In my efforts to give up smoking I decided to investigate these so called electronic cigarettes. To my surprise the reviews all seemed to rave about them and people were claiming they never looked back, what has a lot to do with the smoking bans, so I thought sod it lets buy one. There are so many out there it is damn hard to choose, but in the end I went for the one pictured left from Totally Wicked Eliquid where they call them Electronic Nicotine Inhalers (e-NI) rather than e-cigarettes, which is in fact what they are.

I have to say I am shocked at how good it actually is, not only does it taste very similar to a cigarette, but I actually prefer it and have been smoking it far more than I do cigarettes. You get all the things that keep you hooked on smoking, something to hold in your hand and put in your mouth, the taste, the inhalation of smoke and of course the nicotine high but without any of the nastiness, here are some of the benefits.

• They contain no tobacco,Nor do they contain any of the multitudes of harmful, carcinogeous ingredients found in traditional tobacco products
• No Smoke (it is actually water vapour)
• doesn’t make you or your clothes smell
• no chance of causing fire as it is not alight
• legal to smoke in public places due to above
• no where near as bad for your health
• no more mouth like a litter tray in the mornings
• will not effect those around you
• saves you money
• wont give you cancer
• you don’t have to go outside in the cold to smoke

There are many different types, some look like cigarettes and some don’t, like mine above, and some look just plain weird, add to that the fact that there are 30+ different flavours of nicotine liquid (or cartridges) to choose from, and you can see the whole smoking experience suddenly has a bit more depth to it.

So far I have only tried regular and cherry flavour nicotine and I like them both. I used to only smoke menthol ciggies and couldn’t stand anything else, but this is not an issue with the e-NI as it is far less harsh due to the lack of tobacco. I am a big fan of the flavours too, back in the days of pipe and tobacco shops I used to smoke flavoured pipe tobacco and use liquorice rizla papers, so itsa bit of a blast from the past and I expect I will have a nice selection soon.

So if you are a smoker, I would definitely recommend you give it a try, i’m sure those around you wont miss your stinky clothes and smelly breath either. If you are worried about looking like a bit of a ponce, all I can say is “grow a pair� and stop worrying about what others think, it’s your life after all.

PCI DSS compliance is now a legal requirement for anyone with merchant services, having just had to go through this myself and knowing that our clients are also going to have to do the same, I started searching for a simple guide that I could pass on to clients and came across this book.

Complying with the PCI Data Security Standard may seem like a daunting task for merchants. This book is a quick guide to understanding how to protect cardholder data and comply with the requirements of PCI - from surveying the standard's requirements to detailing steps for verifying compliance.

PCI Compliance for Dummies arms you with the facts, in plain English, and shows you how to achieve PCI Compliance.

And yes my company BlueThunder Internet is fully PCI DSS compliant before you ask :-)

My answer to this would be an emphatic NO, these review sites are all there to make money and simply give the highest rating to the hosts who pay the most. And as far as any reviews go, these can just as easily be made up by either the review site or the host as no real validation  takes place on most of these sites other than to maybe send out a verification email to the specified email address, which only goes to prove that the poster did not use a fake address.  Many of these sites will also doctor the reviews to favour the paying advertisers, notice that almost all host review sites have the same companies in their top 10. Just take a look at http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/ for some real dirt.

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I recently came across this shocking article which made my blood boil.

Mother trailed by policeman and warned by council for telling off son at checkout
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226056/Mother-trailed-policeman-warned-council-telling-son-checkout.html#ixzz0WvxoDr1b

It beggars belief doesn't it, clearly they are too lazy to investigate all those real crimes and this is exactly the reason why more and more kids are hanging about outside off licenses, swearing and being abusive to the public and generally growing up to be thugs and criminals before they are even teenagers, thus making even more cases for the police and social services to ignore.

Judging by the growing number of incidents like the above one, this is the type of behaviour that the police and social services condone and are encouraging by their actions. Obviously by denying teachers and parents the ability to teach any kind of moral values or boundaries to their children or using any kind of discipline for fear of the repercussions they must have some sick dreams of a future like "escape from new york" rather than the utopian society that most dream of.

It certainly seems that the average social services worker or police officer is completely clueless about children if they think all parents should be calm and collected all the time and that all children will simply do as their told if you just ask them nicely. I think it should be a requirement that anyone who desires to work in this field should have some real world practical experience and I can't believe that isn't the case already. Give them a couple of unruly kids to look after 24\7 for a month and see what happens, or at the very least it should be a requirement that they have had kids of their own. Then perhaps they will realise that most parents lose their temper as a matter of course and make idle threats to their kids just to shut them up. Someone who really does smack the crap out of their kids is hardly likely to shout about it in a public place.

Sure we all see parents losing their rag in the supermarket and initially we may think they are crazy or going way OTT, but then if you are a parent yourself you realise that the kid has probably been winding them up all day and the parent has simply run out of patience, and that is probably exactly what you look like to everyone else when you lose your rag as well.

Sure it is great to think that the police and social services are looking out for the welfare of our kids as we certainly don't like to think of those poor children like baby P out there who are being abused, I know that any stories of that nature in the news always bring a tear to my eye, but I for one do not think that is happening when you take cases like "Baby P" where there was some real and obvious abuse that was totally ignored because they are wasting time victimising innocent people who have clearly done nothing wrong and wont even admit when they have made a mistake and continue to push the matter. One can only presume that it takes up less of their time and requires less paperwork than investigating real crime or abuse cases.

I think these days you need to be more scared of the police or social services than you do of the criminals. At least a burglar is only going to take your stuff and not your kids.

Have you been watching the new series of Knight Rider? It is actually rather cool I have to say. I was sorely disappointed after watching the pilot, as were many others judging by the online chatter, Kitt had none of the cool features from the original series other than being bullet proof, and the only new feature was his ability to morph, which was also rather lame in the pilot, and quite frankly the car just didn't look anywhere near as cool as the old trans-am, and I really wasn't feeling at all excited about the new series based on this.

Thankfully it seems the producers have listened to the complaints and things are vastly better in the new series, Kitt can now turbo boost, shoot lasers and rockets, emit emp's, xray and all manner of other scanning and computer wizardry. He can also generate just about anything it seems from a 3D molecular imaging device, has a super pursuit mode (now called attack mode) and the morphing is truly cool even if totally unbelievable allowing Kit to transmogrify into all manner of different vehicles to match the terrain or simply to blend in.

I still do not think the car looks as cool as the original trans-am, but this is far less of an annoyance now that everything else is cool and you can accept the fact that the car is meant to be able to blend in and not stick out like a sore thumb.

The car aside, the cast are also pretty good, the new Michael Knight (it is explained why he has the same name) is a proper ass kicking ex-marine agent type, so the fight scenes are far more exciting and action film like instead of the lack lustre unrealistic fights from the old 80's series that just made Hasslehoff seem like a smooth talking James Bond wannabe.

Back at HQ there are the genius geeks who keep Kitt up and running and help Mike on his missions with all their gadgetry and ability to remotely hack into just about anything, as well us providing us with eye candy as most of them just happen to be extremely hot babes who of course all lust after Michael Knight, lucky guy.

Everything in this new series is totally unbelievable and technically impossible by any stretch of the imagination, but as long as you are not anal about this and are not one of those people that needs to over analyse everything instead of simply enjoying it, it is great fun to watch whether you were a fan of the original series or not and is I think a great reboot of a classic series for the 21st century and is at least for me a must watch programme each week.