Some people have accused me of having a time fetish. You seen things that happen in my life I have planned down to the minute. For example my drive to work and my drive home. I know that if leave at 7:02 in the morning it will take me x number of minutes to get there. If I choose to leave at 6:55 in the morning than it takes me y amount of minutes to get there. You might wonder why I seem so anal retentive when it comes to time. But time is the great equalizer of everyone. You see no matter who you are or how much money you have we all only have 24 hours in each day. I choose to spend my time as productively as possible.

No that does not mean I work all the time, in fact it is just the opposite. The more productive I am the more free time I am afforded. So if I can find a way to streamline something generally I will which will in turn provide me with more free time. I have found a secret method that if you follow it you can at least 30 minutes more free time every day. A secret that is extremely simple yet it does require a little work up front. So what is this secret? Increase your typing speed, yes that is it, that is all. By in increasing your typing speed by at least 20% you will find you will have more free time.
Think about how much typing do you do? Even if you do not use a computer for work, you are using one right now which is on the internet. So it is safe to assume you have an e-mail account. Which means you will eventually write an e-mail or too. Most people these days have at least one instant messenger they use to communicate with friends. That counts as typing too. If you are a blogger than you are doing a fair share of typing for sure.
Let’s face it that two finger chicken pecking just does not cut it in today’s technologically centered world. Learning to type faster is not hard, it just requires some discipline. Get yourself a copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and spend at least twenty minutes a day using it. You will be surprised how much you improve in little as a week. The Mavis Beacon software is not very expensive to purchase, less that a meal at a nice restaurant. However the tangible benefits you will receive from using it are worth more than a meal at a nice restaurant every day for a week.
In summary if you what to increase your productivity which in turn will afford you with more free time you have to increase your typing speed. How do you increase your typing speed? You go and get the Mavis Beacon Teaches typing software and use it for twenty minutes every day.
[ad#adsense]

a

Pod casts and pod casting is nothing new, and has been around for some time on the web. I have often thought that sometime I might try my hand at creating one. The problem you see is that I haven not really listened to many of them. That is until now. While using I-tunes at work the other day I had realized I had left my USB drive at home. Alas I had no music with me, so I decided to check out what I-Tunes had listed for pod casts.

Well I was pleasantly surprised to find hundreds if not thousands on interesting pod casts, in various categories. I was listening to health pod casts, business pod cats, and even some graphic design pod casts. I haven’t even begun to check out the video pod casts.

Some great pod casts I have found are below, check them out you might enjoy them too:

If you have suggestions of other pod casts I should check out please leave a comment.

a

 Do you often work in multiple languages? Are you learning a new language? Have you ever had the need to translate something quickly and on the fly?

 Well if you answered yes to any of the above questions and you are working with English/German/Russian/French or Japanese and running Mac OS X then I have a great solution for you. All you Windows users I think you should petition the author of this software to release a version for Windows as it truly is a great application.

 Jisho 2.3 has just been release I have been fortunate enough to get the author of this great software to answer a few questions for me. Even if you are not interested in this great dictionary software the author has some unique insights of life and things in general. Now to the interview….

1. Can you please describe what Jisho is?

   At its core Jisho is a Japanese-English dictionary. Beyond that though, it supports Japanese-German/Russian/French searches as well. It can also search in the reverse too, so English/German/Russian/French-Japanese.

2. Who would be the primary user of Jisho?
   Jisho is primarily intended for people who are interested in Japanese culture (video games, manga, anime, etc..) and language learners as they would have the most obvious benefit from a program like Jisho.

3. How can your users benefit from using Jisho?
   The immediate benefit that I see, and this is from my own experience, is I am more willing to look any and every word I see or hear that I don’t understand. Especially with it’s integration with OS X I can look up words by just selecting it and pressing a key command. I can’t count the number of words I have learned because of ease and speed of looking up words.

4. What was your motivation to write Jisho?
   I originally wrote Jisho before getting into university as I knew I was going to study Japanese and would need a dictionary. Since I found it quite useful I thought others might as well so I decided to release it publicly.
5. How much time would you say you have invested in the programming of Jisho?
   Oh I don’t even have a clue. A lot of time. Hundreds of hours at least.

6. Jisho has undergone many changes since its conception. Can you describe some of these and explain how the changes you have done make Jisho a better program?
   Jisho started out as a confused mess I think. The major changes is the adherence to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, and adopting some Apple technologies that allowed me to completely redesign the interface in literally a few hours and still have a fully functioning application. I actually got a post on the Sugoi Soft blog that demonstrates the differences at http://www.sugoisoft.com/blog/2007/10/02/how-far-jisho-has-come
7. Even though this is the latest release of Jisho, I know myself as a developer I am always focusing on future changes. What changes does the future have in store for Jisho?
   The future for Jisho is going to be expanding to more dictionaries to make it even more comprehensive. I also want to integrate Jisho more with the system and their life better. I’ve been toying around with making Jisho play well with the iPod and other juicy stuff like that.
8. Where/how did you learn how to program?
   I learned to program by mostly teaching myself. I did take some classes at the local community college back when I was a freshman in high school, but that was more basics and data structures.
9. What has been the best part of developing Jisho?
   The best part of developing Jisho has been knowing that I make a product that people are passionate about. That my work can help improve people’s lives is still incredible to me. Of course the monthly checks are pretty good thing too.

10. What has been the worst part of developing Jisho?
    The worst part of developing Jisho has been the dealing with criticism of Jisho. Especially after the 1.0 release of Jisho as it was my first time to take such criticism of something I had poured so many nights and weekends into. It felt like a direct criticism to myself. Overtime though I have learned to extract the valid points and steal their good ideas to future incorporation.



11. How often do you use Jisho yourself?
    I use Jisho everyday, many many times day.
12. Do you have any plans to release a version of Jisho for platforms other than Mac OS X?
    I’ve thought about it, I’ve even gotten a few requests for Windows versions, but I feel my energy would be better spend on making great software for the Macintosh.
13. How did you come up with the name Jisho?
    I wanted a name for Jisho that was different. Something that encapsulated what Jisho does in a word. Something like Dictionary is boring (and already taken). Luckily for me though foreign languages are rife of words that we don’t use in English. Thus I picked Jisho, which is Japanese for dictionary.
14. Do you have any comments you would like to share with the readers of Tenacious Creations?
    

    Yea, thanks for taking the time to read the interview and if you use a mac give Jisho a whirl. If you decide to buy, input the coupon TCTHANKS and receive 10% off Jisho through Sunday.

 If you run a mac I highly recommend that you give Jisho a whirl as the developer suggests. James Van Dyne is the man behind Sugio Soft and Jisho and I would like to thank him for his time for this interview and the discount he is giving to Tenacious Creations readers.

a

 You may remembering my post FaceBook is pure evil that I deactivated my Facebook account. Now when one deactivates their account you would tend to think that all your information would be deleted. Not so with FaceBook.

