Swine Flu – What are You Doing About it?

May 20, 2009

I know a lot of people are stressing about the why’s and the wherefore’s of the origin of the swine flu, and I know a lot of people are worried about what they need to do to protect themselves from it in the event that the situation becomes even more worrying – because I hear about it in emails all the time.

However, it seems that although the virus is currently spreading, it’s not actually killing that many people. The guys on NaturalNews.com might well be on to something when they say that this is because we have naturally high levels of Vitamin D at the moment due to the sun, and our immune levels are high – and that we’re heading for problems when we hit influenza time in the Autum / Fall and Winter months later in the year.

“With potentially millions of Americans carrying non-fatal H1N1 influenza into the regular winter flu season in late 2009, there is a very real chance that H1N1 genetic code could mix with various seasonal flu strains, creating a highly lethal and contagious strain that devastates the human population across the world.

It’s impossible for anyone to accurately predict the risk of such a mutation occurring, but the elements are in place for precisely such a development. Importantly, should such a scenario unfold, vaccines will be totally useless because they only target whatever H1N1 strain was circulating eight months ago!

Remember this: A viral mutation instantly renders all vaccines completely useless.”

So, rather than worry about things, I’m making it my personal aim to ensure that my natural immune levels are as high as possible over the coming months, via a combination of exercise, healthy eating, cleansing and supplements. I don’t think Government can help us – and I certainly don’t trust the Pharmaceutical companies to deliver a “cure”, because viruses, by their very nature, can’t be cured. They simply mutate into something else!

First on the list of supplements I’m taking is a daily dropper of Ocean’s Alive Phytoplankton – which I get from David Wolfe’s excellent SunFood Nutrition website. (Click on the bottle below to read more if you’re interested!)

What do you think? Is Swine Flu something to worry about? Or simply a seasonal scare?

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UK Government Launches Swine Flu TV Advertisment

May 20, 2009

Well, this seems like pretty good advice – for anyone with any kind of flu!

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pzizz for iPhone update

May 18, 2009

[viddler id=ee0818aa&w=545&h=349]

Well, you’ve been asking me for a progress report on the upcoming pzizz for iPhone App and here it is!

Everything’s going well and Trygve appears to have overcome all of the initial “challenges” that he had originally – thanks to a combination of incredibly hard work, pzizzing – and sheer determination not to be beaten by it.  Well done, Trygve!!!

Please forgive me for not showing the interface because there isn’t one at the moment – and I’m afraid you’ll just have to believe me when I say that I wasn’t playing a pre-exported track from iTunes!

(Also, my apologies for the dog panting in the background towards the end – I only just noticed how clearly audible it was after I’d encoded the video on Viddler…  I’ll make sure we get him out of the way next time!  )

Now off to play with my iPhone again. Happy pzizzing!

e

piotr gajos

May 3, 2009

piotr gajos

the pixel pusher

Piotr Gajos is a twenty-four year old student and so-called graphic designer located in the little town of Oborniki Slaskie in Poland. He is responsible for both the Windows and Macintosh pzizz software product interface.

Piotr has been honing his design skills for almost ten years now. What was once a hobby, suddenly turned into a professional occupation three years ago. Since then Piotr has created many sophisticated visuals, including those for iClip lite 2 widget, winner of a 2006 Apple Design Award. When he’s not pushing pixels, he crafts somewhat tangled and vintage print designs, gathering inspiration from environment, classic arts and music.

Music is the sole reason for Piotr’s instant acceptance of the task of refining pzizz’s user interface. His life revolves around music and being able to create visuals related to sounds as beautiful as pzizz made him very happy.

Piotr sincerely hopes that his work will make pzizz’s user experience intuitive, sightly and simply fun for you. But remember — you must not trust him, his mind has been corrupted with sounds, shapes and colours!

paul staveley o’duffy

May 3, 2009

paul staveley-o’duffy

producer, mixer, composer, programmer

Paul is a multi platinum selling Record Producer, his work has been nominated for both BPI and Grammy awards.

