August is Happiness Happens month. It is a whole month dedicated to celebrating what makes us happy. Its simple premise is that there is no limit on happiness. Moreover, happiness is contagious and can be shared with others.
The Secret Society of Happy People was founded in 1999. It instituted an “Admit You’re Happy Day” on August 8th of 1999. This wasn’t enough, however, so in 2000, they expanded the celebration to include the entire month of August.
Happiness is actually hard to define, although most of us would say that we know it when we feel it. In her 2007 book ‘The How to of Happiness’, Sonja Lyubomirsky defines happiness as:
“The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.”
The most important thing to remember is that Happiness is a choice. It is also the case that just because you are happy it does not mean you are problem free. Happiness is not a destination, but rather a journey.
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
The Stoics of Ancient Greece observed that happiness is about the quality of your thoughts. The essence of stoicism is this: no matter what is wrong with the world in general, and your life in particular, you can choose to be happy if you learn how.
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” ― Abraham Lincoln
The idea of Happiness Happens is that people share the little things that make them happy each day with others. Making someone else happy is often one of the best ways to make yourself happy. You can make someone else happy by a simple kind gesture, from something grand like making someone a special meal, or simply by giving a compliment or sending a quick “thinking of you” message.
Happiness Happens can be observed by noticing more of these happy moments and sharing them with others. Use #HappinessHappensMonth in social media. Just remember that Happiness Happens.
Cloud storage is a computing model that stores data on the Internet and allows “anytime, anywhere” data access. Cloud computing providers manage and operate this data storage as a service, ranging from offerings for individuals to business plans for very large companies. Depending on the cloud service chosen, files can be backed up manually or automatically and then accessed via your web browser. Paid for plans can be very expensive, however, so we here at Infero have put together a list of the top-ten best free plans for you.
Is Cloud storage Safe?
Cloud storage companies typically use encryption to keep your information safe and two-step verification to ensure the right person has access to the account.
Zero-knowledge encryption is private, end-to-end encryption and means that no-one apart from you can access your data, not even the service you’re storing your files with. This is because encryption is performed on your local device before the files are transferred to the cloud. The downside is that if you lose your password, the data is gone forever.
Dropbox is the best known of cloud storage providers with 2GB on its free plan. It is easy to use, but its features are basic, although it does allow you to share your files publicly. It is possible to expand your free Dropbox storage up to 16GB by referring new users. Dropbox has suffered data breaches in the past and doesn’t support zero-knowledge encryption.
pCloud’s has 10GB of storage free, but you are required to do additional tasks such as refer others to pCloud to get this. It has a built-in HD media-player that allows videos to be played and lets you build your own playlists from your saved music files. It does not have zero knowledge encryption, however.
Sync.com has 5GB of free cloud storage, upgradable to 10TB of storage on its paid for plans There are no file size limits. It is one of the best free cloud storage options for Android, with an easy-to-use mobile app. It’s also one of the best zero-knowledge cloud storage providers.
If you have a Google account, you already have 15GB free of free storage. which seamlessly integrates with Google Docs. However, there are privacy concerns; Google has been known to scan users’ files without permission, and it doesn’t include file encryption. To get extra storage you will need a for paid plan, but extra storage can be shared with family members. There is also good support for backups.
Mega calls itself “The Privacy Company” and has zero-knowledge encryption for files. New users get 50GB of free cloud storage, but this is temporary. The default free cloud storage amount on the free MEGA plan is 15GB; the extra 35GB expires after 30 days. Extra storage can be unlocked by installing the desktop/mobile apps and by referring users, but these too expire. There is end-to-end encryption for secure chats and integrated file versioning and recovery. However, transfer speeds are slow.
Amazon Drive offers 5GB of storage free for anyone subscribed to Amazon Prime, but as a service, it’s fairly basic, has few features, and no encryption for your files. Amazon Drive does have unlimited photo storage, and it is possible to create a shared “family vault” to combine and store shared albums. If you have Amazon Drive you may already have this, but not be using it.
Apple iCloud is simple. It is just there, available as a storage drive in your Mac Finder app, or as a backup solution for your iOS devices, with 5GB free online storage for Apple users. iCloud does come with two-factor authentication, and data is encrypted. It’s not zero-knowledge, but Apple has, in many high-profile cases, refused to give data to authorities. Upgrades are also relatively cheap.
OneDrive is similar to Google Drive. It directly integrates cloud storage with Microsoft Office, i.e. you can save Word documents straight to your OneDrive storage. Free users get 5GB of storage, with a 20GB file-size limit. An Office 365 subscription, gets 1TB of storage. The storage can also be used with Microsoft’s mobile and desktop apps. Because of its seamless integration with Office, it is the best online storage for collaboration. Security wise, OneDrive offers encryption for files. Microsoft’s does, however, have a history of incidents regarding the privacy of its users’ data.