All your messages, the stuff on your fun wall, super, wall your photos etc. are still there available to other FaceBook users. FaceBook maintains this is so you can seamlessly reactivate your account when you decided to go back to FaceBook. Lately this little feature of FaceBook has been prevalent in the news. Many newscasters referring to it like the song Hotel California “You can check out, but you can never leave.”.

 So what can you do to get out? Well if you are like me and have already deactivated your account you have to reactivate it. Go in and line by line delete all the information in your profile. Delete all the applications that you may have signed up for such as Fun Wall and Super Wall. Delete all your inbox and sent messages, delete all the photos you may have uploaded. Once you have done all that deleting once again deactivate your account.

 But your presence is still not completely gone. Facebook maintains back ups of this information on its servers. In order to have this removed you must e-mail FaceBook. From what I have read this is no easy process, and some people have even resorted to legal action in order to get themselves removed. Do you need more proof that FaceBook is evil?

a

 While serving in the military I picked up a good number of sayings and expressions that I still use today. One of them was the 7 P’s rule.

 What exactly is the 7 P’s rule. Well it stands for Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This rule can apply to anything you are doing from blogging to taking a trip some where. A little bit of planning can prevent a lot of frustration later.

 Lets’ take a blog post for example and apply the rule of the 7P’s. So in order to write this post I first have to choose a topic, in this case the 7P rule. Then I gather or create any images that I will use. From there I write a brief out line of what I want to say in the post. Now I know we all disliked writing outlines in school but it does help. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just out line the points you want to cover. This is my outline for this post.

 By planning what I need and locating resources before I write I am able to just write. I have every thing at my finger tips and I do not waste time looking for things. I often times have a great idea for a post, so I will write it down and do a quick outline. That way I can be on the look out for relevant resources for that post while doing other things. When I am ready to write my research time has been minimized. To me there is nothing more valuable than time, it is the one resource than I cannot replace no matter how hard I try.

 When you save time you are indeed becoming more productive. For example let us just say that you want to build some shelves in your home. Now you could just go to the hardware store and buy the material that you think you need. But I am quite confident that this will result in you having to make additional trips to the hardware store. This costs you in time, fuel and wear and tear on your vehicle.

 Now lets build the same shelves and employ the 7P rule. First we would take measurements so we know how much material we will need. Then we would make a list of the mounting hardware, screws etc. From this list we could also determine if we will need any additional tools to install these shelves and add that to our list. Now list in hand off we go to the hardware store to buy our supplies. If the store has knowledgeable staff (this is becoming harder and harder to find) we could ask them to go over our list and suggest anything we missed. If we properly planned our project we should not have to make any additional trips to the hardware store. We save the time, fuel and other associated costs. Not to mention the frustration caused by not having everything we need at our disposal.

 A little bit of planning before hand can save time, money and most of frustration. When you start any project remember the 7 P rule.

• Proper
• Previous
• Planning
• Prevents
• Piss
• Poor
• Performance

a

 A short time ago I wrote a post on how much I love white boards or dry erase boards. Well Julia the founder of Kleen Slate got in touch with me to tell me about some products she has created for white boards / dry erase boards.

Julia saw a need and filled it with her revolutionary idea of having erasers attached right on the dry / erase marker. No more having to hunt around for the eraser when you make a bumble while writing, or worse yet using your fingers to wipe off the writing.

 Now before you go telling me that it is just easier to use your finger let me relate this anecdote to you. While attending a conference the presenter was making extensive use of the dry / erase board to explain some formulae. Well he occasionally made a blunder and would wipe it quickly off with his finger. However one time after doing this he wiped his face and left a green mark across his face. Well no one in attendance told him and he went the rest of the day with a green mark on his face. I am sure this made him lose some credibility in the eyes of his audience.

 The first product I want to discuss is the KwikChek II. This is essentially a paddle with a plain dry / erase side and a lined dry / erase side. My wife who works in a nursing home immediately saw the advantage of this when she saw it. She told me it would be an excellent tool for communicating with her patients who are hard of hearing or have difficulty speaking.

  I think it is really well designed for many applications. It is one of those items that once you have it in your hand you can think up endless possibilities for it. A few are listed on Kleen Slate’s web site. I do like the fact the it has a holder for the marker, this way you can always have the two together.

Other possible uses that I can think of right now are:

• To relay time information to runners / bikers in a race.
• To display the channel information for R/C enthusiasts.

 The erasers on the small markers are incorporated to the cap. This makes them extremely versatile. Once you remove the cap and place it on the end you have both your writing end and erasing end. Much like a pencil. The erasers perform better than any other dry / erase eraser I have used. They remove all the ink with no trace leaving a clean dry erase surface. As for odour from the dry / erase markers they are not any worse or any better than those already on the market.

 The big markers do not have the erasers attached to the caps. A feature I would of really liked to have seen as I tend to be a little bit absent minded and can fore see myself misplacing a cap from one of the markers. This can be an advantage as you will be able to easily reuse the erasers from these markers with new markers. Again the erasers perform exceptionally well and are very nice to use. The odour again is much like other dry / erase markers out there.

 All things considered if you regularly make use of white boards (dry / erase boards ) I would recommend using these products. The erasers perform better than any other dry / erase erasers I have ever used. I will make sure that all my dry /erase markers in the future are equipped with these erasers.

a

 The other night I was talking with some colleagues and they were complaining about having to deal with so much e-mail every day. I naively asked them how much e-mail they get in a day. I was surprised when the answers ranged for 10 to 50. I sometime wish I only got 50 relevant important e-mails a day. The fact is I get close to 100 or more a day, and that is not including spam. They all require my attention, but thankfully not all of them require a response. So how do I deal with them?

 The most important tip that I cannot stress enough is to not deal with them as they arrive. Set a specified time when you will answer e-mails, and also be sure to set the amount of time you will devote to answering e-mails. I normally give myself two hours a day, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening to answer my e-mails. When you get snail mail delivered you don’t immediately answer the mail. PLus the first thing most people do is sort their mail before opening it. If it works in the non digital world, what prevents it from working in the digital world.

 One of the hardest things I had to learn when dealing with large amounts of e-mail is to not feel compelled to answer each and every e-mail immediately upon reading it. After I read the e-mail I assign it to two different categories. The first being the nature of the e-mail. For example if it is an e-mail having to deal with this blog it is assign as “TCBlog”, if it has to do with Google Adsense I tag it as “Adsense”. The next category that I assign it is the priority it requires an answer.

