Abhishek's shared items

A list of all the best places to learn for free online.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:07:44 -0800

A list of all the best places to learn for free online.

via The Best Article Every day by bspcn on 12/18/11

Collected by reddit
General Sites:
Schools and Universities:
University of Reddit with corresponding subreddit
MIT Lectures
Carnegie Mellon
Johns Hopkins
Tufts
Rice – Connexions
Utah State
Berkeley
Berkeley Part 2
Berkeley Part 3 (videos)
Stanford
Stanford Part 2 (videos)
Harvard
University of Sydney
University of Virginia
Stanford
Yale
Yale Part 2 (videos)
University of Washington CSE
University of Chicago
University of New South Wales
Open Course Ware Finder
Open Course Ware Consortium
University of the People
Other General Sites:
Wikiversity
Youtube Edu
100 Best Intro Courses
Khan Academy
Open Culture
TED
Cosmo Learning
Knol
Academic Earth
Free Video Lectures
More Video Lectures
Directory of Open Access Journals
Learners TV
IncrediCampus
LectureFox
Freelance-Teacher
National Programme on Tech Enhanced Learning
Study Blue
WikiHow
How Stuff Works
Wonder How To
Better Explained
TeachMate
Learning Schedule Tracker – Smart.fm
Specialized Sites:
Computer Related:
Carl H Programming with corresponding subreddit
Google Code University
Learn about Linux
Free Technology Academy
Lynda.com
Web Building Tutorials
Building Websites via Academic Earth
Opera Web Standards Curriculum
Stack Overflow (Question Site)
D Zone (Question Site)
Music:
Funk University
Piano Lessons
Music Theory – Trainear.com
Music Theory – MusicTheory.net
Guitar Lessons at Ultimate-Guitar
Guitar Lessons at The Stringery
Guitar Lessons at The Next Level Guitar
Guitar Lessons at Justin Guitar
Bass Lessons
Chord Book – Chordbook.com
Chord Book – Chorder.com
Guitar Neck Quiz
Language:
LiveMocha
Languages from BBC
FSI Language Courses
Cooking/Food:
Good Eats (alternate video source)
Cooking Coarse (Youtube Search Summary)
eBooks/Online Books/Academic Journals:
Project Gutenburg
Planet eBook
The Free Library
Google Books
Open Book Project
WikiBooks
Safari Books Online (paid subscription needed)
Using Open Edu Resources – eBook (.pdf)
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist – eBook
Large list of science eBooks
Scribd
WorldCat – Worldwide Library Catalog
Cornell University – arXiv.org
Cite Seer
Scirus
Get Cited
Online Library – ibiblio
Other Subjects:
The Math Motherload
Western Civilization
Psychoactives
Philosophy
Make Magazine
Self Improvement – 101 Linked Resources
Custom Action Figures
Exercise
Yoga
Raising Chickens
Argument Mapping
Investing
Instructables
Physics for Future Presidents
Creative Live
Let’s Make Robots
InfoPlease – Almanac
The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.
I will continue and add/edit/refine this list as my time permits. Please send me a message if you spot a broken link, have general grievance with some sort of error, or have a good link we can add.
Thank you Everyone!
Bonus: ove the quote!!! Its super cute n true!!!

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The Massive Money Infographic

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:03:52 -0800

The Massive Money Infographic

via fivecentnickel.com by Nickel on 12/16/11

Awhile back, I ran across an amazing infographic by Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd. I haven’t mentioned it until now, however, because I didn’t really have time to dig into it. But now that I have, I have to say that I’m very impressed.

This infographic (picture in miniature below) is absolutely huge, and it comes with a giant list of sources. In it, Munroe works his way through a series of monetary visualizations at multiple levels. He starts out with dollars, then zooms out to thousands, millions, billions, and trillions.

He tackles both mundane, everyday issues (the cost of a cup of coffee, the annual cost of pet ownership, etc.) and scales up to bigger picture issues, like a comparison of how household net worth values has changed over the past 25 years, a visualization of household income by quintile (and even finer divisons), presidential fundraising, charitable giving, corporate revenue, federal spending, the derivatives markets, and more.

