Author Archives: schatzi

How to Find Cheap Hotel Deals Using Hotel Price Comparison Websites

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You’re excited. You have finally decided that your funds are going to allow you and your family to take a trip somewhere. The destination has been decided and it seems like the perfect time to begin planning for the trip. One of the steps that needs to be taken when planning a trip is to book the hotel room at your desired destination. It makes sense to try to save money whenever possible because traveling can be quite expensive and who doesn’t want to save a few dollars that can be used for things that are more fun? This is where hotel price comparison websites can be valuable for you and save you a lot of time when it comes to planning your trip.

Benefits of Hotel Price Comparison Websites

Hotel price comparison websites are not difficult at all to use. All you need to do is to have a few pieces of information about your trip handy and you can get the rates for hotels all over. You will find rates for the big names as well as smaller hotels which you may or may not have ever heard about. Overall, the more results you have the better deal you will get because everything is analyzed and looked over instead of a few choice big names.

Information Needed to Get the Best Deal

First, you need to know the city that you are looking for when you want to choose your hotel. The location is the most important piece of information you need to have. If you get rates that don’t seem very appealing, especially when it comes to cities that are popular for tourism, you may want to try nearby cities if you don’t mind a small commute to your destination. This is a way you can potentially save a few hundred dollars over the course of your stay.

Next, the dates that you intend to check in and out will help to determine your rate. Many hotels give different rates depending on the days that you will be staying. The off season rates are generally cheaper and checking in during the week instead of during the weekends is another way to save some money if you are flexible when it comes to the dates of travel. The last piece of information that impacts the rate quote you are going to be given is the number of rooms you need and how many guests will be traveling. You may receive a discount for booking multiple rooms at some of the hotels that are searched.

Features of Hotel Price Comparison Websites

When choosing which hotel price comparison website to use you may want to ensure that there are a few different ways to search. Flexibility here can make finding the perfect hotel that much easier. Some websites allow you to search by city only while you may also want to find rates for a specific hotel or chain of hotels. The option to be able to do this on a site is very valuable because it fits to the needs of the consumer.

How to Cook Affordable Smoked Food From Your Own Kitchen

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Smoking of food is a method of exposing foods to smoke, usually from wood, in order to give the food more flavour and a memorable taste. It’s a simple method, but allows for extra flavours to be put into a meal, and to make things more interesting on the palette.

You often see smoked food with meats, cheeses and fish, and you might think it’s something only a professional cook can do, or something you might only find in an expensive restaurant. You might think it’s time consuming and expensive too, but these are all myths.

There are two types of food smoking; hot smoking and cold smoking. Hot smoking allows the food to be cooked at the same time, and exposes them to smoke and heat. At high temperatures, you still get the smoky flavours put into the meal, but you cook it at the same time. Flavours aren’t quite as strong as cold smoking. Cold smoking is done at much lower temperatures and just covers the food in a rich, smoky flavour. The food maintains its moistness and gains a mahogany colour – it won’t be cooked however, so this is a much longer process.

However, as complicated as it all might sound, it’s all very easy to replicate from the kitchen of your own home. These days there are many companies who produce Food Smokers which can be used by anyone. They do all the work for you and are completely simple and safe to use.

Companies like Bradley Smokers have created Food Smokers which only require you to follow simple instructions, and then food can be smoked for up to eight hours without you having to intervene. You might also think that smoking food might cause food to be unsafe to eat, or for smoke to be produced from the machine and go throughout your home. Again, new companies have created food smokers entirely with the home in mind. Smoke is completely maintained within the machine, meaning you don’t have to worry about ventilation or smoke being carried through the house. The smoke applied on the food is minimal too, so is completely safe for consumption with just the extra great smoked taste having been applied.

Being aimed for use in the home, these food smokers are compact and affordable, able to fit snugly in the kitchen, and not hit you hard in the pocket. As well as Bradley, there are many companies which produce food smokers, so it’s worth a look around at alternative products before deciding on which product to buy.

