XStandard Lite seems a good XHTML compliant WYSIWYG editor. But I’m still looking for something that has rich features and the goodness of Table-less design in all accounts. Content Management Systems like Typolight have a nice way of abstracting the flow, are a good option but then it needs quite a good visualization (unless you are a designer/programmer or such class) which requires a little bit of training.
The definition of success and failure depends from individual to individual. According to me, Success comes from the joy of influencing my subjectiveness and/or being influenced by other’s opinions about a single objective truth. Success is achieved from many different ways, that’s all.
Appearance, Actions, Words, Art, Science, Spirituality, and the list grows endlessly.
Starting from the ground up, you can influence non-living things - the very act of moving an object, juggling few bottles etc. At that point in time, one may say that those objects are under influence. As we move up, influencing people seems the trickier part. This is again in relation to situation, on whom one is trying to influence etc. Very subjective!
Now, it is in my opinion that we are in constant search of those whom we can influence, or we can eventually influence. What are we trying to influence? Truth! A larger objective! And, only in the most subjective form each one of us have experienced. Einstein being one of the most successful person at that. Darwin to an extent but most agree he failed.
The secret being in the mental act of not concluding things! So the next time your opinions are not accepted, be patient until they are. The answer to the question “how long should one be patient?” may/may not be answered before the results themselves are successful, however. And sometimes, it might not be in the same form that we may expect as well. Since it is a “may/may not be” situation on the answer and the results are subjective, I guess it is logical to keep one’s hopes quite high!
Thanks!
Here are some great links that I’ve found for personal development:
I find Steve Pavlina’s the most inspiring ones. Simple on the outside, mind blowing when intuitively seen 
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/30-days-to-success/
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
http://jon.gaia.com/blog/2006/3/how_to_have_a_36_hour_day
the_four_best_ways_to_sit_at_your_computer
I stumbled upon Lori’s blog and love all the quotes as I relate them to my recent personal experiences. One word: Lovely.
“In Love with Life”.
“I am living my heaven NOW and it is fabulous!”
Life is supposed to be having fun with while we travel it!
Spreading Love!
As you might have known, my entire site runs on ExpressionEngine and my current setup is to have clean URLs both for human readability and SEO. I have used the following approach to achieve this.
1. Do a normal install. At the end of the install you will have URLs with index.php
2. Setup auto mode and check PATH_INFO value. Since in my case PATH_INFO is empty, I have to use ORIG_PATH_INFO as provided by my hosting.
3. To remove index.php the first step is to configure your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?$1 [L]
4. The next step is to logon to Administration panel, get to System Preferences -> General Configuration and empty the index page setting (that is, if you see index.php, remove it)
5. Go ahead and thoroughly test your site with confidence! ( This is not optional j/k )
Tech Help: If you don’t understand any of the above steps, get someone with PHP & .htaccess knowledge and/or read this documentation link from ExpressionEngine: Remove index.php from URLs using File and Directory Check Method
Hope this helps in tweaking and hacking your site!
Imagine you lead a small custom apps team with 7 developers or less, with each representing a part (puzzle piece) as in a jigsaw puzzle. On a project that has stern deadlines, the project tasks are broken down into iterations. Each iteration would have tasks under them. It is common that you assign many individual tasks divided to each team member. This is distribution. However, there is an even better way to get most out of your team members. Just like how a single puzzle piece is so unique both by its shape and the part of the picture it contains, you should make each team member feel that their part/role is as important as the overall big picture. Even if a single part of the puzzle is missing, the big picture isn’t complete. This also means knowning each team member’s strength and weaknesses (as in a jigsaw piece).
On the technical front, it is usually the person’s overall technical knowledge and about the project. Both may not be the same! It is important that all team member understands the overall big picture and how it would eventually be solved. For an individual member, it is the awareness about the surrounding pieces. And for a leader, it is the awareness of placement of each piece in the puzzle along their adjacent pieces. Scale this out to small teams to bigger operations as well. Interestingly, anyone could practice/could’ve already been practising this model even if they haven’t played a jigsaw puzzle before though
The advantages are:
- Resource allocation is at its best.
- Depending upon the member’s potential, the same member can play the role of two or more (at very adjacent places in the puzzle).
- Each member knows what should be asked and to whom.
Things to remember in this model:
- Team Leaders/Managers must ensure each team member’s awareness of both the entire big picture and the person’s individual role at every single iteration/task allocation.
- Got to stay away from the distribution model as it is very easy fall for it at time-constraint situations (Distribution model saves the situation but ends up exchanging legs for hands, for example).
- A visual representation that is circulated to the team on top of written task allocation always helps!
Mind maps are a great way to store, organize your ideas. With many commercial tools scattered around in the Web, I gave FreeMind a try and it satisfied most of the basic needs in Mind Mapping. Mind Mapping software come with a multitude of features and one of the important feature that I love is the Calender. They give you the ability to attach dates and reminders to any node in the Mind map tree. I have stumbled upon on a few web based Mind mapping tools and seeking a way to attach Project Management features/tools that would help many folks out there.
Tony Buzan developed Mind Maps with the following key features in mind:
Key features are:
- Organization
- Key Words
- Association
- Clustering
- Visual Memory - Print the key words, use color, symbols, icons, 3D-effects,arrows and outlining groups of words
- Outstandingness - every Mind Map needs a unique center
- Conscious involvement
Following are some great useful resources to start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Mapping
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/
Some of the interesting tools out there:
http://www.mindman.com/
http://www.mindomo.com/
http://www.mindmeister.com/
http://www.comapping.com/
In continuation to my first trip, I made my second business trip that was perfectly planned and executed. The requirement was to scale out a financial database that is fairly large. After a two day research and Proof of concepting, we decided to go with SQL Server 2005 Mirroring feature. While in the way, we overcame a few challenges such as SQL Server 2005 mirroring and permission issues. Later a day, we successfully started implementing Mirroring for one of the databases and continued with the others. A snapshot was created for each of the mirrored databases so as to provide read-only access. Its a great solution for anyone who owns a reporting application that only needs read-only access to OLTP databases. A scheduler application was also developed in C# to take snapshots of the database at specific intervals, in order to keep the snapshots up to date to the principal database.
The entire project was completed in just 6 days. We setup the scheduler and moved into production on last Saturday. The team worked hard throughout the entire week. Kudos!
On my way back to the airport, I had a chance to do a quick shopping on LandMark, bought myself a book and got myself a couple of lovely books gifted from the department head for Systems and Applications. One of them is the International bestseller from Paulo Coelho titled The Alchemist.
Mumbai inspired me so much that I have also planned on a personal trip in the summer. Good day ALL!
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