(click image to enlarge)

He even includes interesting tidbits like the cost to buy the world a Coke ($2.24B), the cost to teach the world to sing ($840B), the cost to fund Wikipedia for 100 years ($1.85B), and the total economic output of the human race so far (a little less than $2.4 quadrillion, with roughly 60% of that since 1980).

The entire infographic spans 12,528 x 8352 pixels, so be prepared for some scrolling.

If you take the time to dig through it, please come back and post the most interesting tidbits that you found.

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:
»
Credit Card Statement Changes
» Learn About the Changes to Your Credit Card Statement
» Another Economic Stimulus Package? Second Round of Checks Coming Up
» Money Poll #2: Coupons
» Weekly Roundup – Massive Failure Edition
» United Airlines Bankruptcy: Don’t Believe Everything You Read
» Net Worth as a Function of Age
» Holiday Savings Roundup

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How to get your Banking Problems Solved by Ombudsman

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:32:00 -0800

How to get your Banking Problems Solved by Ombudsman

Despite the Banks having a complaints redressal machinery, Banking Ombudsman and RBI get over 60000 complaints. But it is also true that almost 50% of the complaints are invalid and are beyond the purview of the Banking Ombudsman. Let us put down the baby steps that we need to do if we have a grievance:

1. First lodge a complaint to the Bank concerned in writing. Banks have a specific complaint register and they have meetings where a customer can walk in and register a complaint. Ask for a receipt.

2. Please keep details of the official receiving the complaint.

3. If the Bank does not respond within 30 days, lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman. Complaints pending at other judicial forums will not be entertained by the BO. You don’t need to pay any fee to the Banking Ombudsman.

4. Obtain a unique identification number for tracking the complaint from the Banking Ombudsman.

5. Online complaints to Banking Ombudsman can be done @ http://www.bankingombudsman.rbi.org.in

6. If you are not happy with the Ombudsman decision, you can appeal to the Customer Services Department, RBI.

There are 15 Banking Ombudsman (BO) Offices situated across the country to spread awareness about the Banking Ombudsman Scheme especially in rural areas. Intensive awareness campaigns are undertaken to ensure greater reach of the Scheme among the members of public.

Banking Ombudsmen participate in various awareness campaigns under Financial Inclusion and Literacy Programme and visit a number of villages in various Districts under respective territorial jurisdiction of the BOs.

Participation in various important fairs and festivals in the State, face to face interaction with members of public at various places at block level, participating in seminars organised by Government of India in association with RBI are some of the other initiatives undertaken by the Officers of BOs

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6.851 Advanced Data Structures (MIT)

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:39:00 -0800

Data structures play a central role in modern computer science. You interact with data structures much more often than with algorithms (think of Google, your mail server, and even your network routers). In addition, data structures are essential building blocks in obtaining efficient algorithms. This course will cover major results and current directions of research in data structures.

via pheedcontent.com

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24 Things You Might Be Saying Wrong

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:18:58 -0700

24 Things You Might Be Saying Wrong

via The Best Article Every day by bspcn on 8/25/10

Written by Melissa DeMeo & Paul Silverman

You never mean: Could care less

You always mean: Couldn’t care less

Why: You want to say you care so little already that you couldn’t possibly care any less. When the Boston Celtics’ Ray Allen said, “God could care less whether I can shoot a jump shot,” we know he meant exactly the opposite because 1) God has other things on his mind, and 2) God is a Knicks fan.

You might say: Mano a mano

You might mean: Man-to-man

Why: You don’t speak Spanish by adding vowels to the end of English words, as a columnist describing father–teenage son relationships seemed to think when he wrote, “Don’t expect long, mano a mano talks.” Mano a mano (literally, “hand to hand”) originated with bullfighting and usually refers to a knock-down, drag-out direct confrontation.

You might say: Less

You might mean: Fewer

Why: In general, use fewer when you’re specifying a number of countable things (“200 words or fewer”); reserve less for a mass (“less than half”). So when you’re composing a tweet, do it in 140
characters or fewer, not less.

You never mean: Hone in

You always mean: Home in

Why: Like homing pigeons, we can be single-minded about finding our way to a point: “Scientists are homing in on the causes of cancer.” Hone means “to sharpen”: “The rookie spent the last three seasons honing his skills in the minor leagues.” But it’s easy to mishear m’s and n’s, which is probably what happened to the Virginia senator who said, “We’ve got to hone in on cost containment.” If you’re unsure, say “zero in” instead.

