09.14.08

Lifehacking

Posted in Hacks, Life at 7:38 pm by cphoton

Hi All,

Finally I am breaking with the inertia of not updating this place as often as I would like!

This post is mainly focused to providing tips to increasing productivity. As some of you probably already know, I am usually filled with work for the entire day and as time goes by, I am forced to crank out more stuff in less time.

When I was faced with the dilemma to increase my productivity, I started wondering if there was any way to change myself in order to be more productive. Shortly after I discovered sites like Lifehack, Lifehacker and Zen Habits that give lots of advice on how to simplify organizing efforts and also how to change oneself in order to be able to achieve the goals intended.

Some of the key tips I have encountered are:

Of course there are many more tips, and most of the time implementing these tips are easier said than done, it is important to practice the discipline and have lots, lots and lots of patience to achieve the desired results. Most of the time you will experience failures, but the lesson here is to learn and adjust (meditation helps). Lots of tweaks might be necessary but once you reach the desired point it is very rewarding. I have a long way reaching that point yet, here are some tips to avoid when changing habits. I really like the part of trying any habit for 30 days, as it feels as if you are just trying a new program. If you like the new program, you can continue with the habit, if not, leave it alone ;)

Hoping this helps, I shall depart, and will try these techniques so that I can share interesting stuff more often here.

06.01.08

New Family Member: Isis

Posted in Life at 9:04 pm by cphoton

This post is not about technical stuff, but a life related one.

About a month ago, my girlfriend Vero was working at the veterinary, when a coworker called her saying that she had found a kitten at the entrance door of her house, and was very small and sick. This is a common occurrence here as people often cannot take care of pets and abandon them for good and here in Uruguay there are no good laws regarding animal protection. Anyways, when the kitten was brought to the veterinary the kitten was in love for Vero and hugged her, and the kitten was so cute that Vero could not resist bringing it home, so she called me and asking to adopt her… Read the rest of this entry »

02.25.08

Tools - Part 2

Posted in Life, Tools at 9:13 am by cphoton

Hi All, I know it’s been a while since I last posted, I hope I can write more frequently here. I am writing this on my way to work, so I will be updating this post during the week with the links of any of the tools I mention.

Regarding tools, for browsing I use Firefox with the following plugins:

  • AdBlock Plus: As the name suggests, it is an advertising blocker. This will make page loads faster.
  • AdBlock Filterset.G Updater: Updater for the previous plugin, this will keep the blacklists updated.
  • Download Statusbar: Useful visual plugin for managing downloads in progress.
  • DownThemAll!: Download Manager (similar to Getright)
  • Fasterfox: For loading pages faster, tweaks the way the browser downloads pages. I don’t turbocharge it though.
  • FEBE: This is for doing backups of the plugins installed, useful if you need to uninstall Firefox or create new profiles.
  • Firebug: Very useful for debugging pages!
  • Forecastfox Enhanced: I usually get the weather information from this plugin. The difference with the regular version is that I can choose which satellite image to show.
  • FoxyProxy: Useful if you are changing the proxy configuration often.
  • Greasemonkey: This plugin lets you inject Javascript code into any page you visit. I use GM so that I can use the GMail Macro scripts, so that my e-mail checking experience is faster as I use only the keyboard to do most of the actions. You can also use this for enhancing the browsing experience for other sites, or even write your own scripts. Get more scripts here.
  • Image Zoom: Very useful for zooming in on images.
  • PDF Download: This plugin lets you choose whether you want to download a PDF file, save it or view it online.
  • ScribeFire: Blogging plugin. It is quite flexible as it supports multiple blogging platforms (Blogger, Livejournal, Wordpress, etc.)
  • YSlow: This tool lets you diagnose performance problems in websites.

Got any useful plugin? just write it in the comments for this post and I will have a look at it :)

EDIT: Done inserting the links, that was quick!

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