Anyway, few months ago I found this simple and easy to use application called TaskPaper. I love it! I recommend to try TaskPaper for all of you who feel that you are not 100% happy with you to-do manager.

For Mac users who want an easier way to make lists and stay organized. TaskPaper is a simple to-do list that’s surprisingly adept. Unlike today’s complex organizers, TaskPaper lets you focus on getting things done.

Configure the server to return a status of 503 (network unavailable), you can also add the Retry-After response-header field to tell bots when to come back.

If you use PHP scripting language something like this should work:
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable");
header("Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable");
header("Retry-After: 3600");
php?>

Another thing – you shouldn’t use 301 (or any other) redirects. I mean if someone comes to yoursite.com/somepage.html this page should display the 503 not redirect to some yoursite.com/503.html page.

As for content you can show something like this:

<title>503 Service Temporarily Unavailable
<h1>Service Temporarily Unavailable</h1>
<p>Welcome to YourSite.com, we're currently under maintenance and will be offline until SOME DATE & TIME.
Please try again later.</p>

You can also add your logo or any other content you wish to show your visitors while your site is down.

I needed more space in my WinXP VM, and here’s how I increased it’s disk size.

1. Create a new temporary virtual disk (with the size of your data on VM) and attach it to the VM
2. Boot to your VM and install a disk-cloning software (e.g. for Windows there is Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost), use it to create a backup/clone image file on the attached temporary disk.
3. Create a third virtual disk with the size you would like to have for your VM
4. Detach your original virtual disk from your VM, attach the new bigger disk and the temporary disk (that has the backup/clone image) to your VM
5. Use Recovery disk (of the disk-cloning software you used in step 2) to boot to your VM (actually, you can mount it’s image) and use restore function to restore your files to the new larger disk.
6. Detach temporary disk and unmount the recovery disk.

You should have your VM with the larger disk now. Check if everything is working OK, and delete the temporary and old disk images.
This is just an example which worked perfectly for me, I believe you can achieve this using other clone/backup tools and maybe even w/o using the temporary virtual disk. Have fun!

I use VirtualBox on my Mac when I need to test/use/check something on Windows or Linux. This is very useful application from Sun (and it’s completely free!).

If you use VirtualBox, you’ve probably already seen that the size of the “.vdi” image file can be a lot bigger than disk space actually used in your Virtual Machine. And it grows with time as you use your VM.

There is a solution to that. You can shrink your vdi images to the size that files actually are using inside of them in 3 quick steps:

1. Launch your VM and defragment the disk.
2. Zero free space (use sdelete.exe -c on Windows VM, there are tools for other OS’es too)
3. Compact the vdi file, e.g., on Mac I run such command in Terminal:
   $ VBoxManage modifyhd WindowsXP.vdi –compact

Staying productive and getting things done are very popular questions these days – especially for those who are working at home. There are numerous various methods and practices, but I will put here a little advice, what I found working for me, three types of to-do’s – three steps:

1. Write down all tasks that are reoccurring daily/weekly/monthly and add them to your calendar (I recommend to also set reminders for them);
   This will define and let you know of your rhythm and routine. For some tasks you will have the exact time (for example weekly call with your client/boss) for other you just set it for your self – for example if you know that you have to send some report to someone every Monday evening, so you can reserve hour or two for this every Monday morning. I even recommend you to add such tasks as “have lunch”, “take a nap”, “exercise time!”, or “watch the news”, “check email”, “read important RSS feeds” etc.
2. Write down non-reoccurring tasks, group them by areas (personal, work, anything else) or by projects you’re working on and keep them close, prioritize what you can.
   The most important part of this is not to forget to look at the to-do list before starting to work on any project/area and to not forget to instantly add new tasks to the to-do lists as soon as you find them. If it’s possible I recommend you to use free slots of the calendar, which left after the first step and use them for working on projects/areas tasks. When calendar informs you about the time to start to work on some project/area – just look into it’s to-do list (and if there isn’t such yet, take time to create one).
3. Have a Not-to-do list (Yes, I know, it sounds strange :), but “not to-do lists” work!). And I recommend you very much to see this list. Review this and leave the things that fit you and add more.
   I highly recommend to set a 15mins monthly task in your calendar for reviewing your not to-do list.

Of course these steps are not for everyone, but hope this will help somebody :) Cheers!

Anyway – as I have a Mac now, I wanted to make me a nice setup for web development which I still like to do when I have free time ;) I found this tutorial - it is really easy to understand and I highly recommend it for all people who want to save a lot of time on this task.

There are three reasons why businesses can fail: 

• it’s a bad idea 
• bad execution
• outside factors 

Examine your business with these three filters to see where you’re at.

Outside factors are the things you cannot control, but Execution and Ideas are the things that you should review and re-estimate very often if you want your startup to succeed. Here’s how Calacanis ofers to do this:

The Execution

How well you’re executing?

• Are you ahead, behind or on schedule? 
• How everyone in your organization rank your product?
• How outsiders rank your product and features?

Put your project up against your two top competitors, compare yourself and your competitors on the top 10 features. 

Execution is the easiest thing to fix, and you can do it one of two ways: 

• get the people in your organization to perform at a higher level, 
• or get higher-level folks into your organization.

It really is that simple: folks can either step up or step out.

The Idea

If you’re idea is wrong, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is if the original idea allows you to evolve into your big idea.

• Have you adapted to your market? 
• Have your customers asked you for something different than you’re currently providing? 
• Have you given it to them?
• After you give them what they want, can you anticipate what they’ll ask for next? 
• Are those items following a theme?

Your first idea is rarely your best.

Indeed many of todays widely-known successful projects have started with totally different idea and than evolved.

• Leave at least one room cat free.
• Don’t let the cat sleep with you. (Your sleeping area should always be a cat free zone.)
• Vacuum frequently. If possible, get someone else to do the vacuuming when you’re not home. Buy a vacuum cleaner with good HEPA filter for this.
• Try to not leave your clothes where your cat can rub on them or sleep on them.
• Wash your hands often – and try to avoid touching your eyes or nose after you touch your cat.
• Wash all bedding in high-degree hot water at least twice a month.
• Clean your cat at least twice a month with a special shampoo (you can use a parfume-free baby shampoo).
• When the allergy symptoms flair up (especially this happens when you meet your friends’ cats), use an anti-histamine medications to make you comfortable.

Many people believe that allergy is caused by cat’s fur & hair, but it is not true – the allergen is in cat saliva. This allergen is a protein called Fel d 1. It is well described in this article about cat allergy:

When a cat washes itself, saliva is deposited on its fur (or skin in the case of hairless cats). The saliva dries into dust (dander or dandruff) which is released when a cat scratches or moves and when humans stroke or brush a cat.

I hope this post will help you to live happilly with your cat. For more info read these online discussions: One, Two, Three.

I like this quote from TechCrunch’s post about hiring right people:

The most important part of hiring correctly is to not hire the wrong people. The second most important part of hiring correctly is to hire the right people. What that means is that it is better to not hire anyone at all if you can’t find the right person.

<…>

The right people are the ones that really, really want to work with you. You can tell they’re excited to be a part of the team. They actively look for problems to solve, and then solve them. This is a personality type that is very easy to spot once you know what to look for – they have fire in their eyes. They’re warriors.

I totally agree with this. I have seen lots of interesting projects/ideas die because of hiring wrong people.