The Lifelong Learner
:: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::
The Lifelong Learner
:: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::
When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. ….
The above is a starting passage from The Collector by John Fowles. It illustrates the principle “Show The Story” very well. It is one of the major principles of writing. By showing the story, not simply telling, a reader is exploring it the same way as the author. The reader sees what the writer sees.
I recently listened to a book by Sol Stein, Stein on Writing. It is a book where Stein, master editor and a great writer, shows you how to improve your writing. He shows you. He doesn’t just tell you the theory behind it. How? By giving you countless examples. It’s a great book if you want to improve your writing.
The two principles from this book that I’m going to remember when I’m writing:
1. Show, Don’t Tell
2. Use Distinctive Detail
To use distinctive detail, or to particulate, is to make the character, scene, or story unique. Make is so distinctive that you can actully see it in your eyes. You can visualize it.
Check out the book, or listen to it, and learn.
I’ve been using Firefox for over 2 months now and I love it! It’s the best browser out there.
Get the exe version from this download site.
See why I like it: Firefox Is My Browser — my previous post.
A list of mirrors here.
There is a curve called failure
A loop called confusion
Speed bumps called friends
Red lights called enemies
Caution lights called family
you’ll have flats called jobs
But if you have determination
An engine called perseverance
Insurance called faith
A driver called GOD
You’ll make it to a place called SUCCESS!”, “WisdomTips.com”); ?>
When I cast my vote on Tuesday, it wasn’t for president re-elect Bush. I voted for John Kerry. However, now that the elections are over, I don’t like to despair. I support Bush whole heartedly. So should you!
President Bush has a lot of wide-ranging flaws. President Bush is not a good speaker. President Bush makes mistakes. But Bush is our president. Bush will be our president for the next four years. Bush is a human being with good intentions. Bush is going to do a good job.
Bush’s plan for the next four years is very ambitious. He does not want to sit and relax. Like him or not, president Bush gets a lot of things done. He wants to reform Tax Code, Social Security, reform schools (especially high schools), plus other things. Those are extremely difficult issues.
I don’t despair. I support president Bush.
Are you looking for coffee shops in the area where you live? No? Are you looking for barber shops in your area? No? Are you looking for anything in your area and want an easier way of finding it? Sure you do. Google Local to the rescue! It let’s you search in your area. Plus, it shows you the location in the presented, zoomable map. Wow! It’s amazing what Google is doing. (Maybe their stock price is where it should be? 
)
Google Local: check it out for yourself!
I remember a professor in my freshman year in college talking about this. He said, that in the future you’ll be able to search locally. That’s exactly what this is. I believed in what he said, as it made sense. It was just dificult to do. And now, localized searches are almost a reality (almost, because I don’t know if this is 100% effective). This will be big!
This entry is only applicable if you use MovableType. 
Are you getting spam comments in you MovableType blog? I see this as a growing problem among many bloggers. A lot of the bloggers are so fed up that they stop comments altogether. I think that’s too extreme. I’ll give you a Anti-spam solution for MovableType that I put in in place (it was suggested to me by a friend ) for my MT blog and that has been working 100%.
What’s the trick? Adding a new, custom, hidden field on the comments form and checking for it when the comment is submitted.
Why does it work? It works because spammers don’t go to your site to post the comment. They use a crawler to do that. And using a crawler, they have to have to same script work for all MovableType, and possible others, blogs. Like I said, it has worked 100% for me — not a single spam comment passed through. How can I tell? That’s the fun out of the solution. I log each request by a spammer in the activity log. The solution presented here does that.
The solution requires some tweaking with couple of MT files. But if you can change couple lines in a file manually, you can do it. It’s a two step process. Very simple.
Step 1: Add a new hidden parameter to your Comment Listing Template
You can find it under TEMPLATES in MT.
Locate the following in that file:
<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi"
Add a new hidden field inside the form. I named the field “saynotospam” but you can name it anything you want. You should, actually, so spammers don’t write the script for it. After you’re done, it will look something like this (you only need to add the bolded code):
<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi" name="comments"onsubmit="this.saynotospam.value='donny';if (this.bakecookie[0].checked) rememberMe(this)"><input type="hidden" name="saynotospam" />
If you allow to Preview comments, you have to add the field there as well (same code). Plus, if you have the comment enabled/embedded somewhere else, you have to do the same (I had to add it to my Individual Entry Archive).
Step 2: Verify that the parameter exists when MT posts it.
When the MT posts the comment and the field does not exist, you stop it, not letting the comment be added.
Open mt/lib/MT/App/Comments.pm
and add the following in the “post” method (search for it):
sub post {my $app = shift;my $q = $app->{query};# 7/13/2004 skif (!$q->param('saynotospam')) {$app->log("spammer ignored");return $app->error("get lost");}...}
That’s it. Watch the spam comments in the Activity Log of MT. I had done the above and I have not received a single spam comment. I used to receive couple per week before. Thanks Rob.
When you open a PDF file, does it take a considerable amount of time? If there is a lag, and you would like speed that up (i.e, like opening a browser window), read on. I’ll give you a tip that will speed up opening PDF files drastically. The tip was published in the latest PC Magazine.
It’s very simple. What you do is remove all of the unnecessary plug-ins and only leave three. How do you do it? Go to c:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat n\Reader folder (where n is the Reader version). Backup Plug_ins directory (copy and paste should do). Remove all of the files from the Plug_ins except the following three: EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api.
Restart and see the difference!
Since I use PDF files a lot (read and write), I’ll be a big beneficiary.
I’ve been watching Mozilla struggle for years now. With each release, I was saying to myself, these guys are never going to get it. I’ve been seeing some good things from them, but never as good as Internet Explorer.
Things have changed, however. With the upcoming release of Firefox 1.0, I think Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. I’ve made it my default browser.
There are a couple of reasons why I like it more than IE. First, it is a whole lot more customizable. With the developer support that Mozilla is getting, you can get a good number of extensions. There is one that I have and that I really love. It’s called Adblock, and it’s a top-rated extension. With Adblock, I can remove ads from the sites that I visit on a regular basis. How? Adblock is smart enough to recognize it (with couple of clicks, of course). See the list of extensions here.
Second, Firefox has more features built in. If you ever experience tabbed browsing, you will never want to go back. For real. Built-in shortcuts in favorites is another really cool feature. Let’s say you want to lookup a word in Dictionary.com. You would do first go to Dictionary.com, search for the word, and copy the resulting URL. You paste that URL into the dialog box from New bookmark, add “d” as your Keyword, and replace the word you searched for with “%s.” That’s it. (The process is very simple so I might be complicating it.) After that, anytime you type “d” followed by anything you want to search for, it will go there directly. I defined several Keywords for myself: for Google searching, for stock-chart lookup, and for a dictionary. It’s simple and great.
Third, Firefox is fast. Maybe not as fast as IE, but fast enough. And a lot faster than previous versions of Mozilla/Firefox. I’m saying that because a lot of people say Mozilla is slow, etc. It’s fast, very fast.
Fourth, Firefox is more secure. There is no question about it. If only for the single reason that its market share is small. People don’t bother as much in attacking it.
I like Firefox very much. I’m excited! I like it also because it has a chance to bring competition back to the browser market. I love competition, and anytime you only have one player, it’s called monopoly. That’s not a good situation.
Get Firefox here and try it for yourself.http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/