Wednesday, September 17, 2014

How to Stay Focused: Train Your Brain

Another good article from Entrepreneur.com



How to Stay Focused: Train Your Brain:



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Monday, September 15, 2014

5 Morning Rituals to Keep You Productive All Day Long

I liked this so much I'm snagging the text in case the host site takes it down.  All credit goes to 

JAMES REINHART who wrote 
5 Morning Rituals to Keep You Productive All Day Long:



7 minutes of exercise. Yep, not 10 -- just seven. Why? It's short enough that it won't impact the rest of your morning routine and long enough to shake off any residual sluggishness from the night before -- including that extra glass of wine.
There are endless fitness routines to turn to, but the one I like best is called the 7 Minute Workout (and yes, there's an app for that). In just seven minutes, it works all major muscle groups with 12 total exercises.
Start your day out green. Sure, we've all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it's pretty easy to reach for a bagel, bowl of cereal, egg sandwich or cup of yogurt to get your metabolism going.
While all of these options are fine choices once in a while, you'll be shocked at the morning lift you can get from a green smoothie. And healthy juicing requires less time in the morning than toasting a bagel and slathering it with low fat cream cheese.
I go quick and easy, blending (for about a minute): one apple, one banana, one orange, a handful of spinach, half of a cucumber, any juice or coconut water on hand, a few cubes of ice and some flax seed. It's cheap, easy and energizing.
Pick 3 wins for the day. While you're waiting for that smoothie to blend, get ahead of the evening's conversation with your significant other -- you know, the one that starts, "How was your day?"
Decide on the three things that you'd like to accomplish in the next 12 hours in order for you to feel like the day was a success. Sure, not every day will be an epic win, but strategizing in this way will help to move the ball forward.

lock your calendar to achieve wins. One of the most common mistakes people make at the office is not turning to-do lists into time-bound, effective project lists. I've found that people who have mastered this hack are far more likely to deliver tasks on time.
It's simple: For each of the big things on your list, block off the amount of time on your calendar that you estimate the task might take -- and then add 33% more time just to be sure.
If a project is multi-day or has dependencies, break it up into digestible chunks. Use one block to plan and a second or third block to accomplish.
This simple method will help hold you accountable and immediately help you refocus on the tasks you've prioritized when you do get distracted. Too often, we let one distraction steamroll an entire morning -- now you don't have to let that client email derail you from your winning plan for the day.
Power up after lunch. Take the 15 minutes right after lunch to refocus on the day -- a kind of professional meditation. Get away from your computer, turn it off, go sit in a conference room and determine what you have on tap for the rest of the day.
Think about how the list you set in the morning is shaping up. Are you ahead of schedule? Behind schedule? You'll find that these 15 minutes help you identify how you got derailed, what's causing you distractions and help you to rediscover a rhythm to be productive all day long.
Give this simple formula a try for a week and I think you'll be pleased with the results. Here's to a more productive 2014! 
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Saturday, July 26, 2014

Hmm, who knew Jeff Bridges had this sort of perspective. Nice.

Jeff Bridges Reveals The Key To A Long And Happy Marriage: ""But another aspect of keeping a marriage together, I think it's important to - you'll think I'm silly - but to love each other, which begs the question: "what is love?" Words that come to mind are openness, understanding, gentleness, kindness, and kind of working on those things, because everyone has a light and a dark side, I think, selfish aspects, and to kind of recognize those in each other and realize that we are going to have our own particular story at any given time, and those stories, they might not be the ultimate truth but they are certainly true for each of us, so to understand that we are each going through our particular version of reality, to respect that, and to nurture being in love, you know? To nurture that.""



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Sunday, June 22, 2014

Edge of Tomorrow Review - Three Cups of Coffee (out of four) - Fun and Sumatra Exciting



Edge of Tomorrow - Screen Caffeine

Three Cups (3 out of 4) 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just saw Edge of Tomorrow and here is my less than 200 word, spoiler free espresso review!   Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are simply terrific in this action packed Sci-fi thriller.  I'm generally attracted to time travelly sorts of things, and this has that element in spades as the title indicates.  The trailer basically gives you the plot - but these actors really sell it.  I ended up loving nearly every character from the Master Sargent down to the female solider with a hole in her sock.  Since you see the characters multiple times you end up learning about them in a non-linear way which is fun.    So while there is heart in this, I judge action movies on what they did to my pulse - and this quickened it more than a double shot mocha.   I also can't help but think the suits are part of the war future...maybe not the sword, but man Emily is great wielding that bad boy around.   Go see it, and feel free to take the kids older than 10.  Its tense, violent, but clean and a lot of fun. 

