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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Visions of Reality ? STARGAZING Week of may 21st?May 27th ...

STARGAZING ? YOUR WEEKLY FORECAST

Week of May 21st ? May 27th, 2012

WEEKLY UPDATE

This week we are ready to jump at the possibility of change. From fast and furious to slow and steady, Venus, the planet of Love, has made a complete reversal in Gemini from May 15th through June 27th. This is an important cycle and it affects your finances, value system, and love life. Time to reevaluate your relationships. Gemini asks that you adapt to change of circumstances and open you mind to new ways of thinking. Gemini is the sign of healing, and helps you reach out to others and step up to a higher set of values.

On May 20, Gemini will take control of the cosmic reigns as the Sun changes from the earthy sign of Taurus and into the airy, flighty sign of Gemini, while the Moon, already in the sign of the twins, immediately moves in for a Solar Eclipse. That?s some pretty serious Gemini energy coming together for one day!

So how will this affect you? First, this sign is about communication?it is ruled by Mercury, after all! Anything that has to do with how you relate to and associate with others will come to the forefront now. This includes your siblings, your neighborhood, and your oldest son. Gemini also likes to do and know as much as possible, without worrying too much about going very deep into any particular subject. That makes this an ideal time to be active and get things done, but also to think outside the box, since you?ll have so many random ideas floating through your head at any given moment.
The only thing to keep in mind is that a Solar Eclipse generally has some lesson it wants you to learn, and since the focus here is on Gemini, your life lesson will have something to do with the traits mentioned above. Pay special attention to areas of your life that involve communication, learning, and trying new things.

It?s time to party this weekend with the Moon entering feisty and fiery Leo on Friday night, spicing up romantic encounters with exuberance and extravagance. Emotions can feel bigger than life with higher highs and deeper disappointments. But maintaining a playful attitude keeps dramas from getting out of hand and allows love to flow without raising unreasonable expectations.

There is a Lunar Eclipse coming on June 4th, so know that the next two weeks dredges up the bottom of your subconscious for you to see what needs to be worked on as you grow along your Spiritual path. Trust the Universe and know that a deeper part of you is trying to come up to the surface, into your consciousness. Give yourself meditation time, free up some self-reflection time, to allow these energies to rise up so that you can begin to work with them.

Make amends and inner perception adjustments wherever you need to. Keep a journal. Focus on what you want to manifest and experience, Then find practical way to create it. You may begin to see results as you move through June.

The Air Signs
Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

Jupiter continues to bring luck to you, but it won?t be there for too much longer. If you want to get started on any home-based projects, get a mortgage, buy, or sell, go for it now and tap into your good fortune. Monday?s conjunction between Mercury and Jupiter may be the perfect influence you need to talk to your bank manager about a loan or a line of credit. Jupiter will give you a helping hand in this area for a little while longer, so make use of it if you haven?t already. After the recent Solar Eclipse in Gemini, you may be reeling from some of the changes. They might encourage you to follow your passion and so put you on the path to success. Mercury moves into Gemini on Thursday, so you Air Signs will be truly in your element. It?s time to get up to speed, especially if delays and challenges have held you back lately. You?re now back on track and ready to talk your way to success. Jupiter continues to bring luck to you, but it won?t be there for too much longer. If you want to get started on any home-based projects, get a mortgage, buy, or sell, go for it now and tap into your good fortune. The focus then shifts and encourages you to get out of your comfort zone and explore new horizons. Travel may be in the cards, as is the possibility of romance. You may want to get out more with the purpose of enjoying life. Get involved with activities are creative and that bring joy to your heart. Let your inner child out to play!

Your Love Week?Air Signs: The talkative planet Mercury flies into Gemini on Thursday to kick up your verbal skills another notch. Being chatty is a gift now, especially with the theatrical Leo Moon dancing into life on Friday night. You?re bound to be entertaining as long as you don?t take yourself too seriously. Friends can be your key to romantic success. The Moon shifting into courageous Leo puts you in the middle of the social pack. Reconnecting with a buddy from the past is possible with the romantic planet Venus in reverse motion. You might even be able to relight the spark in a relationship that?s gone cold or distant. If you want to rediscover the magic of love, take a risk and let your love light shine. This is a perfect planetary setting for teasing, flirting and showing off your sense of humor. The light way is the right way to love.