 If you ever take an emergency responder or first aid course they always teach you to survey the situation. After your survey you perform triage and deal with the most life threaten situations first. This is similar to how I deal with e-mail. I have different levels of priority for my e-mails.

• Requires Immediate Action – These are e-mails that require urgent decisions and as the name says immediate action. I try to use this category sparingly. Things that would fall into this group would be responses to contract offers, emergency support etc. I will sometimes answers these right after reading them, if not the are top of the list when I am done sorting my e-mail.
• Requires Follow Up – These are e-mails that do require me to act on them but there is no urgency. If they get answered today or tomorrow all is well. Most of my business correspondence falls with in this category.
• Requires next day Follow Up – The e-mails that are tagged here are mostly of a personal nature.These will be the first e-mails I will answer tomorrow after sorting my e-mail and dealing with the R.A.T.S.
• No Follow Up – These are those e-mails that are alerting me to something, or from mailing lists that I follow. They don’t require an answer and are not time sensitive, but they are still of value to me. I read these at my leisure. Or something new that I have been trying is to have the computer read these out to me while I am performing other tasks. So far this is working very well, but I’ll save that for another post.
• Junk Mail – This is where I dump my spam, e-mail chain letters and any other e-mail that is of no value to me. Generally speaking this is my spam folder.

 Up front this may seem like a whole bunch of extra work just to answer e-mail. The hardest part is setting up the system and working with it. Once you get it going however you time savings is clearly evident. I have found I am more productive answering my e-mails this way. It has greatly reduced me stopping in the middle of something to answer an e-mail. Not completely however because there are times when after a phone call or something I am expecting an e-mail that require immediate attention. I have found the time it saves as well as the distraction it prevents to greatly increase my productivity.

Tell me your suggestions on how you deal with large amounts of e-mail.

a

 Well it is time for the weekly photoshop post on Tenacious Creations. Filters and Actions are tools a photoshop artist can use to speed up their production. Although all the things that actions and filters can do can be done manually with photoshop (and most times a better result is achieved). Filters and Actions can greatly reduce the amount of time required to do these things.

 There are some things that I find just so much easier to use filters or actions for and some cases where I would prefer to do it by hand. I have a mix of bought filters and actions as well as free ones. Here is a list of sites of actions and filters that I find useful.

1. Action Central – this is the main site I use for many free actions.
2. The Plug in Site – another good resource with several free and commercial plug ins and filters
3. Alien Skin – These are all plug ins you have to buy but they are well worth it. They have 30 demos of most of their plug ins available for download from their site. I have all of their Eye Candy plug ins and they are probably the plug ins I use the most.
4. The Light is Right Studio – this site has numerous tools that make my life easier. From scripts, and plug ins to brush presets. This is definitely a resource you should check out.
5. Panos Fx – While making sure these links work for this post I noticed there are a bunch of new filters and effects listing here that I really want to try out. This is yet another excellent resource for photoshop artists.

 These are the five sites that I have drawn over 90% of the filters, actions and plug ins that I use for photoshop. I am always keen to check out other resources so if you have some please share.

a

 Repetitive Stress Injury, or R.S.I. is something that most of us have heard about but tend to dismiss. Most of us know someone who has had to get surgery for carpotunnel syndrome. Or we have seen or heard of ergonomic designed chairs, desks, and computer keyboards. But it something that we general dismiss not give a second thought. However each year millions of man hours are lost due to preventable repetitive stress injuries.

 A lot of bloggers myself included spend vast amounts of time in front of their computer screens happily typing away. I am particularly bad for this because when I get coding (I feel there is a huge difference between programming and coding – perhaps this will be a future post) it is not all that uncommon for me to put in 20 + hours at the keyboard with out a break. In my younger days this never seemed to bother me. However as I age I notice that my eyes, fingers and even sometimes my arms feel the strain from these coding marathons. When you are in pain or uncomfortable it can make it difficult to concentrate and both your creativity and production drop. In today’s post I am going to give you some tips to prevent repetitive stress injuries when it come to working with a computer.

 First lets discuss the lighting in the area where you generally do most of your computer work. Fluorescent lights and computer monitors just don’t mix. If you are viewing a computer monitor under fluorescent lights you will find that you get tired much quicker than if you are using incandescent light. Some one once told me this had to do with the fact that the refresh rate of the monitor and the speed of the flicker of the fluorescent tubes work in concert to speed up your brain waves. While I am not sure if there is any truth to this I can tell you that by working in natural light (when available) or with incandescent lights I find I have less eye strain. Plus I feel better come the end of the day.

 What do I use for a light? Well I have a desk lamp with a 60 watt bulb in it. Plus I turn the lamp so that the bulb is facing the ceiling as opposed to the desk. This gives me more reflected soft light and a nicer atmosphere to work in.

 The next vital piece of office equipment to discuss is your chair. The most important factor to choosing a good chair to use while working at the computer is that it has arms for you to rest your arms on. Lets’ face it, you will spend the majority of your time sitting on that chair so choose a comfortable one. A chair with a high back is preferable as this will support your back more. You will notice a difference after a day sitting in a chair with a low back as opposed to sitting in a chair with a high back. While we are talking about chairs this a good time to bring up a foot rest.

 A footrest offers proper positioning of the feet in relation to the rest of the body. Use of a foot rest can help reduce the strain on back and neck muscles. Choose a foot rest either 3″ or 6″ high as best suits your needs. You can buy these, or if you are cheap like me just use an old box that some computer hardware came in.

 Now we got you set up to be comfortable but we are not finished yet. You need to take breaks and stretch through out your day. That is where workrave comes in. Workrave is an awesome little utility that you run in the background on windows and most UNIX machines. It has timers built in that remind you to take breaks. You set up the timers in accordance to what will suit you for micro breaks and rest breaks. First let us look at the the micro break, this is just a short pause. An alert sounds telling you it is time to take a micro break, you can take the break ignore it, or post pone it. Then there is the rest break, again you can ignore it, take it, or post pone it. The neat thing with the rest break is workrave also instructs you to do a couple simple exercises. You follow these to an animated character on screen and then go take your break.

 I have been using workrave for just over a week now. It took a little while for me to get the timers set to where I like them. But after that I must say it has dramatically improved the way I feel after a long day on the computer. The biggest thing I have noticed is that my eyes do not get near as tired as they used too. Now it should be mentioned that I have been working with a healing crushed finger the past little while. The first few days where murder to type. Now with the healing and taking the breaks I have noticed a great improvement too.

 So how much would you pay to feel better after a long day toil on the keyboard? $50.00, $100.00, $1000.00 ? that’s the best part workrave is free and open source. I highly recommend you give it an honest try. It might take a bit to get your timer settings right, but once you do and use it for a while I am sure you will thank me.