He has won the Best International Song award at the Grand Prix Japan as well as numerous Ampex Golden Reel awards for excellence in recording.

At the age of 18 Paul was engineering sessions for War, Yes, and Marvin Gaye. In early 1984 he moved to New York, where he worked on mixes and remixes for artists such as:

KC and the Sunshine Band, Man Parrish, Stephanie Mills, The System, Animotion, The Bar-Kays, Taka Boom, Patti labelle, Freeze, Ian Dury And The Blockheads and ABC.

Since his return to the UK in late 1987 Paul has had success with many bands/artistes internationally and also in the film and TV medium, below are just a few of his credits…

Hipsway. Swing Out Sister. Was Not Was. John Barry. Lewis Taylor. Dusty Springfield. Tom Verlaine. Curiosity Killed The Cat. Pere Ubu. The Pretenders. Craig Armstrong. Amanda Ghost. The House Of Love, Danny Wilson,The Beloved, Lisa Stansfield, Barry Manilow Culture Club, Steven ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy,The Dream Academy, Barry Manilow.

Experience Paul’s work on pzizz for yourself. Download FREE MP3s and get a taste of pzizz energizer and pzizz sleep.

Paul can be contacted here or at 365 artists, attention of Adam Clough, here.

tomas zahradnicky

May 3, 2009

dr. tomas zahradnicky

the windows developer

Tomas Zahradnicky is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Information Technology at the Czech Technical University in Prague.

Tomas specializes in reverse engineering and numerical mathematics and develops the Windows version of pzizz.

When not making programs back from zeroes and ones, doing research, teaching computer hardware or coding pzizz, Tomas likes motorcycling, aviation and scuba diving

trygve inda

May 3, 2009

trygve h. inda

the developer

President
Xeric Design, Ltd.

Xeric Design, a Macintosh software development house based in Incline Village, Nevada, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, are the creative minds behind the Macintosh pzizz software product.

Through an uncannily serendipitous sequence of events, Xeric Design and Brainwave were brought together in Dubai and pzizz was added to their innovative line of products for people on the move.

michael breen

May 3, 2009

michael breen

the voice of pzizz

Michael Breen is a man of great presence with the ability to discover and innovate…

He is an exceptional communicator and gifted trainer who can clarify traditionally difficult topics without losing any of the richness that mere simplification can bring.

These skills and his unique grasp of NLP enable him to provide his clients with original and effective solutions to often complex problems. Today, Michael Breen’s work is at the forefront of enriching an developing NLP whilst exploring its most powerful applications in business.

edward laing

May 3, 2009

edward laing

CEO at pzizz technology limited (formerly brainwave enterprises fz-llc)

pzizz technology limited is a developer of specialist products located in Malta.

It has been responsible for the creative development of pzizz, the bringing together and project management of the team, as well as the multi-million pound investment necessary to bring the project to fruition.

Everyone at pzizz hopes that you will enjoy the benefits of pzizz as much as we have enjoyed working on the project!

. pzizz Technology Limited

. Unit 9, 2 Balluta Building, St. Julian’s, Malta

matthew ashenden

May 3, 2009

matthew ashenden

the inventor

pzizz… the creation story

My first introduction to napping was rather an involuntary one. I was in the British Special Forces and found myself having to catch little bits of sleep whenever I could while staying alert and ready to react to any situation. Since the Royal Marines I have been involved in quite a few situations where ‘napping’ has been a bit of a ‘life saver’. When I was working as a personal trainer, I researched the different techniques of the top trainers and bodybuilders. I was fascinated by Frank Zane’s diaries (Mr. Universe ’77 ’78 & ’79) where he talked about his technique of napping in the middle of his workouts. Frank documented his results and proved that he could train harder if he ‘napped’ than if he didn’t! I was amazed but it made perfect sense!