You might say: Bring

You might mean: Take

Why: The choice depends on your point of view. Use bring when you want to show motion toward you (“Bring the dog treats over here, please”). Use take to show motion in the opposite direction (“I have to take Rufus to the vet”). The rule gets confusing when the movement has nothing to do with you. In those cases, you can use either verb, depending on the context: “The assistant brought the shot to the vet” (the vet’s point of view); “the assistant took the shot to the doctor” (the assistant’s).

You might say: Who

You might mean: Whom

Why: It all depends. Do you need a subject or an object? A subject (who) is the actor of the sentence: “Who left the roller skates on the sidewalk?” An object (whom) is the acted-upon: “Whom are you calling?” Parents, hit the Mute button when Dora the Explorer shouts, “Who do we ask for help when we don’t know which way to go?”

You almost never mean: Brother-in-laws, runner-ups, hole in ones, etc.

You almost always mean: Brothers-in-law, runners-up, holes in one, etc.

Why: Plurals of these compound nouns are formed by adding an s to the thing there’s more than one of (brothers, not laws). Some exceptions: words ending in ful (mouthfuls) and phrases like cul-de-sacs.

You almost never mean: Try and

You almost always mean: Try to

Why: Try and try again, yes, but if you’re planning to do something, use the infinitive form: “I’m going to try to run a marathon.” Commenting on an online story about breakups, one woman wrote, “A guy I dated used to try and impress me with the choice of books he was reading.” It’s no surprise that the relationship didn’t last.

You almost never mean: Different than

You almost always mean: Different from

Why: This isn’t the biggest offense, but if you can easily substitute from for than (My mother’s tomato sauce is different from my mother-in-law’s), do it. Use than for comparisons: My mother’s tomato sauce is better than my mother-in-law’s.

You almost never mean: Beg the question

You almost always mean: Raise the question

Why: Correctly used, “begging the question” is like making a circular argument (I don’t like you because you’re so unlikable). But unless you’re a philosophy professor, you shouldn’t ever need this phrase. Stick to “raise the question.”

You might say: More than

You can also say: Over

Why: The two are interchangeable when the sense is “Over 6,000 hats were sold.” We like grammarian Bryan Garner’s take on it: “The charge that over is inferior to more than is a baseless crotchet.”

You almost never mean: Supposably

You almost always mean: Supposedly

Why: Supposably is, in fact, a word—it means “conceivably”—but not the one you want if you’re trying to say “it’s assumed,” and certainly not the one you want if you’re on a first date with an English major or a job interview with an English speaker.

You might say: All of

You probably mean: All

Why: Drop the of whenever you can, as Julia Roberts recently did, correctly: “Every little moment is amazing if you let yourself access it. I learn that all the time from my kids.” But you need all of before a pronoun (“all of them”) and before a possessive noun (“all of Julia’s kids”).

You might say: That

You might mean: Which

Why: “The money that is on the table is for you” is different from “the money, which is on the table, is for you.” That pinpoints the subject: The money that is on the table is yours; the money in my pocket is mine. Which introduces an aside, a bit of extra information. If you remove “which is on the table,” you won’t change the meaning: The money is for you (oh, and unless you don’t want it, it’s on the table). If the clause is necessary to your meaning, use that; if it could safely be omitted, say which.

You never mean: Outside of

You always mean: Outside

Why: These two prepositions weren’t meant for each other. Perfectly acceptable: “Wearing a cheese-head hat outside Wisconsin will likely earn you some stares and glares (unless you’re surrounded by Green Bay Packers fans, that is).”

You might say: Each other

You might mean: One another

Why: Tradition says that each other should be used with two people or things, and one another with more than two, and careful speakers should follow suit: “The three presenters argued with one another over who should announce the award, but Ann and Barbara gave each other flowers after the ceremony.” (By the way, if you need the possessive form of either one when writing that business letter, it’s always each other’s and one another’s; never end with s’.)