The Fire Signs
Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

Monday brings opportunities on the work front, which may mean good news on some level. There is quite a buzz building up in your social life. There may be a few changes to contend with after the recent Solar Eclipse. You might join a new group or find a friend you really get along with. You get more chances to improve your financial situation, so make the most of a special aspect between Mercury and Jupiter on Monday. Meanwhile, the recent Solar Eclipse may have interesting news for you. If you haven?t heard it yet, you may get the message once Mercury moves into Gemini on Thursday. Don?t rush to resolve issues that may have arisen recently ? all will soon become clear. Wednesday and Friday are great for brainstorming, but not so hot for business deals. Later in the week the focus shifts to relationships, especially when Mercury joins Venus and the Sun in Gemini. There is warmth and good feeling, which can help soothe away troubles and bring peace as long as you don?t say the wrong thing. However, even if you do, these aspects help you discuss core issues and come out on top. There?s plenty of opportunity for flirting and romance, too. Expect an exciting weekend with the brassy Leo Moon on Friday night. You could attract someone who comes on strong, maybe even too strong for your normal taste. But adding more passion to your personal interactions is an essential step to getting the most pleasure possible with your current squeeze or with a new companion. Give your brain a rest and let your fearless heart lead the way. The weekend may bring news that encourages you to think of taking a vacation or perhaps visiting someone in another country. You still have plenty of opportunities to make progress in your career. It?s full steam ahead, Fire Signs. Things are looking up. Inspiration flows on Sunday.

Your Love Week?Fire Signs: It?s fun time for you Fire Signs. Demonstrating your feelings more openly may scare off timid people, but it?s better to find out sooner than later if they can?t match your level of passion. Attention comes your way more easily now but if, for some odd reason, you?re feeling ignored, step it up and make the first move to get yourself noticed. Your itch for travel and natural attraction to foreign cultures grows even stronger this weekend. The Moon?s move into Leo has you thinking of Faraway Places on Friday night while stirring up your restless spirit. Connecting with someone from a different background or through cultural and educational events is very possible now. Demonstrating your eagerness to learn rather than acting like you already know all the answers makes you a more delightful companion. The Moon enters Leo, kicking your emotions into a higher gear and garnering you plenty of attention. Just make sure that you spread the love around rather than just demanding to have things your way. Sure, your pride can be easily wounded with this lunar placement, but it?s no time to hide your heart. This is your chance to shine by being warm and generous with both your words and your actions. Enjoy the Holiday weekend!

The Water Signs
Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

The Sun has recently moved into Gemini, and Mercury moves in later in the week. You?re more connected to your inner world and so may feel more vulnerable than usual, Water Signs. Don?t overcrowd your schedule, but make time to reflect on the past year and what you could have done better, and think about what you?d like to achieve in the future. You may have taken great strides recently by focusing on your career seriously and making a point of promoting yourself. This has boosted your confidence and may have brought extra business your way, as well as connected you to new friends and interests. There?s a shift to home and family matters, with plenty of opportunities to entertain, bring family members together, or use your home as a meeting place for activities that interest you. You may be thinking of starting a home-based business, too. This is your chance to get in touch with your passion. Keep networking, as Jupiter brings lucky opportunities. Be careful on Wednesday and Friday, when there are aspects to Neptune, meaning you may not see a clear picture. Don?t spend money on impulse because you may well lose out. Romance is highlighted, too, and adds extra spice to your current relationship. This is a good time for counseling or therapy, if you need it. The focus shifts to financial issues on the weekend, particularly loans, taxes, mortgages, and your partner?s finances. You may want to re-organize your debts or any other aspect of your finances that would benefit.

Your Love Week?Water Signs: Putting more time and attention into your appearance might seem superficial, but the extra effort is likely to boost your confidence. Being your most sociable self can be very helpful to your personal life this week. Assisting others is a great way to help yourself. The lively Leo Moon on Friday night, puts more punch in your personal life because of all the little things you do for others. The Moon?s shift puts you in a leadership role. Use your creative abilities to show others how to have a good time and they?re likely to follow. There?s no need to expose your doubts openly now when it?s your quiet confidence that makes you so intriguing to others. Demonstrating your willingness to support people with a joyous smile on your face could touch an admirer?s heart. Your best self shines when you are compassionate and kind in all of your interactions. The flamboyant Leo Moon lights up your resources, inspiring you to spend money on clothes, which are bolder and brighter than your usual style. Taking a subtle or cautious approach now could leave you languishing in the background. Expressing yourself more creatively places you in the spotlight, where others can?t help but notice your sparkle. Red or orange are great summer colors, Water Signs!