Note: if there is some one out there who reads my blog and has a new ergonomic high back office chair they would like to donate to me in exchange for a review of it go to my about page and contact me. Hey a guys got to try right?

a

 White boards, you have all seem them somewhere or other. You know the white shiny surfaces that you use dry erase markers to write on. The black board of today, only its white and requires none of that dusty chalk.

 I love white boards, at just about every professional software development job I have worked at I have had a white board in my office as well as white boards in conference rooms and meeting rooms. To me they have become indispensable when it comes to planning out a project or just brain storming.

Well in the summer of 2007 when had a disaster strike the house we were living in and my white boards were damaged beyond repair. Where I live we seem to have a shortage of housing so our options for a place to move into were limited. We moved from a house that was 3640 square feet to one that is just over 1000 square feet. So need less to space my office space is cramped and was with out white boards.

 However I learned in the army to improvise, adapt and over come. Since I had no white boards to map out my software projects, or draw my mind maps I resorted to using paper. It just wasn’t the same, so then I tried software. No luck there either, I mean both paper and software worked, but it just didn’t feel right. The ideas did not seem to flow as smoothly. maybe I am just a little too anal retentive, I mean in order for me to draw or be creative I need certain things. For example I only use Staidler mechanical pencils, and for pens, well don’t even get me started. If some one happens to draw or write in my sketch pad, then that’s it I can’t use it anymore. Its ruined for me. I know its an eccentric personality quark but for me it works. If it is not broke, don’t fix it right?

 Well last night I had resolved that I could no longer function with out a white board. So off to Wal~Mart (cause I am cheap and its the only big store around here) I go. Well just my luck they were sold out of the cheap dry erase boards I wanted. I thought I was doomed to not get a white board.

 Today I had to go to the local office supply store. Remember my need for just the right pen? While there I checked out how much their dry erase boards were. Well lo and behold there sat a damaged 48 inch x 38 inch white board on sale for half price. All that was wrong was that it had a bend in it.

 I am happy to say it is now hanging in my small office and I have already used it to quickly mind map out this post.

 But what is that makes a dry erase board so effective for me?

1. I think the most important factor is that it is not permanent. If I screw something up or don’t like what I write. Just a quick wipe and it is gone.
2. Its a big space and I don’t feel cramped like when I am using a sheet of paper.
3. It is real easy to make colorful
4. When operating in a team environment other members can add to it with ease.
5. They are just fun to use and fun is a big part of creativity.
6. A white board makes it easier for me to map out ideas, add and remove as I go.
7. Maybe I am just addicted to the smell of the markers….

 I am really curious as to what others use for mapping out ideas and such. Do you use software? Do you just use paper? Or are you like me and use a white board?

a

 Lets’ face it just about everyone who runs a web site likes to keep track of what their visitors do on the site. There are many great tools out there that do this for us. Google Analytics is probably one of the more popular ones that people use. What these tools don’t really tell you is how your users actually interact with your site.

 That is why you should give Robot Replay try. Now don’t worry I am not trying to sell you something. Robot Replay is currently free and super easy to use.It as simple as installing a bit of java code into your pages header to use Robot Replay.

  Robot Replay tracks how your users interact with your site. Then you can view actual sessions and follow the users mouse pointer as they go through your site. This allows you to see where your user may encounter pit falls while interacting with your site. Plus for those of you who advertise on your site this can also tell you where your users are looking. Research has shown that a users eyes follow their mouse cursor 60% of the time. Robot Replay is a fantastic tool to have in your arsenal when improving your sites design.

 Well if a picture is worth a thousand words than a video must be worth at least a million. So give this video a view to see just how you can use Robot Replay to enhance your users experience with your site.

a

 It seems every blog that runs EntreCard has a list of tips to gain more EntreCardcredits. So it would be like flogging a dead horse for me to do a post on EntreCard tips.

 That is why this post is on getting the most out of the time you invest into EntreCard. For those of you who do not know, EntreCard is a way of attracting traffic to your blog. It works like the business cards of the past. For more information on EntreCard and why you should look into it read my post here.

1. Use a RSS reader and subscribe to the feed for your card drops. This allows you to view all your card drops at the end of the day and return the favor by dropping cards on those sites. Doing this all at one time saves you more time then checking randomly through out the day and returning the card drops.
2. Use the Favorites feature in EntreCard to single out places where you want to advertise. This way when you go to do an ad campaign you can look to see if the blogs you want to advertise on are available.
3. Set a time limit for how much time you’ll spend card dropping and browsing sites. I set this at around one hour. This gives me ample time to send thank you notes to both those who have bought ads from and those who I have bought ads from. Now you could just use a form letter and copy and paste which would save you more time. But I prefer the personal touch.
4. Lets face it there are going to be some sites you’ll want to frequent every day. You can do this by subscribing to their feeds. Or what I do is book mark them in FireFox and put them all in the same folder. Then I can click on that folder and have FireFox open all the sites in individual tabs. As I drop my card and or leave my comments on the new post I close the tab. Again I do this with in the time limit I have set for EntreCard that day.
5. Start your ad campaigns and approve the ads purchased for site first thing in the day. I have noticed that price to advertise on my blog will always be cheaper first thing in the morning. This rings true for other blogs as well. I know it is tempting to approve ad requests all day. But if you do them all at one time it will end up- costing you less time.

 EntreCard is a great system and has brought my blog a lot of traffic and many RSS subscribers. The only draw back is it does cost a bit of your time. I hope these five tips will help you save a bit of time while using EntreCard. Time to me is my most valuable commodity. I never seem to have enough and I can’t replace what I have used of it. If you have some EntreCard time saving suggestions please leave them in the comments.

a

 Recently I made a similar graphic to the one above for a friend to use on her website. She was very grateful and sent me an e-mail full of praise for spending my time to do that for her. I had to tell her that it is really simple and I cannot take all the credit because I did use a photo shop action. So I figured I would write a tutorial to show just how easy it is to create this nice effect.

1. First thing you need to do is to go to addictedtodesign.com and download the free Polaroid 600 action. If you have never installed an action in photo shop before I recommend you read addictedtodesign.com’s guide.
2. Now that you have the action installed select the Polaroid 600 action and press the
   Play button



3. All you have to do now as follow the steps as the action runs. It will ask you to select the photo you want to use. Then it will ask you to adjust the handles to crop the photo so it is the right size for the Polaroid.


all the photos used here are from http://www.sxc.hu/




4. Run this action on all the photos you want to use in the spread of Polaroids. Make sure you do not close the images as you make them.
5. After you have the images you want to use converted to Polaroid like pictures, create a new image by going File > New Image. I made mine 6000 px wide by 2500 px tall with a transparent background. How big you make it is dependent on how big your Polaroid images are. Mine worked out to be about 1051 px wide each. Do not worry if yours are not all the same size as you be able to resize them when you drag them to your new image.


