That’s better right?

Now take a look at our top 13 WordPress themes, collected from the deepest darkest corners of the net – so now you can stay relaxed as we have done the hard work for you.

1.	Of Few Words A curious but effective design.
2.	Collaboration Simple and corporate. A neutral choice.
3.	Heaven Wonderful artwork that’s sure to impress your visitors.
4.	Poker A theme with flaws, but shows how effective neon on black is.
5.	Gluttony Not a good name to describe this template. Would work well as a catalogue or data resource template.
6.	Dark Planet Awe inspiring.
7.	Sad Fish Who can resist the sad fish? Cute template.
8.	Duct Tape Business Blog Clever and stylish template.
9.	FreeStyle The very best music magazine style blog template.
10.	Pink Love If you need a girly blog template look no further. Pink as far as the eye can see.
11.	Mountains Design Makes you want to be strapped into you snowboard and not at your computer. Beautiful and inspiring image.
12.	Car Addict A nice layout for a car website.
13.	Jello-Wala-Mello Great for displaying profiles and member information.

If you want to find more inspiration you will find the following sites very useful:

• Wordpress Free Themes Directory,
• The Top WP Themes, and the
• Wordpress Themes Base

Free software has come a long way, with the open source community and advertising revenue models financing an endless stream of high quality, well developed applications than cost nothing to own.

Here are the 13 programs that its impossible to function without. All are used on a daily basis, some for many years. Try them today and say goodby to the expensive bloatware that is damaging your health.

1.	AVG Free http://www.avg.org AVG is a powerful and free Anti Virus Checker made by the folks over at Grisoft. Combining real time protection with email and on demand scanning it does exactly what you expect from a virus scanner.
2.	Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ Notepad++ is a very powerful text editor. It comes with default color code highlighting support for 34 languages including HTML, PHP, C++, Java and more. You can also print from notepad++ retaining the color coding to allow easier offline code revisions.
3.	Smart FTP http://www.smartftp.com/ SmartFTP is a fully featured FTP client that is free for non-commercial use. With over 20 languages, IPv6 and on the fly compression it provides all the features of its paid equivalent for free.
4.	Free Download Manager http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/ Another program I can not live without is free download manager. It is a multi threading download accelerator that offers so much more. The latest versions offer support for bit torrent, an html spider and even a flash video download tool that works with YouTube.
5.	Winamp http://www.winamp.com The original and still the best. Thousands of skins, hundreds of plugins makes Winamp the obvious free choice for your music needs.
6.	Ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/ A tool that I can not live without. Cleans temporary files, browser history, and form history – infact all the junk that accumulates on your hard drive. Add to that a very useful registry tool and you have a program that is better than every paid tool I have tried.
7.	Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/ Open office is a little bit sluggish compared to its Microsoft counterpart, but its free! You get all the same stuff that office provides such as a word processor, spreadsheet and a database program. You also get a rather decent drawing program included as well.
8.	Google Earth http://earth.google.com/ Google earth is a fun tool to play with, but the really useful thing about it is the map and directions tool. If you travel by road then you cant live without this.
9.	DivX Player http://www.divx.com/ A high quality video player that will play pretty much anything. There are tons of free codecs available for download and its modern sleek design is pretty pleasing on the eye.
10.	Skype http://www.skype.com/ If you collaborate on projects, or have more than one friend you need to get Skype. The most used feature for me is the brilliant conference call facility, something that MSN and Gtalk dont do.
11.	Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/ I was unsure whether to include this until I realized some of the uninitiated might still be using IE. Seriously get Firefox. Its fast, sleek, stable and there are thousands of really useful plugins available to download free of charge.
12.	DVD Shrink http://www.dvdshrink.org/ If you have a large movie collection and want to back it up to prevent damage, DVD-Shrink is the tool you need. Most commercial DVDs hold more data than the off the shelf consumer discs. DVD shrink lets you remove un-needed files such as the extras or additional languages so you can back up with ease
13.	TeamViewer http://www.teamviewer.com/ If you need to do some collaborative work remotely TeamViewer is your best friend. Connects without having to set up IPs and runs fairly fast.