Madrid – An Exciting Honeymoon Destination Just For You

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Honeymoon is really a tempting experience that we all wait and plan for years. But choosing the best place in order to make your honeymoon worth mesmerizing is the most serious trouble that most of face. But believe me Madrid is really an astonishing destination that will allure you and you will yourself discover that nothing can defeat the charm of this place.

Madrid is the most admired tourist attractions and the largest city in the Spanish Capital. The magnificent city is located in the river Manzanares and is the home for cultural heritage. The city boasts of rich historical and romantic destinations and is positioned at the geographical center of the Iberian Peninsula.

Best time to visit
The most preferred time to be in the place is the spring and fall season however May and October are the ideal months when weather is good and crowd is normal.

How To Reach
You can take up any of the international flight departing from the international airport near you and if you are in Spain only then you can use the sea ways, trains, rods as well.

Places to visit in Madrid

1. Puerta Del Sol
This is the central part of Madrid and is the position from where all Spain’s radial highways start on. In the central place of the Puerta Del Sol there is a statue made on the Madrid’s coat of arms, illustrating a bear standing against a tree. And you will find the same bear all over state.

2. The Plaza Mayor
This is a great and historical square build up in 1617 with 136 houses and 437 balconies. It is a popular meeting area particularly on Sundays when people come and socialize here. This place is a host to fiestas, bullfights and even public executions as well.

3. Gran Via
Gran Via is one of the most vigorous and commercial streets in the city. You can witness a variety of different styles of preserved monuments and architecture.

Best featured hotels in Madrid

1. Preciados VIP
It is a great hotel situated in the heart of city, Madrid and is close to puerta Del sol. This is a home of unbelievable luxury on the reasonable prices.

2. Vincci via -66
You will experience all the advance amenities in this deluxe accommodation, positioned between puerta Del sol and plaza espana.

Go to Madrid and enjoy the flavor of real romance accompanied by enchanting natural beauty. You will feel the vivacious energy of this place and will mesmerize the joy all thorough your life.

Pre-Order and DLC Culture: Solved!

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One of the biggest problems in gaming is the culture that has developed surrounding downloadable content and pre-ordering video games. It’s gotten completely out of hand. These problem are actually two entirely separate issues, that have some significant overlap. The reason I am looping them together is because they both have the same solution, which I will get into later.

Let’s start with pre-ordering. The problem with it is that you are paying money before you receive a product. It’s an insane concept. You have no idea of knowing what the quality of the product might be. Have you ever played a game that was absolutely garbage? If you haven’t, I wish I were you. Can we switch lives? This has nothing to do with this article, I just hate my life. Anyways, I have played truly awful games before. The first “Two Worlds,” and “Cabela’s Big Game Hunter” both unfortunately come to mind. Both were pieces of absolute garbage. Now imagine waiting in line for two hours in the cold waiting for a game you’ve already waited for a year and half. You paid 65-ish dollars for this game with money you worked your ass off for. You followed the news of this game from day one. You were absolutely gutted to hear it was delayed by six months. You’re super pumped and you drive home. You took the next day off even though you know you need the money, just so you can play all day with a much needed day off. You put the game in, and let it install. It does its thing and you boot it up. Hmm, that’s weird… this doesn’t look like it did with the previews. You controls are a bit weird. A couple hours later and you’re furious. The game isn’t just bad, it’s boring. It’s uninteresting, and bland. It’s missions are weird, the revolutionary gameplay aspects are just gimmicks. The story they touted as engaging is awful. The main character has personality of a plank of wood. The game I am describing is the disappointment of 2014 known as Watchdogs. I was excited for this game for the longest time. I bought a PS4 to play this game. This was the best case for the next gen console. The poster child of why you should upgrade your consoles. I was basically tripping over myself to give my money to the game developers and publishers. And then it came out. Then all the controversy happened. It turns out the game we were shown at the E3, or electronic entertainment expo for those who don’t know, was running on a very high end PC. The game we got looked like that game but put through the world’s worst Instagram filters.

