RT @davewiner: "Getting Things Done" sounds like "Using An Outliner." http://r2.ly/729c
Totally right.
I had connected these concepts when I read this book 2 yrs ago.
In practice it works very much like an outliner.
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Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Novice Swimming Class
Today we went into the deepwater pool (up to 16 feet) in the swimming class. We first practiced our underwater swimming stroke in the shallow pool, wore our flotation pad and then headed out to the deep pool. In the deep pool, we then got a hang of the pool, lost our fear of the deepwater with help from the pad.
Then we removed the pad, pushed ourself up in the edge of the pool and sank in the water. This gave us a sense of going inside the deepwater and then we floated up. All along, 2 lifeguards were assisting with the training. We then jumped into the water from the deck and then floated up and then swam to the sides with assistance. Finally, we used the springboard to dive into the pool feet first and then swam or kicked to the side. All along, we could also wear our flotation pad and practice treading in the deepwater pool.
It was an exciting class and I never thought I would ever get into the deepwater pool. It was looking very daunting in the first day of the class. Now I have a feeling that I could deal with it. Mary, the instructor, says that we could dive head first into the pool by the time the class would end. That would be awesome. Actually, If I am able to tread water by the end of the class in that pool, i would have achieved what i wanted to achieve from this class.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com
Obama on Daily show was gripping. Jon gave Obama some tense moments. I watched Obama's appearance when he was a Senator and he was a bit loose then. This time, he was acting a bit tight (presidential as some would say). I thought obama really did say: "larry summers did heck of a job" echoing George Bush's comment on Brownie. But he recovered very quickly and sharply once Jon tried to make fun of him and said it was "pun intended".
Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com
Yes they Cain! SF Giants, Matt Cain take 2-0 World Series lead!
Absolutely joyful to watch!
The bayarea is abuzz with October baseball fans! (including myself)
I never thought baseball would be this much fun to watch!
List of unusual words beginning with X
While looking for words starting with X: List of unusual words beginning with X,
I came across this interesting site:
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
World Series Backdrop Comes in Red and Blue - NYTimes.com
I said it before here and NYTimes is also saying it.
This year's World Series is Blue Vs Red!
Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News
The Octopus that entered the pop culture, including some bollywood movies, has died.
Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News
Monday, October 25, 2010
Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «
Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «
If this pans out, it will be nice. I can have hopefully have a Wifi-direct adapter for my printer, hard drive, camera, stream data, music and video over the wifi, etc. This will probably replace AirPlay but probably not in the next couple of years.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Using feedburner to connect twitter and blogger
This weekend, I discovered the blogger and twitter extensions in chrome. It is now very easy to blog about anything very very quickly. I was also trying to kickstart my twitter habit. While doing so, I found myself blogging an entry and then tweeting that entry at the same time. I always wondered why blogger wouldn't tweet for me when i posted my blog entry. Maybe its because they are competing tools in a sense.
I then found out from this link that feedburner allows posting tweets for every blog post automatically. feedburner was recently acquired by google apparently. I then created a feedburner feed for my blog and in the feed preference, i requested for twitter connection. This was fairly easy to setup and in a minute or so, i am now setup to tweet for every blog post. If it worked, this post will be the first one for me that will appear as a tweet as well.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Novice Swimming Class
Im taking the novice swimming class at DeAnza college. The class is from late September to first week of December. The instructor Mary Donahue is a very good swimming teacher. I think that subjects like this taught by really good teachers like Mary will really develop people with good skills that can be used through the rest of our lives. I think community colleges are such a good use of my tax dollars. The facilities in de-anza college and the teaching quality are just so good.
Here are my class summaries:
Class 1:
This class was all about getting used to the water. We had to dunk our head and immerse ourselves inside the pool. We learnt beach ball float and got used to floating in the water learning about the nature of our bodies in water (i.e. your body floats naturally!). We got used to holding our breath and floating in the water.
The final exercise in the class was to do a somersault by doing a beach ball float and then a windmill hand rotation.
It was a lot for the first class but it got our attention.
Class 2:
In this class we learnt about treading water, watched videos about water safety and practiced the previous class material. We did more of somersaults and floats. Then we started floating in the water and doing flutter kicks.
Class 3:
We learnt about jumping into the water from the deck and swimming from there. We learnt about underwater stroke, i.e. swimming under water. We learnt about backstroke (soldier, monkey, bird(or airplane)) and swimming while facing up. Using the underwater stroke we swam to the bottom of the pool and did handstands. We also learnt about the rudiments of freestyle by keeping our hands like chicken wings and swimming that way. The other drill was to keep our arms well stretched and swimming forward using flutter kicks.