8 Confusing Pairs

leery, wary: suspicious
weary: tired

farther: for physical distance
further: for metaphorical distance or time

principle: rule
principal: of your school

compliment: nice thing to say
complement: match

continual: ongoing but intermittent
continuous: without interruption

stationary: stands still
stationery: paper

imply: to suggest a meaning
infer: to draw meaning from something

affect: typically a verb, meaning “to act upon or cause an effect”; as a noun, it’s “an emotional response”
effect: typically a noun, meaning “something produced,” like a special effect; as a verb, “to bring about,” as in “to effect change” •

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Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, drugs and HIV -- let's get rational

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:45:52 -0700

via ted.com

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Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement address (2005)

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:36:51 -0700

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

via news.stanford.edu

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Breaking the Email Addiction - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:06:15 -0700

Do you wake up in the morning and bring your laptop into bed with you, or check it before you brush your teeth?

Do you check email while you're driving, even though you're four times as likely to have an accident when you do?

Are you answering email on your iPhone or Blackberry when you walk between meetings, or on your way to the parking lot?

Do you keep answering while you're sitting in your car in your driveway or garage when you get home?

Do you bring your laptop back into bed with you at night, and make one final check before you turn out the lights?

Last month my company, The Energy Project, posted a poll on the Huffington Post asking people about their experience in the workplace. One of the questions was about email.

Out of 1200 respondents, some 60 percent said they spend less than two waking hours a day completely disconnected from email. Twenty percent spend less than a half hour disconnected. Email has become our intravenous feeding tube.

I gave a talk recently at a Fortune 100 company about the value of focusing on one thing at a time and the attentional costs of constant interruptions. When I was done, an articulate and ingenuous young man who worked in finance came up to me. "I believe everything you said," he said, "but I can't do it. If I get an email, I have to look at it."

"Have you considered just turning it off at certain times during the day?" I asked.
"I don't think I can," he replied. "As soon as I turn it off, I'd start obsessing about what I'm missing."

It isn't overload we're battling anymore, it's addiction — to action, and information, and connection, but above all to instant gratification.

In the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel began conducting his famous "marshmallow" experiment. He placed a marshmallow in front of a succession of four-year-olds. Mischel told them they were free to eat the marshmallow simply by ringing a bell after he'd left the room. However, if they were able to wait untill he returned, he told them they could have two marshmallows.

Seventy percent of the children gave up in less than a minute. Only thirty percent were able to wait 15 minutes.

Mischel termed marshmallows a "hot stimulus" — meaning highly seductive — not unlike the ping of an email, or a text.

We're pulled to anything that provides instant gratification, even when we know we'd get a bigger reward for delaying. We're also quick to respond to any excuse to stop working on something that is difficult and requires high concentration.

What Mischel discovered is that the low delayers quickly burned down their limited reservoir of will and discipline by staring directly (and longingly) at the marshmallow.
The high delayers found something else entirely to focus on. They never looked at the marshmallow.

Mischel came to call this skill "strategic allocation of attention." It's a capacity many of us have lost when it comes to the Pavlovian pull of email.

Years later, when Mischel redid the experiment with a new group of 4-year-olds, he decided to teach the poor delayers among them the techniques of the high delayers — very simple ways to redirect their attention away from the marshmallow. Kids who hadn't been able to wait more than a minute rapidly learned to hold out for a full 15 minutes.

We, too, can strategically train our attention. When it comes to email and the Internet, it's critical that we do so to give ourselves more time to think more reflectively, creatively, and deeply in an increasingly complex world.

If you're truly tethered to your email, start small. Choose a specific time each day to turn off your email for a half hour, or an hour, and focus on something that requires your full attention. Then begin adding other times as your focus gets stronger.

Here's one way to start. Take back your lunch. I wrote about this movement on this site last week. Get up from your computer step outside and leave your iPhone or your Blackberry behind. Instead, use the time to quiet your mind, or to think through a difficult problem, or to truly connect with a friend, or a colleague. You'll be building much needed renewal into your day, and you'll also be effectively retraining your attention.
Take back your lunch, and take back your attention. They're two first steps in taking back your life.