 

6. Now select the Move tool . Move one of your Polaroid images onto your new image. Adjust it so it looks like it was randomly thrown there. Once you have it positioned hit the enter key.
7. After you have pressed the enter key double click on the layer (click on the icon of the image) to bring up the layer properties. Then select drop shadow and check the box next to it. Now play with the settings until the shadow looks right.


 
 

 
 


8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have placed all the images you want to use. Remember to adjust them so they look like they were randomly dropped.


9. After all you images are placed use the crop tool to cut out any extra blank space from your image and you are done. Now if this is going on a web site you can fill the first layer with whatever color the background of the site is to ensure it looks good. But I would recommend saving it with a transparent background. That way it the site changes background color it will still look like it belongs. Below is the finished project

a

 While I was surfing through numerous Word Press sites today I notice a bunch had this nifty Comment Luv Plug in. When you leave a comment at a site running this plug in it will automatically retrieve the commenter’s last post and place a link to it with their comment.

 What a great way to not only encourage comments but help send some traffic to your fellow bloggers. I am pleased to announce that Tenacious Creations now has this plug in enabled. Comments are still moderated so you can not simply post spam in order to get links. But if you leave a comment related to the post be it good or bad it is almost always approved. If you have left a comment that has not been approved it may of got caught in my spam filters. Feel free to use the contact form on the about page to ask me why your comment was not approved.

 I also noticed in my surfing that a lot of sites have a large number of links to other sites on them. This is something that Tenacious Creations is lacking. If you would like me to place a link from my site to yours please leave me a comment here. All I ask is for you to link to my site.

 Plus if you are running Word Press and Adsense or TTZ ads consider signing up to beta test my new ads optimizer plug in. On that note, I had a found a few bugs in it today so the beta won’t be available till early next week.

a

 With this PhotoShop tutorial I hope to equip you with the necessary tools to create your own hybrid morphed animals. This can be a lot of fun and you can create some really unique looking creatures. As with anything in photoshop the more time you spend on the details the better your end result.

 Now I bet you were thinking we were going to combine an elephant with a camel. Well you would be wrong. Instead we are going to make an Eleguanna. That is an elephant combined with an Iguana. Why? Well I just like combining large mammals with lizards. Besides this gives me the opportunity to share a few more neat tricks. The hardest part of this tutorial is find the pictures you are going to use. I scoured over www.sxu.hu to find these two images. You want to make sure that the parts you are going to attempt to morph are following roughly the same angles. If you click on the thumbnails below you with get the two original images I started with.

1. Once you have these two images opened in Photoshop it is time to crop out the elephants head. Now you’ll notice the elephant is facing the wrong way in relation to our iguana. No worries, just go to Image > Rotate Canvas > Flip Horizontal. Now use what ever tool you are comfortable with to crop out the elephants head. I used the pen tool and then made it into a selection.
2. Once you have the elephants head selected, go to Edit > Copy. Then go to the image of the iguana and go Edit > Paste.

 

 

3. Now we have to position the elephants head over that of the iguanas. To make this easier reduce the opacity of the elephant head layer. Now you may have to rotate it a bit and resize as you go. If you are resizing make sure you hold down the shift key. This will keep the proportions relative. With PhotoShop CS 3 as soon as you paste the elephant head it goes to Free Transform mode. By moving the handles on the box around the elephants head you are able to resize and rotate.


 
 

 
 

4. Make sure you have the elephant head layer selected and click on the mask icon in the layer palette. Then make sure you foreground color is black, and choose a good sized soft brush. With this mask out all areas of the elephant head that you do not want visible. make sure to go along the edges where the elephants skin meets the iguanas. This will help blend it together.

     




5. Now you will notice there is still some of the iguanas head peeking through from behind. To remove this we are going to use the Clone Stamp Tool . First make sure you select the iguana layer. Then holding down the Alt Key select an area above the part you want to clone out. Then click over the areas you want to clone out. Do not worry about cloning out the elephant head as the clone tool will only clone the layer you have selected.

 

 
 

6. Looking pretty good so far. But now we want to match the color. First make sure your elephant head layer is selected. This part takes some time and experimentation. Holding down the Alt Key click on this icon . Then select Color Balance, when the dialog appears make sure you have a check mark to use the previous layer as a clipping mask. You’ll have to adjust the shadows, highlights, and mid tones. Try and get it as close as possible.

 

 

 
 

 
 

 
 

7. You see that some areas have the color changed and we don’t really want them to be green. Places like the eye, and the straw in the truck. To fix this select your color balance layer and then click the mask button on the bottom of the layers palette. With black selected as your foreground color, just paint the areas you want the original color back.

 

 
 

8. Now click on your top most layer, then add a new layer. Double click on your foreground color to bring up your color picker tool. Select a nice soft blue color. I find blue tends to bring out details. In the picture below I have my color picker set to Web Safe colors but you don’t have to.

 

 
 

9. Using the Paint Bucket tool fill this layer with the soft blue. Then change the Layer Mode to Overlay . Now adjust the Opacity till you the details pop and the layers blend nicely.

 

 

 
 

10. Now click on your top most layer, then add a new layer. Double click on your foreground color to bring up your color picker tool. Select a dark pale yellow color.
11. Using the Paint Bucket tool fill this layer with the soft blue. Then change the Layer Mode to Overlay . Now adjust the Opacity till the layers blend a bit more.

 Viola, you should have an image looking like mine or even better. Now there are several different ways to do the same thing in PhotoShop, so if your methods differed a bit don’t worry.

a

 Sometimes it seems as though the internet is full of thieves. When I first started my blog I noticed that my high resolution finished pictures were being stolen. That lead me to learn how to place an unobtrusive water mark into my images.

 Now it seems my posts are being stolen word for word and published to sites full of ads. I guess I should be flattered, that some one thinks my posts are worthy of stealing. But they don’t even include a link back to my site. If I even get the idea for one of my posts from another site I always make sure to credit that resource. I would ask people do the same for me.

 It turns out this is common practice out there in the big bad internet. They even have a term for it – Blog Scraping. Well I thought there was nothing I could do about it until I came across this post.

 I was all set to add some code to my site when I thought “Hey I should just make a plug in to do this.”. Thats when the light bulb went on, and I realized that there probably was a plug in already written for that. So I resolved that I would search first to see if there was a plug in out there already made. Well it just so happens that some one beat me to the punch in writing the plug in. If your running word press you should check out Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog to grab a plug in that inserts a link back to your site in your RSS feeds.