This showcases the problem. The textures are muddier. The lighting is noticeably less real. The shadows are less dynamic. If you look at the lights above the main character’s head in the E3 version the look like they have real depth, on the PC release they look blurry and painted on by the world’s laziest artist. And that’s the PC! It’s running at maximum graphics, all features enabled. I was playing on a console, which wouldn’t even look this good. I might as well have been playing the game with my dad’s glasses on, or playing a different game entirely. I would sue these guys for false advertising if I knew what that meant.

Seriously though, we were promised the game would look like the one on the left, and that it would run on consoles. Let’s relate this back to pre-ordering. You went into the store in let’s say May. The game comes out in November. That’s six months of which they have your money, and you haven’t even received a product. Why in the world would a company have the desire to back up their claims of graphics, game play, story, or even just technical competence if you’ve already given them your money. They know that if you had waited to see reviews of this game before it came out you would have hopefully saved your money for food and water for your starving children. So what do they do? They offer you a crap tier consolation prize in the form of pre-order bonuses. Oh boy, a skin for a gun, an exclusive pet, oh boy a DLC level that’s just made up of already made assets. These bonuses are there to trick you into giving up your money, with little to no effort from the publisher or developer in order to give you anything worth while. It’s a cheap con to make sure that you’re in their pocket before they even have to provide you with anything. It’s seriously a stupid concept. There is one pre-order concept that especially pisses me off.

I am a huge “Mass Effect” fan. If you ask any of my friends, they will ask you what my favorite things are, It goes “Mass Effect”, food and “Mass Effect.” In that order. However, when “Mass Effect 3” was being released they announced a pre-order bonus. A brand new whole mission that would add about 30 minutes of game play to the game, as well as a new character to talk to. The best part was that you got it for free just for pre-ordering! That’s amazing! However, as the game got closer to release it was found out that the pre-order bonus downloadable content (or DLC for short) was already on the discs that were being shipped. That meant that it was already on the game you just bought. The DLC you just bought was essentially a piece of code that allowed you access that part of the game. On the game you just bought for full retail price. That really angered me. That is actively trying to screw over the consumer. It is truly an anti-consumer policy. The concept of pre-ordering as a way to get access to a game you already paid for should be unthinkable, but instead it became rather common, and this the phrase “Day one DLC” was coined. This leads me really well into my second problem that needs solving: DLC.

It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I am disappointed

I remember when DLC was really expensive, but really worth it. Back then it was called “Expansion Packs” Look at “Dragon Age: Origins.” “Dragon Age: Awakening” was a 30 hour full on game pretty much that you paid a lot of money for, 40 dollars. However, you got a lot more for your money. Fast forward to the current game in the series, “Dragon Age: Inquisition,” where you pay 15 bucks (or there about) for about 3 hours of game play. There were 3 big DLC’s so that means you spend 45 dollars for 9 hours of game play. That’s a clear loss for the consumer. The worst part? Dragon Age is an example of DLC done correctly. Call of Duty has been charging 15 dollars for map packs for several years now. Several of those maps are just recycled maps from previous games. So they literally just conned you into buying the same thing twice! How crazy is that?!

So here’s the solution: Stop. Just Stop. Stop pre-ordering. Stop buying crap DLC’s. Stop buying products before you read a review. Hell, that last bit of advice applies to everything not just video games. Please, be wise with your money. At the end of the day, money is a physical manifestation of time you’ve spent. If you don’t value your money, surely you value your time. If we stop letting developers and publishers take advantage of us, if stop giving them money for services not received, if stop buying cosmetic items for too much money, then surely they will listen to us. That’s the only time they will listen to us. When we say enough is enough! We will not be taken advantage of. You need us, we do not need you. We have to hit them where it hurts: their wallets.