All posts by admin

Money – Gold Prices

Finance & Insurance,

If you are looking to invest in gold right now then you need to keep a close eye on gold prices. A lot of money has gone into gold in recent years and this investment has paid off as gold prices reached a peak. While the rest of the financial world struggled, the benefit of investing in gold was the fact that you actually had a physical commodity rather than the theoretical paper property of money that could be wiped out in a very short amount of time.

Gold prices now are still at an all time high. The rise in gold prices started about 5 years ago and and has escalated to a level not seen before. Prior to the 5 year rise seen recently the prices were pretty static for the 20 years before that.

The reason for the increase in gold prices in the last 5 years has been debated a lot in the press. Generally it is understood that people buy gold for it’s value as a tradable commodity and the fact that it is a good thing to invest in in times of uncertain inflation. Gold will always have value and be tradable so may be considered a safer investment than other things.

So the question you need to ask if you are planning on investing in gold is, are prices going to rise any higher and are you looking for long term or short term gains? What you need to decide is what you think the ceiling for gold prices might be. At the end of the day prices depend on supply and demand and what people are willing to buy and sell for and gold prices are no different.

Music – Lady Gaga

Entertainment,

Lady Gaga has never been one to shy away from the shock factor. Although her music is probably considered quite mainstream, her personality and shock appearances at many music awards and the like have made her into a well known figure.

Not content with dressing up as a piece of meat at the MTV music awards in 2010 and also appearing hatching from an egg at a performance at the grammys, she added another string to her strange bow of outfits by dressing up as her alter ego – a man called Jo Calderone.

The question is, is Lady Gaga doing this all to seek extra publicity for her music? And if so, firstly does she actually need to do this as her music seems to stand up for itself, having won many awards and sold in large quantities, and secondly, if she is doing this to publicise her music then how is she going to keep up with the wacky things she has done so far?

Not only this, I think we need to ask, that if she does not exhibit all of this bizarre behaviour in the future, then will her future sales be affected? How much of her personality is rubbing off on the reason why people by her music? Is it cool to buy music by Lady Gaga because she is a wacky personality and would people still buy it if she was just the everyday girl on the street?

There is no doubt that her music is good, and usually original (although I do believe that some songs show a distinct similarity to Madonna in my opinion) but how long will she last? Only as long as she can think up the next wacky outfit or publicity stunt?

Beyonce on YouTube

Entertainment, ,

So recently Beyonce announced that she was pregnant by her husband Jay-Z at the VMA awards. As I did not get to see these awards I tried to check out the announcement on YouTube. However, one annoying thing about youtube is that people often load up their videos with misleading titles and so you don’t really know what you are going to get until you load the YouTube video.

I searched for Beyonce and the VMA awards on YouTube and I must have looked through about 20 videos before giving up and deciding that the announcement of Beyonce’s pregnancy was not on there. Maybe it was but I found it impossible to find. All that I got were people sitting in front of their computer and commenting on the fact that Beyonce had announced her pregnancy. Maybe the proceedings were protected by some sort of copyright but I just couldn’t find  the YouTube video that showed what she said.

I was interested in seeing the recording of the VMAs thenselves as some people I know had not been very complimentary about the way that she announced it and how that might impact other people who were trying to get pregnant but were struggling.

Anyway, I might keep checking YouTube to see if I can find the real Beyonce video but in the meantime if anyone finds it I would be interested to know and would appreciate a link here in the comments, thanks.

 

Amy Winehouse Lyrics

Entertainment, ,

Since the death of Amy Winehouse in August 2011 there has been a lot of discussion about the lyrics of Amy Winehouse songs and how much they tell about her thoughts and her life. Obviously some songs were written by other people for her or were a cover that she has done. For example, one of her most popular songs was Valerie and a lot of people think she wrote the lyrics for that and even wrote the whole song but Valerie was originally a song by the Zutons and it was in the charts not that long before Amy Winehouse actually covered it (with Mark Ronson).

However, one song that was very popular for Amy Winehouse and for which she did write the lyrics was ‘Rehab’. It is said that she sang the hook line to Mark Ronson as they were walking down the street and that he encouraged her to make it into a full song. Obviously the lyrics to this song were taken from her own life experience when her management company wanted her to go to rehab for her alcohol addiction. But at the time she denied that she had a problem with alcohol and said that she would not go to rehab.

Recently, since the death of Amy Winehouse, the album ‘Back to Black’ which contains the song ‘Rehab’ as well as many other self-penned songs such as ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’ and  ‘Love is a Losing Game’ became one of the best selling albums of all time. The lyrics from most of the songs on the album came from personal experience and are a reflection of the troubled times that she had.

 

 

Steve Jobs Resigns from Apple

Computers & Electronics, ,

Steve Jobs was one of the founders of Apple and had been active in it’s management since the start. He had previously worked for other high profile companies including HP and Atari (the biggest maker of computer games and consoles in the 70’s) and also went off to form his own company as a kind of spin off from Apple.

He worked as the CEO of Apple until he was unfortunately struck with cancer in 2004 –  although it appeared to be a non-aggressive and rare form of pancreatic cancer that was treatable.

He was seen at various conferences and keynote speeches for Apple after his treatment and although he appeared thin and gaunt, continued to work for the company. There are many of Steve Jobs keynote addresses and presentations that can be found on Youtube so that is a great place to look to see what Steve Jobs is about.

In August 2011 Steve jobs resigned from Apple on health grounds, after a period of medical leave but continues as the Chairman of the Board of directors as he had requested in his resignation letter.

Postscript – so the sad news came through on 5th October that Steve Jobs had passed away peacefully at home with his family around him at the age of 56.