It’ll never go wasted.

Steve Jobs’, in his famous Stanford Commencement Speech told how all the calligraphy he had learned in his college after dropping out(yes, he did learn after dropping out!) helped him out later when designing the user interface for Mac.

I recently had a similar experience.

I had learned SQL in 11th and 12th grade and at that time, I thought that it was of no use. However, now its all coming back. Many people are considering DBMS in this semester as most difficult or one of most difficult subjects but I am able to easily go through it!

The lesson to take is that whatever you learn never goes wasted. It all comes back sometime!

And remembered a discussion with my roommate about Apple and Samsung last night.

Now that I’m owner of iPhone 4S, I can say a thing about design and functionality.

When you use iPhone, it works beautifully. Everything is magical. And I love that.

When it comes to Samsung and Google, I do not essentially hate them. But I do hate their bad designs and poor experience.

I used to like Google at one time. Because Windows UI was horrible compared to Google’s Simplicity. I loved their products and I still use them.

But then, I got to know about Apple.

Now, I am a big fan of Apple and that is for a reason, their quality. Yes, I pay a premium, but that’s better than getting headaches because of using bad UI.

I remember reading “Once You Go Mac, You Don’t Go Back.”

Times are changing and now, a better phrase would be:

Once You Go Apple, You Don’t Go Back

It is good advice and though I’m just trying it out, may prove out useful.

Basically, its about not making a priority list. Do not assign priorities to anything. Do everything that comes with equal priority. Simple.

Why

Although this advice may seem useless to many on first sight, it is beautiful.

“There’s no use of putting much effort in a less useful task”, you might say.

But, is the task really less important?

Yes?

Who said so?

We do not know the future and what may seem of very low importance can turn out to be the biggest decision of your life!

So, try it out at least once.

To the pessimists out there, I know you are thinking “What if I do something of low importance well and it does not help?” If you are, stop reading this post, close this tab and find something else to read. This post is written by an optimist.

When To Do This

Each and every moment. With every task that you encounter.

How

1. Practice doing everything with equal importance. Start for small intervals. Like an hour.
2. Slowly, increase the time of practice. Start doing it in long stretches.
3. Repeat.

That’s it.

If you are still thinking that your work or _______ is of more importance, no one is stopping you. You can still do it.

This is the best thing with advice. Either you take it or throw it. No one forces you to follow it.

P.S. I tried giving equal importance to everything and this post is one of the results. What was going to be a 50 word recommendation for Effortless turned into a 300 word spell checked, Scribe Optimized post!

And yes, Effortless is a great book. To top it up, Leo has not set a price. You can decide your own price (even $0), so go get it.

You can:

1. Stick with things and be miserable.
2. Make creating new things your business and enjoy!

I was reading Why Psdtuts+ Has To Make Money To Continue by Collis Ta’eed and drew some similarities between me and him. I also like to create new sites but do not hang for long.

I did stick with Blogging With Success but it did not end very well. So, what to do?

Either I can start creating websites or focus on building next one. But without money to invest, I think step 2 can only be achieved by going through step 1.

I do not know about Collis in detail. So, not sure how he did it. Anyway, I’ll find it and see what can be done!

By the way, doesn’t Steve Job’s philosophy apply here? He said that we should do what we love. It will be easy to stick if we do what we love.

Again bringing Ta’eed, he stuck because he loved creating websites.

So, if you do not find like sticking to task on hand, better find what you love and do it!

Let’s end this here and do something.

And it has repeated year after year.

I call it marketing pattern, at least in blogging!

1. A new “authority figure” appears on a big blog or a bunch of blogs.
2. They do lot of guest posts.
3. They give “something” for free. A book, a free webinar or something similar.
4. They start a course.
5. Next month, they are nowhere to be seen around. They have gone back, not visible on radar anymore!

Now, this cycle repeats year after year.

I was thinking about this circle. Can this be broken?

How about a blogger that stays on the radar forever. For a long time. Who does not disappear for long time!

It would rock. Let’s see who can step up!

• Why?
• Because WordPress 3.2 had a strange but irritating bug that
• basically drove me mad!

When you added bullet list, the next paragraph will start as a div! While a small bug, it meant that paragraph formatting would not work. Hitting enter would then move the pointer to next line only.

My workaround was to write some words first and then insert list above them!

Small but inconvenient!

Anyway, WordPress 3.3 solved this and also added many new features. Download now.

It Just Works.

You get an Apple product and it just works. Noticed this today when using a friend’s iPhone for listening to songs. The earphones are great. They sound good and the mic is exceptionally designed.

Elegant and Beautiful!

“What’s so special?”, you might ask.

Well, they look good. And talking about design, let me first add a quote by Steve Jobs:

Design is not how it looks, it is how it works

And these earphones just work. The mic comes in very handy when you are listening to music. The volume controls and the pause button are great!

When using these, I got reminded of a post by Joel Spolsky, Hitting the High Notes. In this post, Joel has explained why Apple is Apple.

Just read this excerpt:

Apple made a decision based on style, in fact, iPod is full of decisions that are based on style. And style is not something that 100 programmers at Microsoft or 200 industrial designers at the inaptly-named Creative are going to be able to achieve, because they don’t have Jonathan Ive, and there aren’t a heck of a lot of Jonathan Ives floating around.