 I really don’t know what else one can do to prevent these Blog Scrapers from stealing your content. But if you know some better ways please tell me how in the comments.

a

 How do you improve your creativity? How do you keep coming up with fresh new ideas? Well it is my belief the mind acts like any other muscle in the body and if you do not exercise a muscle it atrophies. If you don;t exercise your mind you will find that your mind also will atrophy and it will be that much harder to think of new ideas and solutions to problems.

While dropping my card at a few sites I came across this site which had a nifty little creativity exercise on it.

Basically the author suggests that you take 6 sheets of paper and everyday do something creative with the paper. I have modified this a little bit. Every day I take a sheet of paper and write down one different way to improve traffic to Tenacious Creations. On the seventh day I will gather all my ideas and review them. So far it has been working very well and I have been able to come up with a new idea each day. I am really looking forward to reviewing them at the end of the week. Guess what – I’ll more than likely post about what I cam up with.

 I encourage you to do the same sort of thing with a problem you want to solve. Or how about just doing one creative thing each day and documenting it? Let me know how it works out for you.

a

 Every now and again while viewing my site I get distracted by a head line in the BlogRush Ad. The head line catches my eye and I am off I go to read the post on that site. But today it seemed every post I went to had another headline that caught my eye. I do enjoy reading blogs but this wasn’t the most productive part of my day.

 But I did notice something common to virtually every blog I visited with in that hour. They were all running this thing called Entrecard. Now there is a real good chance that I have seen these on other sites and never really noticed them. But today I did notice them and decided I would check into it..

Well Entrecard is yet another one of those web 2.0 social whatchama call its. It is based on the premise of business cards, your create one (mine is the image at the top of the page) or use one of their (boring and lame) designs. Then you install their widget on your site (I installed mine beneath the fold in the left column). When another Entrecard user comes to your site they simple click on the widget to drop their business card. This action earns them and you an Entrecard credit.

 Now you’ll also notice that in the Entrecard widget another Entrecard users business card is displayed. They paid X number of Entrecard credits (at the time of this writing it costs 7 credits for an ad on my site) to have their card displayed in that widget for 24 hours.

 So does it work? Well when you first sign up you are barraged with people trying to buy ad space on your site. Mainly because when you first sign up it only costs 2 Entrecard credits to buy 24 hours worth of ad time. You have the option to choose which ads you wish to accept and you do get half the credits the advertiser paid to advertise on your site. But be warned there are lots of vultures out there waiting to prey on new sign ups. The price it costs to advertise on your site depends on how many people click the business card and how many people drop their cards on your site. The good news is in the span of a few short hours your price per ad will go up.

 So right in the beginning you do experience a bit of a traffic surge as people are checking out your site to see if they want to put an ad there. You will also get a deluge of e-mails from Entrecard telling you someone wants to advertise on your site. I figured this would die down after I filled the 10 ad spots (you presell your ads for nine days in advance).

 Well I am happy to report that the traffic did not really slow down. I think one of the main reasons for this is because I went to other sites running Entrecard to drop my “card”. When you drop your card Entrecard displays your card in the dashboard of the users who site you dropped it at. Now lets face it we are all curious as to who reads our blogs so naturally you go and check theirs. So far my Entrecard experience has been positive. From this I recommend giving them a try.

 However be warned I do not think you can be passive with Entrecard and still keep good traffic coming from it. Plus I have not yet bought any ads and cannot comment on there performance. But I will keep you updated. I still feel that best way to get traffic for the lazy blogger is to use Blog Rush.

 If you do decided to give Entrecard a try let me know and I will stop by and drop my card.

a

 Believe it or not there was a time before digital cameras. In the age of film cameras after you had used up your roll of film you had to process it or get it processed. This resulted in photographs printed to actual paper and not just saved as in an electronic format. How do you get those printed masterpieces to digital format so you can share them with the world? Well I hope to answer that for you with the following tutorial.

 The advantage of scanning a picture directly to Photoshop is that you can then carry out fixing and touching up the picture directly. Plus PhotoShop gives you many more options when it comes to resizing the picture and formats to save it in.

1. Open up Adobe PhotoShop and go to File > Import from there you should be able to see your scanner as an option. Select your scanner.
2. Now all scanner software is a bit a different so I will just go over the settings you should use. It is up to you to figure out how to set them in your scanner software. The basic procedure is to do a preview of what is in your scanning area. Then you select the picture you want to scan. Now here comes the tricky part. The resolution you scan the photo at depends on what you plan to do with it.
3. If you are just going to e-mail it then 72 pixel resolution is what you want to choose.
4. If you are planning to send the photo directly to your printer than you want to scan it at 300 pixel resolution.
5. If you want to do some retouching then you’ll want to scan it at 600 pixel resolution. This will allow you to a large image to work with. It will also give you the detail needed if you are require to really zoom in on parts of it.
6. After you have selected your resolution scan the photo. Be aware that if you are scanning at 600 pixel resolution this can take some time.

 These six simple tricks can greatly increase the quality of your scanned images.

a

 Let me start this post with a little true anecdote from my past. The year was 1998 and I was in the military, most of our computers were still running Windows 95. Every year as a junior or senior NCO you are required to write personnel evaluation reports (PER’s) and in ‘98 we were supposed to write them with a piece of software from People-Soft.

 Now PER time was dreaded by most people who had to write them as they have to follow a strict format and it is very time consuming. Frustrations run high. While sitting at my computer I heard banging and cursing coming from the office next to me. It seems a certain Master Corporal was having major problems with his computer. So I went other to offer some assistance. He looked at me and innocently said “Where the fsck is the “any” key?”. Well truth be known I thought he was joking, but he was dead serious. After some difficulty explaining to him that he could hit any to key to continue not just the “any” key he was on his way.

 So what does this have to do with creativity and programming? Well as programmers, bloggers, website developers, and even graphic artists we must always remember to keep the end user or our audience in mind. Coders tend to like to build these awesome applications with all these super fancy additions and features, that to a coder seem awesome (take EMACS for example). However to an end user this can be very intimidating. Computer and technology savvy people tend to ignore this.

 The average computer user just wants the computer to work for them and do what they want it, that is it. They don’t care if their editor / word processor can tell them the tides or psychoanalyze them. They just want to be able to create their document with no hassles. They average computer users seems to be always afraid that something they can do will destroy their computer and they will lose everything.

 These are the people who make up the greater part of your market share. make sure you think about them when you design your new software, website, or ad campaign. If your application requires a lot of data input from the user, like say a word processor, make sure it automatically saves the data at timed intervals. Your users won’t remember to keep saving after they have made changes. If your website is highly graphical and all your links are graphics make sure these are easily distinguishable for your users. If you are writing a blog post about technology for the average person be careful with the terms and acronyms you use. For example most tech savvy people know what WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) means. But to an average user a statement like “Use a WYSIWYG Editor.” Translates to “Use the editor called WYSIWYG.”