Several years later I worked with Britain’s top hypnotist. I began learning about the human mind. I realised how important the whole ‘napping’ thing was and how it was becoming more and more relevant even in just ‘normal’ life. I began learning the techniques needed to ‘nap’ efficiently and found that, to do this well needed quite a bit of effort because you needed to learn, practice and then administer the techniques! I then looked at all the relaxation type products and found some really good stuff. I enjoyed using many of them but always found that I had to fit in with whatever the program offered i.e. if it was a 25 minute soundtrack then i had to have, 25 minutes. I also became bored of hearing exactly the same thing again and again… I thought, “Why can’t I have a relaxation system that fits in with MY lifestyle instead of the other way round?”… And so the pzizz concept was born!

My first task was to develop a concept that could satisfy all these ‘wishes’. The primary desire was to have a relaxation system that could be set to run for the exact time I had for a nap, was a ‘complete’ soundtrack (with an intro, middle and outro) and was different every time I listened to it so that I could use it again and again and again – and it would still have the same powerful effect. The only way I could see this happening is if I were to break down the traditional relaxation system into small chunks and have a program to rebuild it each time. This made sense and so I enlisted the help of 2 of my friends who were, luckily for me, experts in their fields; Michael Breen and Paul O’Duffy. Michael is a Master Practitioner in NLP and someone who I have always enjoyed listening to. Paul is a very talented music producer and composer… we used to race motorbikes together. The task for the three of us was to a) create a script of phrases that can be pieced together to make a complete relaxation program b) compose music that fits in with the script to compound the relaxation c) record these phrases and d) write an algorithm to do all the clever ‘working out’!

All this sounded relatively simple until we began work. Firstly, Michael had to write dozens and dozens of ‘phrases’ that would work within the algorithm so that, regardless of which phrases were selected, the resulting soundtrack would make sense. Again with the music, Paul had to make sure that the music would work with any of the voice selections. Lastly, all the separate voice files had to be recorded in such a manner that there was no audible ‘jump’ between phrases. We’ve all heard programmed voice announcements where names etc. are dropped into a sentence. This was just unacceptable.

While this was all going on in the background we had other issues to deal with. Mainly, we had a great concept here but how could we deliver it to the public so they could use it? The obvious route would be (as it is now) using a software program. Unfortunately we were slightly ahead of our time and this was all going on way before Apple had OS X or Windows had XP. QuickTime was in its infancy, there was no iTunes and there were NO iPods (was there ever such a time??) – just a couple of MP3 players on the market with 32MB memories. Software was very much out of the question. The only way to get around this was to create the hardware to run this complex algorithm and deliver it seamlessly to the end user. Once we had designed the spec for the device, we put the tender out to about 10 electronics manufacturers to see who would be best to work with. Out of the 10 companies only 1 came back saying they understood what we were asking for and might be able to help!

This whole process took many months. Luckily, Michael and Paul had got the recordings done perfectly and so we were just waiting for the hardware to put them on! We ran into problem after problem due to the fact that we were doing something completely new. Thankfully we made it and in Feb 2002 the pzizz hardware was launched. We were pleasantly surprised at how many people used it and loved it. For the next couple of years we kept ourselves busy with sales and press. Finally, in 2004 we were able to begin working on the pzizz software. Edward, Trygve (our Mac developer) and I were locked in a room in Dubai for 3 months working on the software. It took quite a while to translate the algorithm and timings into a software app. We had been very restricted with the hardware because the technology was so young but now we were writing our own software we could look at features I had only dreamt about! We were also lucky enough that Michael had a window of opportunity to write and record a new module. So the software took us 3 months together and then a few more of Trygve working on his own before we could release it at the beginning of 2005.

Thanks to the software our pzizz users have gone from thousands to tens of thousands of people from over 70 countries around the world. I really do believe that pzizz is a fantastic friend to have on your computer but I have so many great ideas waiting in the background for the time when we are able to include them. Roll on pzizz 3!!! )