I’m sorry, I can’t stop talking about the iPod. That beautiful thumbwheel with its little clicky sounds …  Apple spent extra moneyputting a speaker in the iPod itself so that the thumbwheel clicky sounds would come from the thumbwheel. They could have saved pennies … pennies! by playing the clicky sounds through the headphones. But the thumbwheel makes you feel like you’re in control. People like to feel in control. It makes people happy to feel in control.The fact that the thumbwheel responds smoothly, fluently, andaudibly to your commands makes you happy. Not like the other 6,000 pocket-sized consumer electronics bit of junk which take so long booting up that when you hit the on/off switch you have to wait a minute to find out if anything happened. Are you in control? Who knows? When was the last time you had a cell phone that went on the instant you pressed the on button?

Granted, this is a bit old. But to this day, most of these things are true. Apple is all about style, design and experience. Technologically, there are 100 other companies that can produce better or powerful devices. But they can’t get that experience.

The experience is what makes iPhone a great smartphone. It has that experience!

No other phone with 2 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM and a standard OS can beat it. It will be better technologically and maybe in terms of looks too. But experience, na, never!

Experience is something that a 100 coders copiers at Android will never be able to get. It is something that a big hardware giant like Samsung will never be able to replicate.

So, Apple haters, keep your arguments to yourself. Play with your Samsungs, Androids and what not.

I love the experience and I’ll choose that any day.

Why?

Because here’s what other smartphones work like:

You have to push them to make them work.

iPhone, it just works! And looks great too.

Next time you think about comparing anything with iPhone, ask yourself, “does it just work?”

And before you tout your next “iPhone Killer”, just keep in mind that only thing that caused decline in iPod sales is iPhone! There was never an iPod killer and there will not be an iPhone killer for same reason!

Call me part of cult, fanboy or what, but Apple is Apple!

Push Image Credit: meshmar2 vis flickr.

Facebook, Google+, Twitter and everywhere else, I used this pic.

This pic reminds me of good old days. I used to live in Hamirpur. This pic was taken by my best friend, Ajay. Back then, I weighted some 60+ kgs and all my jeans were fit!

Now, I have lost some 15 kgs(without any need, thanks to bad food provided by our mess!) and all my jeans are loose!

Also, I wanted to update the pic for long time. In search for the pic, I even had a small photoshoot with my photographer friend Chintan Doshi and my Sony Ericsson W595 which resulted in these:

Last pic was taken by Priya though.

Last night, I was getting bored and decided to get a good profile picture. First, I took an outline effect image with Webcam Toy. Next, I removed background using Aviary. Finally, I was able to achieve this:

Works well! So, finally, I have a new profile pic. Yay!

Here it is:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I have exams from December 2 and preparations are in full swing! (OK OK, they are not!)

This afternoon, I was studying a pretty long example of linked list related code. At first, I went through all the code and then tried to understand it all.

But then, I had a thought.

And now, I have a full cheating plan.

Interested?

Let’s analyze some things first.

Programmers Have A Strange Habit

They do not like to read other’s code.

Being a programmer myself, I have noticed it many times. I can help others solve their code problems but in most of the cases, I help unwillingly because there’s always this small part in me that wants to ask them to rewrite whole code!

In fact, according to Joel Spolsky, there’s a fundamental law of programming:

It’s harder to read code than to write it.

Read more about this habit of programmers in Things You Should Never Do. It’s an excellent piece by Joel.

Now, teachers who teach us are programmers! So, they’ll not check the code that well. And in case they are not programmers…..

Teachers Are Not Always Programmers

No disrespect intended to anyone but many times, teachers are not programmers. Especially in India where teaching is viewed as last profession.

And if your teacher is not a programmer, the job is easier!

A non programmer is never ever going to analyze all code. In best case, syntax will be checked. (Wish I had remembered this in first semester in my C exam, where I forgot to add & before each and every scanf! )

Programs Run On Computers…..

Not papers!

And we write our exams on paper.

So, teacher has two options:

1. Check syntax only.
2. Run every program on their computer.

In case you are thinking about the second case, read on…..

Money Is Important, Not Code!

Teachers Are Paid To Check Answer Sheets

Ta da!

At least in India, teachers are paid to check answer sheets and not for checking codes! So, teacher will not run your code, they will just see if you have written everything.

Now that we know that memorizing codes won’t help, here’s how to save you some hard work during exams:

1. Do Not Leave Coding Questions

Worst thing you can do with a coding question is leaving it. Do not leave answer blank. Write something relevant. Write anything. You will get something at very least!

2. Add Algorithm/Flow Charts or Both

Since code won’t be checked fully, teacher will look for key points. Right?

Do not let teacher go to programming part. Write algorithm or flow chart so that teacher knows that you know how to solve the problem and hope teacher does not check the code.

3. /* Comment, Comment, Comment */

Do not write just code, include comments too! This will make code a bit clear (if it is correct, that is!)

These tips will surely help you score better in programming exams. Let me know how it goes.

Disclaimer: One last thing, this is just an experiment! I’ll try these things this time. However, this may or may not work. Try at own risk.