It is geared towards businesses, but Box also offers personal plans. There is a desktop app for syncing between your computer’s hard drive and your account. The mobile app allows you to upload and access files online from your smartphone or tablet. There is 10GB of free storage with an individual file size limit of 250MB. Box for Office also lets you open, edit and save files in Box from within Microsoft Office
All BT broadband customers get some storage space with BT Cloud, either 10GB, 200GB or 1,000GB depending on your broadband package. To find out your allowance, log into My BT and click on the ‘Manage BT Cloud’ button under ‘Your included extras’. It is possible to pay to get extra storage.
Keeping Your Online Storage Secure
It is important to keep your online storage and data safe:
Change your password regularly and don’t use the same password across multiple websites.
Don’t use predictable passwords. Choose a secure password using a combination of key words and numbers.
If you struggle to remember large numbers of passwords, use a password safe or password manager to store them securely online.
Turn off the auto-upload function on services such as Dropbox or Google Photos. These services automatically save a backup version of your documents.
Plastic is a problem that we have all become increasingly aware of. Organisations like Greenpeace and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation report that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, causing devastation to the oceans and horrifying damage to wildlife We need to drastically reduce the amount of plastic that is being discarded each day. As we return to our offices, cutting down the plastic used there would be a great start. We’ve put together a list of ways to reduce plastic waste in your workplace.
Provide Unlimited Filtered Water
Single-use plastic water bottles are among the most common items we find washed up on beaches. Globally we use a million plastic bottles a minute, which seems totally indefensible in countries where tap water is safe, clean and free.
Install a mains-fed filtered water cooler or put a water filter on the office kitchen tap. Filtered tap water tastes better and is healthier than bottled water. Encourage your colleagues to use reusable water bottles.
Encourage Staff to Bring Their Own Lunch
A lot of plastic waste comes from staff lunches Provide your staff with facilities to store and reheat food and encourage them to bring in their own lunch. This cuts out shop-bought sandwiches, ready-made meals and pasta dishes in single-use plastic packaging.
Reusables Items in Kitchens & Canteens
Provide reusable items in the kitchen and canteen areas and/or encourage colleagues to bring their own plates, cups, bowls, cutlery, lunchboxes, etc., as well as providing facilities for washing them after use. There is no excuse for disposable cutlery. A single plastic fork used for a couple of minutes will remain in the environment for many, many years to come.
Reduce Plastic in Tea & Coffee
Tea and coffee making produce an awful lot of plastic, but there are ways you can cut this down. Have milk delivered in reusable and returnable glass bottles. Use Find Me a Milkman for a local supplier. Have sugar in paper packets or put into refillable tins, not in plastic pots.
Most tea bags have plastic in them. Use tea bag brands that avoid using plastic. As for coffee, use glass jars (just the lid is plastic) or tins of coffee. Avoid machines that have single use pods. Have a cafetière available for staff. Of course, use reusable mugs and spoons.
Give Your Team Something Reusable
If you have budget, a great way to kick-start your plastic-free office environment is to give employees one reusable item, such as a water bottle, coffee cup or lunchbox. You can even brand these, if appropriate
This is obvious one and you are probably already doing it. Ensure that items are genuinely recyclable and are in the right bin. Here is a guide that shows you what can be recycled in the UK. Inform your team, clearly label recycling bins and minimise general waste bins. Use biodegradable bin bag options when possible.
Responsibly Source Your Office Supplies
Think carefully about office purchases, e.g. before buying toner, check if the supplier has a send back scheme for empties. It is even possible to request that suppliers use less plastic packaging by drafting a formal letter with guidelines of how you would prefer to receive your deliveries in future. Receiving less plastic will cut down on own your business waste costs. It may even cause a beneficial ‘ripple effect’ through the supply chain.
Promote an Anti-plastic Culture
Encourage good plastic habits amongst employees. Consider suitable incentives for team members who go out of their way to help reduce the plastic waste at the office. Encourage people to take practices home with them.
Organise an Outside Clean-up
Arrange a littler picking walk to help clear your local area of rubbish, or organise a park, river or beach clean with your team This could be worked into a team building activity where teams compete against each other to fill the most bags.
Share Successes and Inspire Others
Record improvements in the amount of recycling waste your organisation generates on a daily/weekly/monthly basis and report these back. Get the offices around your workplace involved by sharing useful articles, posts, tweets and blogs. Try to spread good practice and habits.
Ask Your Team for Ideas
The people with the best insights into how to cut plastic usage in are your team. They are the ones who know the biggest sources of plastic waste in your business. With a little prompting, they will come up with some brilliant ideas for doing things differently.
It’s important not to be disheartened. You will probably never eliminate all plastic from your office, but making consistent reductions in your plastic usage over time adds up to make a big difference.