The Earth Signs
Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn

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Lea Michele Flaunts Her Cleavage in a Sexy Dress!

Lea Michele turns heads in a sexy, low-cut dress! Plus, see more of your favorite celebs on the scene!

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Sharper Image Cooling Station

Every so often, a product graces the PCMag Labs that will leave more than a few of us scratching our heads in befuddlement. Enter the Sharper Image Cooling Station ($79.99 direct), an item whose main purpose somewhat eludes me. Ostensibly, it's a portable keyboard with a built-in touchpad for your laptop, yet it can only work inches away from the laptop's keyboard. And, as the name implies, it also cools your laptop, but that requires the laptop to be placed in a ridiculously awkward position in order to accommodate the built-in keyboard. And therein lies the main problem with the Sharper Image Cooling Station: while there's obviously nothing inherently wrong with portable keyboards or cooling stations in and of themselves, a combination of the two winds up compromising the utility of both elements to such an extent that the overall product consequently suffers as a whole.

Now, I'm fully aware that Sharper Image isn't a company known for computing prowess. It's more of an entity that specializes in innovative-cum-gimmicky items ranging from foot massagers to automatic tie racks. This lack of focus is apparent with the cooling station. It's a hastily sketched out idea that tries to perform more than one function and winds up doing none of them adequately.

Design
The Sharper Image Cooling Station is constructed out of flimsy plastic and comes in a silver finish. It folds open and close like a laptop, and when it's open and laid out flat, the unit is 17 inches wide and 13.75 inches long, whereas it stands at about 9 inches tall when opened up like a laptop. Opening it up for the first time is a mildly jarring experience because you encounter a keyboard in the lower half but no screen above it, like an incomplete laptop. Instead, you place the bottom of the laptop on this upper portion while tilting your screen upwards. In the end, you wind up with an eye-level screen and the strangely disconcerting, Shining-esque sight of two keyboards staring at you point blank. From an aesthetic angle, the Cooling Station's keyboard is a dead ringer for the MacBook Pro's keyboard, so its keys are in the familiar chiclet style. But while the Cooling Station's keyboard emulates the MacBook Pro's look, the keyboard also has a Windows Start Menu button since it's meant to be compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. As a mini keyboard, its size is nearly identical as the Evoluent Essentials Full Featured Compact Keyboard (EKB) ($49.95 direct, 3.5 stars). There's also a touchpad beneath the keyboard which, despite its superficial similarity to the MacBook's touchpad, does not feature any multi-touch capabilities, like two-finger scrolling.

But before you actually mount your laptop onto this thing, you'll notice a few features on the upper half, namely three horizontally arranged cooling fans that the Cooling Station owes its namesake to. There's a rectangular flap beneath the fans that you push out so it sits obliquely on an adjustable plastic panel behind the system, sort of like a picture frame; adjusting the flap's tilt in turn alters the viewing angle of the laptop screen. There's a removable plastic window to the left of the flap that opens up to reveal a built-in USB 2.0 cable that powers the Cooling System's fans.

To the left of the keyboard are three additional ports: there's a micro USB port for connecting the keyboard and touchpad to your laptop (via the included USB 2.0 cable), as well as two available USB 2.0 ports for connecting additional peripherals. Annoyingly, the micro USB port and the built-in USB cable are both located on the Cooling Station's left side, so if there aren't any USB ports on the left side of your laptop, it'll take some patience and creativity to hook the Cooling System to your Laptop; this problem is exacerbated by the fact that both the included USB cable and the built-in cable are only 21 inches long and, consequently, offer very little slack.

Performance
Although the Sharper Image Cooling Station's three cooling fans performed decently and succeeded in lowering my laptop's temperature by 2 degrees Celsius after a few minutes, its built-in keyboard and touchpad must also be considered since the three are inextricably linked and, in appraising the item holistically, the good must also be evaluated in addition to the bad. And, man, there's plenty of that going on here.