]]> http://13tips.com/13-best-free-pc-programs/feed 3 http://13tips.com/good-ideas-to-help-you-have-a-good-nights-sleep http://13tips.com/good-ideas-to-help-you-have-a-good-nights-sleep#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:21:36 +0000 admin http://13tips.com/good-ideas-to-help-you-have-a-good-nights-sleep If you can’t wake up easily in the morning, you may find the following 13 tips useful. Whilst you probably already know some of the tips, some other may surprise you. Introduce them slowly to your sleep routine and enjoy maximum rest for the minimum time possible.

1. Arrange to sleep for multiples of 90mins

That’s how much a full cycle of sleep takes. So, prefer to sleep 6hrs even if you can sleep for 6.5hrs. At the end of the 90mins cycle, you can wake up much easier than in the middle of the cycle when you are at the deepest levels of sleep.

2. Change the pillow from your head to under your legs

It may be uncomfortable in the beginning but this works well when you need to maximise your rest with little time available to sleep. As your feet are slightly lifted there is more blood available to the rest of your body and to your head.

3. Do not drink water 1hr prior to going to sleep

Although it’s a good thing to drink plenty of water to clear the toxins of the body, drinking it before sleep causes extra work to the kidneys and decreases the quality of sleeping.

4. Use earplugs to decrease sound levels

Without interfering noises you sleep better and thus you need less sleep. It takes a while to get used to earplugs, but after that they become indispensable.

5. Sleep in complete darkness

The slightest light can interfere with the quality of your sleep. Minimising light is thus very important to achieve better sleep and wake up easier.

6. Learn to meditate so that you can sleep at will

By spending sometime working on meditation techniques you acquire better control of your thought processes and thus you get better at being able to sleep anytime you want. The classic sleep inducing technique of counting 100 sheep jumping a fence has merit. If you can bring yourself counting slowly from 100 to 1 without interfering thoughts (and every time you have an interfering thought you restart)
then you’ll have the ability to sleep whenever you want (or need).

7. Make your last thought before sleeping to be your intention to wake up at a particular time

Use all your imagination to see yourself waking up the exact time you want to. Use sounds, vivid colours, feelings, even imagine the craving for a bit of water in the morning. Make it a little movie that you imagine happens and attach your intent to it. After that, no interfering thoughts, or if there are any, repeat the imagination procedure.

8. Sleep with an empty stomach

Depending on what you had for dinner that may mean anything between 3-6hrs. You should be slightly hungry when going to sleep. Don’t drink alcohol for at least 3hrs before sleep. Alcohol interferes with the quality of sleep by dehydrating the body and overloading many of the organs.

9. Sleep for 20 mins between 2-4pm

20 minutes is just enough to give you energy for the rest of the day. Having mini siestas decreases the amount of rest you need overnight.

10. Plan to give yourself a reward for getting out of bed

Ensure you have something to look forward to when you wake up. If the problem of waking up is too hard to solve, plan for a good reward to push you out of bed.

11. Eat a small breakfast

Start by drinking a glass of warm water with honey and lemon. If your body feels hungry eat natural foods like fruits, nuts, yogurt and fruit juices. Do not overload yourself with a big fatty breakfast because you will feel like going straight back to bed.

12. Use light & music for your alarm

A radio works better than an alarm because it’s sound is unpredictable. The latest alarms use light that approximates the sun’s light spectrum to naturally light the room. These devices are expensive but an easy substitute would be to use a bright light and a simple timer set to the same time as the alarm (or the radio).

13. Read more articles and tips about waking up easier

* Wake up refreshed! Mornings don’t have to be hard.
* How I trained myself to get up earlier in the morning
* Wake Up Naturally to a More Energized Day
* How to Become an Early Riser