Using less plastic in the workplace is not rocket science. It does require some time and investment and you will never achieve zero waste, because that would be virtually impossible. Cutting plastic use means recognising that we can’t go on treating an indestructible material as disposable waste. Once we do, we can come up with better ways of doing things, to protect our fragile environment.
Many people agree that the current health crisis may well have changed working patterns permanently, with more people working from home, even after lockdown ends. Because of this, many organisations are looking at creating company videos that can outline company procedures or systems. We here at Infero recently came across a video editor that can do most of things that a professional video editor can do, but is entirely free.
Shotcut User Interface
Shotcut
Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor and supports hundreds of audio and video formats. It offers many standard video editing features, and with a little practice is not that hard to use
Shotcut can be downloaded for free and is available in a portable version, that can be run without being installed. It is also available for Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems. Unlike many video editors, it’s a small download of only 184MB. It is updated fairly regularly, even though it is an open source app, and the first time it is run the app checks if you’re running the latest version.
Shotcut’s interface is sparse when first opened. On opening a video file and click the timeline button, however, you will see source clips in a panel at top left, a preview window at the top right, and the timeline along the bottom. The panels are undockable, allowing the interface to be customised, especially useful if using multiple monitors.
There are three interface colour themes: dark, light, and system.
Shotcut can do most things from Basic Joining and Trimming, creating transitions between video clips and also adding Text to videos
To apply effects to videos, open the Filters panel, hit the plus sign, and choose an adjustment; lighting and colour, for example), filter. Other filters include Opacity, Colour Grading Blur and five Old Film effects. A Rutt-Etra-Izer filter creates 3D extruded distortion from a video image.
Shotcut will even produce a Picture-in-Picture (PIP) effect for your videos PIP is considered a filter. The tool provides handles for resizing and moving the picture in picture.
Titles and text can be added, and as with other effects in Shotcut, these are also considered Filters. There is even a 3D Text option, with five font choices, something not normally available in a free application.
Adding Text
Select the video track you want to caption.
Click the Filters tab at the top left of the timeline
Type “TEXT” into the search box. then choose one of the three options: Text 3D, Text Simple and Text HTML
Fix out-of-sync audio
It is annoying when picture and audio in a video aren’t in sync. This is easily rectified in Shotcut:
Right click your clip on the timeline and select Detach Audio. This drops the audio on to a separate timeline where you can drag it independently of the video until the two are in alignment. (If you cannot see the detached audio, expand your timeline so it is visible.) For precise adjustments, zoom into the timeline using the slider.
Although there is not any help documentation as such, the Shotcut site has a number of video tutorials available. We suggest you start with the introduction video that is available here:
Under the law, Employers have the same health and safety responsibilities for home workers as for any other workers. Whether the home-working is permanent or temporary, there are some areas an employer should consider. So, here are a few tips on how to work with Display Screen Equipment:
Working with display screen equipment
Those working at home on a long-term basis must be risk assessed for using Display Screen Equipment (DSE) which includes them doing workstation assessments at home.
For those working at home temporarily, home workstation assessments do not necessarily need to be done.
Employers should, however, provide workers with advice on completing a basic assessment at home. The HSE provides a downloadable workstation checklist here: https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/ck1.pdf
There are also simple measures that can reduce the risks:
Breaking up DSE work with rest breaks (at least 5 minutes every hour) or change the work activity if possible.
Regularly change whilst working and don’t remain static.
Periodically move around and try stretching exercises
Changing work activity focus and blink to avoid eye fatigue.
If employees have specialised DSE needs, Employers should meet these where possible.
Workers can be allowed to take equipment, such as keyboards, mouse, riser etc. home.
If a worker normally uses items such as ergonomic chairs or height-adjustable desks, try other ways of having a comfortable working environment, such as supporting cushions.
Reviewing DSE arrangements
If temporary home working extends, regular discussions should be had and, assessments made and additional steps put into place if required. Areas that should be checked include:
Developing aches, pains or discomfort related to temporary DSE arrangements
Possible adverse effects of isolated working
Employees possibly working longer hours without adequate rest and breaks
If home working is made permanent for an employee, the full responsibilities of an employer under the law come into effect and full workstation assessments need to be done, with workers provided with appropriate equipment and advice.
Reviewing DSE arrangements
Workers may be using tablets and smart phones at home. These, too, have ergonomic issues and areas that need to be considered:
Texting and other small-screen use can be stressful on the thumbs. Limit this to no more than 10-15 minute sessions.
As with other DSE equipment, stretch often when spending extended time on a device.
Posture should be thought about. Use something to support your arms and don’t hold them aloft for long periods. Don’t maintain a bent-neck posture.
Other areas may need to be considered when assessing home working ergonomics, including lone working and stress and mental health.