We jumped into the pool from the deck and swam facing down and later facing up using backstroke.
Class 4:
This class was all about learning freestyle swimming. We watched videos about freestyle swimming, the entry, pushdown, pushback and recovery (maybe there were different terms for these). We were not supposed to learn breathing while swimming yet. We did a lot of drills of swimming in backstroke and then freestyle, swimming under water and then freestyle, etc.
Apple ipad purchase
We bought an ipad this month. It is a very cool device and reinforces my desire to switch over to Mac. It is really a media consumption device and not a computer. You can browse, read books (but too heavy to be a good ereader), read mail, calendar, write simple docs, notes, mails, etc., listen to music, watch netflix and youtube, tweet or blog, use all the cool apps, play games, etc.
And you get to do all these in a very enjoyable and interactive way. That is what i like about ipad. You can do almost all of these on a PC but you will not enjoy doing any of these as much as doing them on ipad. Usability makes all the difference in using these devices.
For example, i felt that my PC became really usable only after i switched over to google chrome (firefox sucks and IE is horrible), itunes, latest version of thunderbird, picasa, etc.
What i dont like about ipad? The screen just has too much glare. The device is a bit too heavy. The screen gets too smudgy after a few minutes. You cannot search within the page in safari web browser.
Another major gripe, you cannot watch any flash content. I think Steve Jobs just picked a religious war and not a technology fight. His reasons for rejecting flash are not very convincing. However, i do agree about the poor quality of the current Adobe plugins. My chrome browser and firefox crashes too often in shockwave plugins.
Apple ipod and ipad are surely "walled gardens". But im not complaining too much because I think the "walled gardens" like the one that Apple built are pretty convenient, pleasant (not many virus infections or mcafee caused slowdowns to prevent them) and makes me very productive. If i want the freedom and anarchy of an open environment, i will go to my PC and Linux machines, but i am happy that i have a choice of going into beautiful but restricted "walled gardens" like what Apple provides.
Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com
Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com
I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Was a REAL TORTURE!
And loved every innings of it, especially the last one!
This year's world series is BLUE state vs RED state!
FEAR THE BEARD!!
GO GIANTS!!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Early Voting in California 2010
I voted early for this election. This year's voting sheet was really long. It had a long list of different propositions. Some of them really are about lawmaking which in my opinion should be in the hands of the legislators. Isn't that the way "democracy" is supposed to work? You elect legislators and they are supposed to make laws?
California's "Direct Democracy" through the Proposition process, in my opinion, is out of control.
However, I wouldn't want to get rid of it altogether. For example, in the last election, there was Proposition 17, which changed California to have "Open Primaries". I am eagerly hoping to see a lot of moderate candidates as a result of that Prop.
As for the long voting sheet, I really hope that they bring in some good web applications to show the voting recommendations from notable opinion makers, from newspapers or even from your social network. With a very busy schedule, I really do not have the time to read about the merits of a little known proposition in my county government. I would rather take the word of someone that I would trust for this one.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Cellphoon Reapars
I found this from Neeru Khosla's (wife of Vinod Khosla) blog. A very interesting blog post from the director Shekar Kapur. Very heartwarming story reminiscent of "slumdog millionaire".
Who fired Steve Jobs?
Given Larry's comment ( "The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."), I was curious about the smart ones in Apple board who fired Steve Jobs.
Here is the link where i found the answer. The bright businessmen who did this smart move were:
A.C. (mike) Markkula
Peter O Crisp
Arthur Rock
Henry Singleton
Philip Schlein
John Sculley
I remember reading that Steve Jobs insisted on getting rid of Mike Markkula from Apple board as part of his taking the role of Apple CEO again.
I always wondered about this list because when I worked at Taligent, people used to point to a conference room in one of the buildings and mention "this was the conference room where Steve Jobs was fired".
Malcom Gladwell's Post in Newyorker about social networks
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell
(good takedown of social networks as an agent for political change)
Monday, October 04, 2010
Pidgin Docking windows on my desktop
I am using pidgin 2.6.5 (our current IT standard issue) and it has a really bad default option that docks the windows in an annoying way. Once you bring up the buddy list, it will shove the desktop and the other windows to its side. I really couldn't find a way to disable it easily. After googling,
i found this:
I followed the advice in this post:
> You've enabled the "Dockable Buddy List" in the "Windows Pidgin > Options" plugin and then dragged your buddy list close enough to the > side of the desktop that it has docked. > > If you disable that feature, it will no longer dock.
I invoked:
Tools->Plugins->Windows Pidgin Options->Configure Plugin and disabled (Dockable Buddy List)
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