Tony Schwartz is president and CEO of The Energy Project. Tony is the author of the June, 2010 HBR article, "The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less," and coauthor, with Catherine McCarthy, of the 2007 HBR article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time." His new book is"The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance" (Free Press, 2010).

via blogs.hbr.org

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Infographic of the Day: The Bumpy Rise of a Start-Up

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:36:00 -0700

Infographic of the Day: The Bumpy Rise of a Start-Up

via Co. by Cliff Kuang on 7/9/10

I think it's safe to say that no one has managed to summarize the dramas, frustrations, and triumphs of running a startup quite as effectively as this flowchart, by HackFwd, a European VC firm: Obviously, the overall message of the flowchart isn't terribly complex--have a good idea, work hard, be passionate--but as with any startup, the fun is in all the unforeseen bumps along the way. [Via Flowing Data]

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Einztein Knowledge Network Catalogs Virtual Courses from Around the Web [Lea...

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:46:34 -0700

Einztein Knowledge Network Catalogs Virtual Courses from Around the Web [Learning]

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 7/8/10

More and more universities are putting video courses online but combing through various collegiate and organization web sites looking for videos is tedious. Einztein gathers videos and virtual courses from across the web for easy keyword and category-based browsing. More »

Education - Distance Learning - Online Teaching and Learning - Online Training - Online Courses

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Your Building a LiteTouch Bootable USB Image Questions Answered!

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:57:55 -0700

Your Building a LiteTouch Bootable USB Image Questions Answered!

via The Windows Blog by Stephen L Rose on 6/21/10

During the Get On The Bus Tour, I did a demo using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 where I took a Windows XP machine with Office 2003 on it and migrated it to Windows 7 and Office 2010 in under 40 minutes. I have received several emails with questions on this presentation, so here are the answers to those questions.

What is MDT 2010 and how do I get it???

Check out my post on the MDT 2010 here and information on how to access the latest version.

How do I build the image and use the tool?

Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Using MDT 2010?

Part 1: Building the Deployment Environment

Part 2: Initiating the Install and Migrating the PC

How do I build that bootable USB stick?

Based on the size of the content folder, acquire a USB drive that will store all of your files. (Remember, you can do everything by storing your deployment files on the network also and boot from the LiteTouchPEx86/x64.iso files – they are typically under 300MB)

Prepare the USB drive to be bootable

Insert drive

Open an elevated Command Prompt

Type “diskpart.exe”

Type “list disk” and find the disk number

Type “sel disk 1” (replace the “1” with the actual number)

Type “clean”

Type “cre par pri”

Type “active”

Type “format fs=ntfs quick”

Type “assign”

Type “exit”

Now copy the content in the “content” folder to the root of the USB stick.

Now you should have a bootable USB stick with your image and custom build on it.

How can I view your Get On The Bus Tour presentation?

XP to Windows 7 with MDT

Thanks again to everyone who attended our Bus Tour events!

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6.088 Introduction to C Memory Management and C++ Object-Oriented Programming (MIT)

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:44:50 -0700

Ever hang your head in shame after your Python program wasn't as fast as your friend's C program? Ever wish you could use objects without having to use Java? Join us for this fun introduction to C and C++! We will take you through a tour that will start with writing simple C programs, go deep into the caves of C memory manipulation, resurface with an introduction to using C++ classes, dive deeper into advanced C++ class use and the C++ Standard Template Libraries. We'll wrap up by teaching you some tricks of the trade that you may need for tech interviews.

We see this as a "C/C++ empowerment" course: we want you to come away understanding

why you would want to use C over another language (control over memory, probably for performance reasons),

why you would want to use C++ rather than C (objects), and

how to be useful in C and C++.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

via pheedcontent.com

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Download and Share Visual Studio Color Schemes

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:30:29 -0700

Download and Share Visual Studio Color Schemes

via ScottGu's Blog by ScottGu on 4/29/10

As developers we often spend a large part of our day staring at code within Visual Studio. If you are like me, after awhile the default VS text color scheme starts to get a little boring.

The good news is that Visual Studio allows you to completely customize the editor background and text colors to whatever you want – allowing you to tweak them to create the experience that is “just right” for your eyes and personality. You can then optionally export/import your color scheme preferences to an XML file via the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu command.