Think of the users of your software, the readers of your website, the viewers of your graphics as customers. You want to make the customer/user as comfortable as you can and provide what they need with out confusing them. Remember they do not need to know how the machine operates to use it (not that it wouldn’t help immensely if they did know how it works). Look at the automobile, you don’t need to know how an automatic transmission works, in order to drive one.

 Remember the KISS principle – Keep it Simple, Stupid. The software that gets the most use is simple to operate, a web browser for example or even windows. A person new to digital photography who opens up Photoshop is going to be overwhelmed with the myriad of options and tools. They might just want to fix red eye, they have no need of layer mask, filters etc.. Just look at software the comes with an entry level digital camera its always very simplistic.

 In short remember the any key syndrome.

a

 The other day I was asked if I could recommend any good plug ins to use with Word Press. Well to be honest I only use about 15 plug ins. So I decided I would provide a list of the plug ins I use and the reasons I use them. If you have know of a great useful plug in that I have missed on this list please let me know. I would love to give it a try.

1. Adsense Deluxe This is the plug in I use for controlling the advertising from Google. It is pretty simplistic and I know there are others out there. But what I like about this one is it allows me to precisely control where the ads are in my posts.
2. Akismet This is my spam guard for the comments and I highly recommend you use this plug in on your blog. It is pretty accurate, and has only let a wee little bit of spam through, and so far has never identified a legit comment as spam.
3. Get Recent Comments Well this does just what it says, it gets the recent comments from your posts and displays them as a widget. I initially installed this so that people could follow their comments on the posts simply by going to the main page. That was of course before I installed the subscribe to comments plug in.
4. Maintenace Mode This is a very useful plug in if you are updating your Word Press blog. It displays an under maintenance page to your readers while you perform site critical updates and changes. It allows you to display how long your site will be down. Not only is it a courtesy for your readers it prevents new readers from thinking your page doesn’t exists anymore. Of course you still want to keep your down time to as little as possible.
5. Php Markdown When I came across this plug in in my plug in directories I actually had to read up on what it does. That’s the sign of good software it runs in the background doing its job. Basically this converts your non html formatting to html so you don’t have to remember things like & nbsp;.
6. Related Posts This plug in puts links for posts relating to a post based on the tags you use. It is a real nice feature to allow your readers to keep reading on a particular topic that you have blogged on.
7. SEO Siloing This plug in basically optimizes your site for a search engine optimization technique called Siloing. To explain SEO siloing would take a post in itself.







8. Stumbleupon it This is a great little plug in that puts a link at the bottom of your posts so your users can add it Stumbleupon it.
9. Subscribe to Comments This is a great plug in, it allows your readers to follow the chain of comments for a post. When I comment on a blog that does not have this I tend never to return to see if any one commented on my comment. Well this handy plug in solves that.
10. Word Press Stats This plug in provides a free service to track the stats of your blog. It tells you which posts were more popular, what links your readers clicked off your site etc.. It is not nearly as good as Google Analytics or other free trackers but it is a nice feature in your admin dash board.
11. Word Press Data Base Back Up You have all heard the mantra – back up back up back up. Well this plug in allows you to do just that, just in case something happens you can rest well knowing you have to your database backed up. That means all that hard work you put into writing those posts is saved. It is also really useful when moving to a new server.
12. Word Press Cache This plug in speeds up your site and reduces load on your server by caching word press pages and storing them in a static file for future use. This would be real handy for an extremely heavily trafficked site, but even on a low traffic site you can see improvements in load speeds.
13. Contact Form This is a real simple plug in that makes it a breeze to put a contact form on your blog. It even has some rudimentary defenses against spammers.
14. All in One SEO Pack This plug is set up help you make your posts search engine optimised. Now of course no software can do it all, you still need some knowledge of SEO practices but this does make it easier.

 Now I am sure there are a lot more awesome plug ins out there. If you know of some post them in the comments.

a

(This has been fixed by WordPress -
Click Here to read more)

 You don’t need a crystal ball to see what is going to be posted in the future on your favorite blog. At least you don’t need the crystal ball if the author has edited the time stamp to post date it.

 Now if you follow Bug Traq or Security Focus you already know about this bug since it came out around December 14 2007. But for those of you who may not be technically minded when it comes to how your favorite word press sites work let me try and explain what this exploit does.

 When I write a post in Word Press I have the option to edit the time stamp. The time stamp defaults to the current time of your server. But lets say I want this post which I am writing on December 26 to be published on December 28. I go and check edit Time stamp in word press and change the time time to be that of when I want this published. Now when I click the publish button the post will not be posted until the date and time I specified. Many bloggers use this feature. Some use it while they are away on holidays, some just use it because they don’t want too many posts posting all in one day.

 So where is the exploit – well rather than mean writing in detail about you can read the details at Securtiyfocus.com. It does not allow the malicious user to change anything, all they are able to do is view posts that are not yet posted. Its real simple to do just type this in your browser (or click on it) – http://www.tenaciouscreations.com/?x=wp-admin/&paged=1. Now if I have any posts that have yet to be published you’ll be able to see them. If I don’t you’ll just go to the main page.

 This can be used on any blog that is running word press. For example (replace myfavoriteblog.com with the site address of the wordpress site you want to use this on) Http://www.myfavoritebloghere.com/?x=wp-admin/&paged=1. The important part here is the ?x=wp-admin/&paged=1, if you add that to the url of the word press site you want to look into the future of it will work (at least until a patch is made). Some sites say that if search engine friendly urls are turned on it will not work. However I have found this not to be true. Word Press only changes the URL to a search friendly one after it has been published to the main site at the time it was intended to be.

 Now this bug is considered not to be dangerous. For the most part I guess it is. But what if your a company who uses word press and you have an important announcement of new product timed to be published at midnight. Your competitor finds your post using this method and leaks the information. That’s probably not that good, but I think if your worked the publicity right you could turn it around to be something really good! In fact you could use it to draw a lot of traffic to your site.

 In my case if you are reading my posts early, I don’t think it is too terrible of a thing. At least your reading them .

a

 I recently came across this blog post and it got me to thinking how true it is. The author of this original post did a great job bought I thought I could add and expand on a few points. I would urge you to read the original post.