 

Friday, May 09, 2014

little picture


Game of Thrones

I'm wondering if I should be watching it after reading the whole books and having a mixed feeling about it.  Everyone's talking about Westeros, but haven't I already bled enough for it?


Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Freeing up Iphone Space

Say you have an iphone, and you've had one for like 4 years.  Lets say you NEVER delete texts.

Guess what? Those videos of  Junior in the pool that you sent to your whole family...maybe your dog sleeping in that funny pose... the 72 panoramic pictures of Yellowstone...well, those take up space.  I personally had 1.3 gigs of it, which is equivalent of a whole movie in standard def.

Apple does a lot of things right, but iTunes isn't one of them.  I just have a miserable time with that program. I mean , who's idea was it to combine the player functionality with the file management functionality with the backup functionality with the online store functionality?  I mean..no wonder it sucks.    Its a great example of why doing one thing and doing it well, the Unix philosophy, is so

Don't take my word for it.  3.3 Million hits on the query "why does itunes suck" .  Webmonkey hated it 5 years ago, and  a great dissection on xk9 just six months ago.  

But this blog is about solutions, so here's one I found that actually worked.  It takes some technical competence or confidence at least.   Follow this, have faith, and get ready to try it twice because I had to for some reason.


The Method:

  1. Make a backup in iTunes
  2. open iBackupBot (Google it)
  3. Go to the relevant backup
  4. Click on Multimedia File Manager and click on the other Multimedia files tab
  5. Sort by filename by clicking the Filename tab
  6. Find MediaDomain/Library/SMS/Attachments and highlight all of them, then press delete.  You can also click to export to a folder of your choice, if you want to save them that is. 
  7. Then go to System Files>MediaDomain>Library>SMS>Attachments
  8. They will be all listed here, highlight them all and press delete
  9. Then just restore that backup using iTunes
  Tadaa! Space recovered, your messages are still there but without the attachments! 

Good luck and let me know if it works...and thanks to the fellow who posted this on the itunes forum!


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Don’t Torture Your Tech


I was at a performance for one of my children the other day and I saw some woman whip out some giant pink tablet that looked like it was stolen from a local preschool. It was pink, with a big handle and just gnarly, and she was waving that thing all over the place trying to get a picture of her kids performance.   It had a Polaroid logo, and that kinda made sense since Polaroid has gone bankrupt and is justly out of business. Because anyone who came up with this thing must, by laws of God and Man, go out of business. 


The monstrosity is shown below:


Really?  Are you kidding me?   I’m like, you better return that before Steve notices its missing from the Blue’s Clues set.    But upon Googling to troll anyone who bought this abomination,  to find out what dark corner of techdom this slithered out of, I came to find that it wasn't a tablet at all, but a case.  An Ipad Case. 

So let me get this straight. 

You’re going to take this $500 dollar beauty that Steve Jobs probably put more love into than his own children...                            
Gorgeous...aren't I? 

And you’re going to put it into this:

No no no no no no noooooooooooooooo!


I understand the desire to protect a precious piece of technology. I really do.  Kids are bad for tech…they are.  But its just wrong, and if you going to insist on doing it, do not bring it out of the house to a public event.  This is why God invented the emotion of shame.  Keep it home. Or buy your kid something cheaper.  

Of course this habit of putting an offensive carapace over our high end designed items ins't exclusive to Apple. Here's super sleek HTC One.  I'd live inside this phone if i could... 

Sexxxxxyyyyyyy

Then you go and do this...

Non Compos Mentis



I mean, is deer or a pheasant vision so acute that it can peg good design from 100 yards? 


"WOAH dude, you almost had me but that slick HTC One really got my attention.  You should wrap that sucker in a Otter Case."  


Not going to happen.   And what about carbon fiber?   Boeing makes 787 WINGS out of carbon fiber...are you going to fly your phone home?  Use it to shield yourself from bullets? Use it as a Captian America shield? 

Phones are tougher than they used to be, and so are tablets.  And you replace them every few years anyway.  So seriously people - stop wrapping your tech in bullet-proof carbon fiber vomit-inducing pink coffins and set them free!



Thursday, February 06, 2014

The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition | TIME.com

all this time, blogging still isn't dead.   What's your favorite?



After reading this I'm commiting to reengaging with my own. :)



The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition | TIME.com:



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