comes in many shapes. Most use replaceable blades. When the tip of the blade loses its sharp edge, break it off with a pliers, observing standard precaution – Keep the knife away from the body and your face. The broken metal can fly off …

Electric Drill : Electric mains operated drills have more torque than their cordless cousins of similar sizes. But cordless drills are versatile and can be used anywhere without tethering to a mains outlet. Drills have amazing varieties of attachments – from buffing to sharpening your knives – you can use your ubiquitous drill.

Keep the batteries always charged when not in use to conserve the battery life. Most cordless drills are powered by Nickel cadmium batteries, which tend to lose their capacity when made to sit under discharged conditions.

Tapes: Keep a stock of electric insulation tape, duct tapes and measuring tapes handy in your tool kit. Remember to encase any temporary electrical connection joints in insulation tape. It is never pleasant to receive electric shocks …

Multimeter: This comes in handy to test for many electrical / electronic works – from testing continuity in circuits to measuring the current or measuring the voltage at the outlet. Again these meters come in many sizes with varying capabilities. A simple digital multimeter (DMM) capable of measuring upto 20 Amp AC/DC current will be adequate for most purposes. They can measure with adequate precision volts up to 900 or higher. They can beep or buzz when the prods are shorted or when there is continuity up to a few Ohms.

There was a time people used analogue meter movements in the Volt Ohm Meter (VOM). These meters use D’Arsonval Meter Movements, which are very sensitive and need careful handling as they use jeweled bearings. And they cost a packet of money. With the advent of digital revolution, digital meters have become insanely cheap to own.

Ensure that you have set the meter to the right function before connecting the prod. When you select the function to read the current and apply the prods directly across the mains supply – you are causing a direct short in the mains supply !

Currents are always measured in series with the equipment and the supply. Voltages are measured across the source. Switch off the mains when you test for continuity.

Find a good toolbox to store your collection of tools. Smear thin grease on the movable joints of tools. But the handle sections must never be greasy or be smeared with oil.

There’s no one like mom… be it when you are a little kid, growing girl or adult woman. There’s no comforting place like being ensconced in the loving arms of your mother. She’s comforted you when you grazed your knee, been a tower of strength during your rigorous exam schedules, helped you with tackling the pangs of growing up and she’s been happy when you finally made it out on your own. For those of us with kids, there is no denying the special role of granny.

Take time off to buy your mom a special gift this Christmas. After all, you know your mother best. Think of what she would like, be it a piece of jewelry or a gourmet gift basket. Would she prefer a gift certificate so that she can leisurely buy something at her own pace once the Christmas shopping crowds are gone? If your mom is game for it, why not gift her a pampering session at a spa. Maybe you too could go for it together…ideal to spend a whole day just the two of you, getting yourself all massaged and pampered!

Flowers never go out of style. A bunch of her favorite flowers and goodie gift hamper are sure to bring a smile on mom’s face. Toffees and cheesecake, cheese and herbs, wine and cookies – choose a gift hamper that suits her taste buds. Whilst at it, you can even consider Italian baskets crammed with pasta, sauces, herbs and more or exquisite chocolates.

If your budget permits it, why not go ahead and buy her a jewelry gift for Christmas. The options are myriad, from lightweight gold jewelry, silver jewelry or pearls. You can pick up a Celtic Shamrock Clover brooch or beaded jewelry. Buy her jewelry with her birthstones in it. Religious jewelry is yet another option.

Mom’s hobbies are a great clue to finding her a great gift for Christmas. Books, music, gardening accessories, sewing patterns and materials…. the list goes on. If you think you can spare the cash, book a relaxing holiday at a nearby holiday resort that she has been eyeing for long.

There is no denying that personalized gifts mean a lot, be it a simple card sketched by a grandchild or a photo album that takes her through the years or even a small poem written by you for her.

Browse through our collection of ideas for Christmas gifts for mom. They are sure to inspire you:

Pearl Jewelry - Pearl Jewelry as Gifts

Religious Jewelry - Religious Jewelry as Gifts

Gold Jewelry - Gold Jewelry as gifts

Gemstone Jewelry - Gemstone Jewelry as gifts

Holiday- gift basket - Holiday Gift

Gift Certificate - Try Gift Certificate

Personalized Christmas card - Simple but personalized christmas message

Homemade Christmas Gift - Make your own very personal Gift at home

About a year ago, we noticed that we were running up our regular quota of one-month usage of bandwidth within 15 days. One thing about our portal is we have lavish illustration or images adorning every page. Most of the images and flash files are systematically optimized for maximum resolution with minimum file size with the specific intent on keeping our average page loading time to manageable level for the end users.

Images and flash files consumed about 58-65 % of our total bandwidth and any savings in this region would help our cause. But as I mentioned earlier, things appeared to be going out of control for a time. We were getting lots of hits from hundreds of other sites hot-linking to our images and we ended up paying for the additional bandwidth consumption for that month.

Fortunately, as our server is Apache – the most popular HTTP server on the planet, modifying the behavior of our server is easy. Setting server directives tailor made for each directory is quite easy with simple text directives in a .htaccess file. Apache server’s mod_rewrite module is called as the Swiss Army Knife for a number of reasons. You can create a complete bomb-proof web application with little more than a few lines of PHP/Perl code strung together with a carefully set of instructions deployed in a .htaccess file.

It is decided that only pages from our server can use the accompanying images and any other site linking to our images will be served a simple small image – about 6 k, with our site name embedded.

We deployed the following directives in the .htaccess file in the image directory:

All the directives shown below are populated with comments starting with a # symbol.

[code]

RewriteEngine on # Invokes mod_rewrite module

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://targetwoman.com$ [NC] # identify the referer

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.targetwoman.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://www.targetwoman.com/image.jpg [R,NC]

[/code]

The last directive indicates to the server that it must serve the default image.jpg for other sites directly linking to the images from this directory.

Most webmasters who directly link to our images are not aware of the implications of the bandwidth consumption for us. This method ensures that there are no ruffled feathers as a consequence. There is a flip side to this – if someone views the page from a search engine’s cache, they will be mildly amused by a single image in various sizes adorning our own pages. But that is small price to pay for avoiding a convoluted solution for the prevention of hot-linking.