Despite Sharper Image's claims that the Cooling Station increases productivity, I found the opposite to be true in actual practice. The combination of a tiny palm rest that forces your hands off the edges and flimsy plastic material made typing on the Cooling Station's built-in keyboard an exceedingly difficult and frustrating endeavor. While the Cooling Station's keyboard succeeds in emulating the MacBook Pro's aesthetic, it doesn't come anywhere near the latter in terms of quality and performance. The Cooling Station's stiff and clacky keys are almost entirely devoid of springiness. Unlike the better, equally portable Evoluent Essentials Keyboard (EKB), there are no hot keys whatsoever. Only the most basic keys are here. Even standard, fairly ubiquitous function keys like screen brightness and volume control haven't been included. These omissions paradoxically force you to return to your laptop's now-vertically positioned keyboard to access these keys even while another keyboard sits directly in front of you, thus begging the question: why even bother using this keyboard at all, especially when your laptop almost invariably comes equipped with a better one? Those looking for a portable keyboard to use in addition to their laptop's would be much better served by the significantly cheaper Verbatim Mini Wireless SlimBoard Keyboard & Mouse ($30 street, 3 stars), which also boasts wireless connectivity, or the Evoluent Essentials (EKB) since it's practically the same size as the Cooling Station's built-in keyboard and also sports hot keys that would actually succeed in increasing productivity.

It doesn't help that the keyboard lacks rigidity and give off an overwhelming sensation of cheapness. The shallow area where the keys are located feels disconcertingly hollow, and typing on it with a normal level of intensity yielded a noticeable amount of bending beneath the weight of rapid keystrokes. Overall, the Cooling Station made for an unpleasant typing experience. The cramped keyboard served as a prelude to the even more cramped and equally limited touchpad. Its responsiveness was average at best and its left- and right- click buttons were stiff and clunky. As mentioned earlier, there aren't any multi-touch capabilities on the touchpad. As was the case with the Cooling Station's keyboard, you'd very likely be better off using your laptop's touchpad, or with a mouse-keyboard combination like the Verbatim Mini Wireless SlimBoard Keyboard & Mouse or its full-sized counterpart, the Verbatim Wireless Slim Keyboard and Mouse ($63.00 direct, 3 stars).

In the end, the Sharper Image Cooling Station's lack of focus seals its fate. It's a cooling system that harbors aspirations of being a keyboard, and it consequently performs poorly as whole. Even if it didn't come with an inflated price tag, its odd design and lackluster keyboard and touchpad make for a strange, entirely half-baked product you're better off avoiding.

Go for the automated tie rack instead.

Compare the Sharper Image Cooling Station with several other keyboards side by side.

More keyboard reviews:
??? Sharper Image Cooling Station
??? Corsair Vengeance K60
??? Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover (for New iPad, iPad 2)
??? Evoluent Essentials Full Featured Compact Keyboard (EKB)
??? Corsair Vengeance K90
?? more

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Humanitarian Penn helps Haiti, but loses temper

By Randee Dawn

Cannes isn't just?home to the glamorous, glitzy film festival -- it's the spot where two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn recently hosted a different kind of celebrity bash. He threw his "Carnival in Cannes" benefit to raise funds for relief in Haiti, which is still trying to recover from a massive earthquake two years ago. For Penn, Haiti is a special place.

"The job isn't done," he told TODAY's Ann Curry about efforts to repair the nation. "The job of the international community isn't done." That said, he added, "It's kind of a magic moment. It's an exciting time to be working in Haiti."

Tables for "Carnival" went for as much as $100,000 each, and guests included Ben Stiller and Chris Rock, according to Reuters. Penn has been named "Ambassador-at-large for Haiti" by the country's new president, Michel Martelly. Penn's J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been going since just a few days after the earthquake hit.

Curry asked Penn about his demanding nature, particularly when working with helpers in Haiti, and he was unrepentant: "Most of the people I'm angry at are usually international volunteers who are coming over to stamp themselves with a do-gooder label. ... I don't control my temper well, I guess."

Penn has long been a supporter of humanitarian causes, including journeying to post-Katrina New Orleans to help rescue people. But, he adds, he's not out to prove he's more moral-than-thou.

"I'm not going to accuse myself of being moral. ... I recognize a lot of the things that are less than good in me, and similarly there is a very powerful thing that comes when something is good despite me," he said.

And on the subject of morality, Penn has some ideas about the afterlife: "I prefer not to go to hell," he said. "I'd like to think that heaven is a little sexier than generally portrayed ... but if it is black and quiet, that's OK too."

Do you applaud Penn's work in Haiti? Tell us on Facebook?and?follow us on Pinterest.

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