1. Share Everything – Open source is a good thing, and it can help a coder immensely. If you get stuck somewhere along the way it is always nice to be able to look at some one else’s source code and gain ideas from it. But it is just bad karma to always be taking and never giving anything back. Get involved with an open source project, devote what time you can afford. There are huge benefits for you. You get established programmers to review your code, you get to participate in other facets of a project that wouldn’t normally get too. It looks good on a resume and gets your name out there.
2. Play Fair – Give other ideas a chance, your way is not the only way! I hate to tell you this, but it also may not be the best way either. In the same manner the other way may not be the best, but a combination of the two might just be exactly what you are looking for. Do not forget to give credit where credit is due. In my eyes and in many others eyes, I think more of the guy who gives the proper credit than the guy who says it was all him. These people who steal and claim the credit themselves are always found out. It is just a matter of time.
3. Do not hit people! — Don’t go on the war path just because some one is programming in visual basic, or using what you consider an inferior operating system. They still may have some thing to contribute. There are many things you can learn from some one doing something different than you, if you take the time to stop beating them and just listen. Who knows you just may end up as their mentor. Let me tell you, being a mentor is a good thing and you get an even greater sense of accomplishment when your protégé surpasses you.
4. Clean up your own mess – Before you take a look around at your desk and get scared because you realize you cannot see your desk this is only part of it. Believe it or not an organized work space does help more than one thinks in getting things done. Now before you say well all the coders I see have stuff piled everywhere (I am included in this portion of coders). Just because there are piles of things does not mean I am not organized. I truthfully am and know what is in those piles, when it gets to a point where I don’t know what is in those piles then its time for an office restructuring. I used to do this about once a month, now however I do it once a week as that way I a more organized and efficient.
    This also applies to your code however. Strive to keep your source code neat and following some sort of flow. Add comments, even if you are the only one who will ever see this code. Trust me years later when you look at it you’ll have no idea of your thought process unless you took the few seconds to add comments. How do I know this? Well in a lot of code I wrote when first starting I didn’t use comments at all, looking back on it now what I once thought of as elegant code is a mess of spaghetti.
5. Don’t take things that are not yours – Follow the GNU license or the other licenses that are attached to the code you are using. How can you expect some one else to pay for that nifty application your poured your heart in soul into if you don’t pay for the software that others put their heart and soul into? You have more than likely heard the saying “What goes around, comes around.”, well guess what it is absolutely true. Again give credit where credit is due. For example the idea for this post came from this blogs post.
6. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody – Reviewing someones code is a great idea. It helps you by allowing you to see new approaches, and it helps the codes author. But this can be tricky, don’t let your ego get in the way. Use constructive criticism, don’t just point out the flaws, give suggestions on how to fix them. Before you say something negative, take a step back and think about how you’d respond to the comment. That should at least allow you to craft you statement in a productive way and not a purely negative way. However be careful not to coddle the author and don’t just give out the answers. A good mentor knows when to show the answer and when to just point the direction of the answer. If you don’t know the answer, admit it and then you and your protégé can go about finding the answer.
7. Wash your hands before you eat – Remember the 7 P’s to success. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Plan out your project, prototype it, research it on the web, talk to people about, get a good perspective on it. make a flow chart or pseudocode. And if my grade 11 computer science teacher is reading this – “No I still stand behind the fact that you do not need to flow chart a simple PASCAL black jack program that does not even use suits.” (yes I am still bitter about that even though it was more than a decade ago)
8. Flush – Like it says in the post I got the inspiration from. Do not be afraid to replace, refactor, or rewrite something that is crap. Now this is harder than it sounds, it can be very difficult to give up on something that you have worked hard on. But deep down you know when something you have done is crap, you have to admit to yourself that it is crap and have the guts to ditch it.

 

 

9. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you – You need to have a good work environment. If you work from home make sure your office is a distraction free zone, print up a sign or something to hang on your door to warn other house hold members that you are coding and should be left alone. Make sure you like the space you work in. hang pictures of things you like if you are into that. Maybe include a plant (Unless you are in some gloomy dungeon where no light can get in). Try to be in a place where some natural light can be seen. I used to love to work in absolute darkness but I have learned I am actually more productive if some natural sunlight or moon light can get in (contrary to my own beliefs I might add). Try to use an incandescent light in a lamp and point it at the ceiling. This diffuses the light a bit and makes it easier on the eyes.
10. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. – This is probably the most important advice I can give. Working 24 hours a day IS NOT good for you and hampers your creativity. Googles program is to allow its employees to spend 20% of their time at work devoted to whatever they think they should be working on. You need to have other outlets that gets you away from the code, draw, skate board, build a battle bot, finger paint, or just bake cookies. You’ll be amazed at how rejuvenated your mind will be after a short break. Solutions you were struggling with will just seem to come to you. In fact when you get really stumped – take a break away from the computer and go for a walk. It really does help.
11. Take a nap every afternoon – I have a kitchen timer stuck to my filing cabinet next to my work station set with a 20 minute count down timer. When it goes off, I take a two minute break. I get up and stretch, close and rub my eyes. You might see it as a wasted two minutes but man has it increased my productivity. Now I’ll admit sometimes I am involved in something and can’t take that little break. In that case I reset the timer and try to take a break before it goes off. But after it goes off the second time I make myself take a break. If I am in the middle of an idea I write it down in my note pad. At first I was afraid I would lose my train of thought. But in reality it allows to me to focus more precisely on that train of thought. My reasoning behind this is as such – Your subconscious brain processes way more information and way faster than your conscious brain and a sort of lag develops. When you take that break it allows for your conscious brain to catch up. That ca also explain why I seem to be able to solve things while I nap or sleep.
12. Be Positive – This is the chant of many self help guru but it really does have an effect. You have to strive to be the glass is half full person and not the glass is half empty person. Being positive takes a lot more work than being negative, and you have to always watch yourself to make sure you are not sliding to the negative side. Once you start approaching problems positively you’ll find the solutions come a lot easier. Instead of thinking ” Crap another bug this sucks!”. Try and approach it by thinking ” Hmm another bug, lets find and see how I can make this code a work of art!”. As goofy and new age as this might sound it does do wonders.

  The author of the post where I got my inspiration has a few more points listed but this covers pretty much what I wanted to say. I really hope you enjoyed this post and possibly came away with something that can benefit you from it.

a

 Years ago I read a really good by called The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll. Its a fascinating true story how an astronomer from Berkley caught a hacker who was stealing government secrets and selling them.

 The book is a great read and I wish I would’ve been able to read when I was younger. If I did I am sure I would’ve made it my mission to attend university at Berkley. I highly recommend reading this book if you are even remotely interested in computer security. It is by no means a technical book on computer security just an excellent read.

 Cliff Stoll also include his recipe for totally awesome chocolate chip cookies in this book. So through out the years I have made these cookies calling them Haxor Cookies. Well through a random mishap I packed some of these cookies along with a banana for lunch one day. The cookies took on an most delectiable flavour of banana. This got me to thinking that I should try and add some banana too them as you would for banana bread. The result is a banana / chocolate chip cookie hybrid and I must say it is awesome. So I have decided to pass on the recipe so you can try it for yourself. Give it a try and tell me what you think. Also what should we call these hybrids?

a