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

New website that makes it easy to download and share VS color schemes

Luke Sampson launched the http://studiostyles.info/ site a week ago (built using ASP.NET MVC 2, ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010).

Studiostyles.info enables you to easily browse and download Visual Studio color schemes that others have already created. The color schemes work for both VS 2008 and VS 2010 (all versions – including the free VS express editions):

Color schemes are sorted by popularity and voting (you can vote on whether you find each “hot or not”).

You can click any of the schemes to see screen-shots of it in use for common coding scenarios. You can then download the color settings for either VS 2010 or VS 2008:

You can also optionally upload color schemes of your own if you have a good one you want to share with others.

If you haven’t visited it yet – check it out: http://studiostyles.info/ And thank you Luke Sampson for building it!

Hope this helps,

Scott

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How to Have An Argument – Mónica Guzmán & Jason Preston

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:07:08 -0700

How to Have An Argument – Mónica Guzmán & Jason Preston

via Ignite Seattle! by Randy Stewart on 5/3/10

Accomplished contrarians, Ignite alums, and fiancées, Jason and Mónica will share the secrets of how to have an argument that doesn’t involve legal fees. Their talk also marks an Ignite first, a tag team talk.

About Jason Preston

Jason is currently the Director of New Media at Parnassus Group, the company responsible for the 140 | The Twitter Conference. You can find Jason on Twitter at Jasonp107, on his blog or sharing his gaming expertise on his site, l33tsauce.

About Mónica Guzmán

Mónica Guzmán is a reporter for the Seattle PI’s Big Blog You can find her on Twitter @moniguzman.

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How To: Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:56:23 -0800

via caranddriver.com

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Case Study: Freescale Netbook Design at SCAD, by Dave Malouf - Core77

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:54:32 -0800

via core77.com

Laptop use - positions to avoid..

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Microsoft Security Essentials Ranks as Best-Performing Free Antivirus [Antivirus]

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:48:56 -0800

Anti-malware testing group AV-Comparatives.org not only gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal, but now they've given it their best ranking in their performance test as well.

AV-Comparatives.org ran a series of real-world tests running through common scenarios like downloading, extracting, copying, and encoding files, installing and launching applications, and they also ran through an automated testing suite as well. Once the dust had settled, it became clear that not only is MSE one of only three products that both blocks and removes malware well, but it's also very light on system resources.

Out of all the products tested, Microsoft Security Essentials was the best-performing free antivirus solution, and one of only two that received "very fast" on each of the real-world tests, earning it their top award: an "advanced+" ranking. We've been telling you for a while that you don't need to pay for Windows security, and now with MSE ranked alongside the top paid apps in both malware removal and performance, you might want to consider making the switch.

Hit the AV-Comparatives link for the full report in PDF form, or check out the PC Mag story for the overview—if you can deal with some irritating in-text ads.

Performance Tests [AV-Comparatives]
AV-Comparatives Rates Anti-Malware Performance [PC Mag via @edbott]

Send an email to How-To Geek, the author of this post, at ybjryy@yvsrunpxre.pbz
moc.rekcahefil@llewol.

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Bing - Overused Words That Make Your Resume Suck by Kay - Bing Jobs Blog - Bing Community

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:20:27 -0800

Bing Jobs Blog - Overused Words That Make Your Resume Suck by Kay

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PowerPoint 2010’s sample “Five Rules” presentation shows off powerful new graphics engine

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:11:06 -0800

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Make a Gift Bow Out of Any Paper [Gift Wrap]

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:45:30 -0800

Sure, you can just go to the store and buy a bow. But why not make your gift show a bit more thought, and style? Recycle old maps, glossy ads, and other paper into creative bows with this guide.

Design blog How about orange... put together a tutorial for turning a glossy magazine page into a gift bow. They talk about using it in a gift-wrapping emergency, but we'd be equally as impressed if someone used paper related to the gift in some way—paper from a travel brochure for a travel-related gift, a cover of a sports magazine for piece of sports equipment, and so on.

Check out the full guide at the link below, and if you have you own crafty wrapping tricks, let's hear them in the comments.

Make a Gift Bow from a Magazine Page [via Re-Nest]

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at wnfba@yvsrunpxre.pbz
moc.rekcahefil@nosaj.

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