Cookies.

It is not about the cookies that we eat.

When trying to access gmail from a new web browser from linux 12 cookies were loaded before google would let me see the login page. I don't know how many cookies would be there in an hour's browsing. I had the misconception of cookies as objects that try to steal my data or those that would make my system more vulnerable to attacks. I regularly remove cookie manually. I had allowed them only because I thought them to be necessary evil which allowed proper functioning of a webpage. However this article at wikipedia says that "cookies are simple pieces of data unable to perform any operation by themselves. In particular, they are neither spyware nor viruses, despite the detection of cookies from certain sites by many anti-spyware products".

கற்றது கைமண்ணளவு; கல்லாதது உலகளவு. வேறென்ன சொல்ல.

Heavy Problem

The third biggest problem that is facing the people of the world after the more probable global warming and the less probable nuclear flareup is weight / fat / cholestral/ obesity. There are a million websites offering "weight loss tips" [ well it is actually Results 1 - 10 of about 2,110,000 for "weight loss tips". (0.16 seconds) in google on 24/12/2007]. Reader's Digest covers Weight loss like nothing else with a cover story on weight loss every 3 months or so. Even I went on to cover my "7 day weight loss" program on a daily basis only to find out that it didnot work for me. But that was in February 2006. Now I am older and wiser(!) by almost 2 years. So I'm gonna give it another try. It'll start after Christmas and end on the second day of the newyear. This time I'm planning to have a close watch on the progress that I'm expecting to make.

PS:

Whatever you see above were written on 24th Decemner 2007 and the post was left in cold storage since then. So was the "7 day weight loss" program. I forgot all about it till today when i came back to see what's in my blog list.

Disposable email ID - Towards a spam free inbox

Lifehacker has posted about disposable mail ID that can be created through Guerillamail.com. I used to wonder why my inbox gets more spam. This should help me reduce that.

Energy Savings - 2

Usage of energy can be calculated through these energy calculators. It helps in monetizing your savings and motivates in implementation.

Template changes (again)

Once again I have changed my template. The previous post on template change is here. This time for the betterment of the world. Not kidding. I wanted to go in for energy saving at my office and as a first step I changed the switch off monitor time from never (yes never) to 30 minutes and then to 15 minutes. This has been implemented in 6 PCs so far and I am trying to get this setting to be implemented in atleast 50 PCs in our office complex. For this I need to project the savings in monetary terms, not in power. As I did some research on it I stumbled on the information that even a white screen uses more energy than a dark screen. So I have started customising my computer to show a less bright screen in as many applications as possible and hence this template change for my blog. Now tell me. Isn't it for the betterment of the world.
More links.
See How you can save $25 to $75 per desktop PC annually here
Some questions on switching off monitors answered here
Energy Star
CIS Knowledge Base

Merge the csv files

For long I have been processing the daily bank statements that we receive at our office one by one. I have always wondered if there is not a better way of doing it. I specifically declined a daily statement for another account fearing having to open multiple files with just a couple of lines to create a weekly or monthly statement. Finally I searched the internet and guess what it can be done through excel itself. No separate tool is needed. How to do it can be seen here. Happy merging now on.

Take "Ctrl" of your browsing / computing.

"Ctrl" really helps in gaining control over the browsing and computing. There are somany shortcuts that make life easier. The ubiquitous "Ctrl+X,Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V" need not be mentioned as they are the most widely used controls next only to "Ctrl+Z. The tabbed browsing of IE has introduced the "Ctrl+Tab" to toggle between tabs. It did take me a couple of days to get out of the hangover created by firefox's "Ctrl+Page Down" to land at the correct shortcut to toggle b/w tabs. There are so many keyboard shortcuts put in place by every software maker to make life easier. Now a days I find myself using less of the mouse (so much for all the ergonomics stuff in it). (I'm planning to post on keyboard shortcuts and expecting it to be a learning experience for me too.)

--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

www.choladynasty.blogspot.com

Emails and Productivity.

It looks like these two don't go together. Every productivity suggestion includes at least one point about email. Either it is "No email in the first hour" or "No email on one day of a week" or "Separate time slot for emails". In our office we are yet to embrace email for in house communication in a big way. So even internet access is still restricted to a few workstations and mine being one of it. So far I did not have much trouble with spending more time on email. However I used to spend more time on RSS. But once I read that a empty inbox does not help in being productive I made a point not to read more than 10 posts from RSS. I select using the search option (Thunderbird) for random words, read them and in addition something that catches my eye. That really works for me.

Fire safety in Chennai

Yesterday while commuting to office I heard the siren of a fire engine going off. Ambulances are sighted more often in my route but not firetrucks. I tried to give way to the truck by slowing down to 25 kmph. But it took the truck close to a couple of kilometers to overtake me. The truck driver tried so hard to speed up but failed miserably. Chennai really needs to do something about it. In emergency conditions even a few minutes could be of great importance.

Brainstorming.

Last week I got a hands on experience with brainstorming. So far it had been something that I have read in books. As a student I have always failed (not subjects) to see the benefits of brinstorming. In fact I thought that this could at best throw out some whacky ideas if we can find some one bold enough to cough out such crap. Researchers seem to think in a similar way as they have generally failed to find evidence of its effectiveness for enhancing either quantity or quality of ideas generated(wiki). But my experiences have been encouraging.

Situation 1: Accepting the responsibility of another department.
What we get: One "no- body wants" kind of employee.
Issues. Incompetent staff being diverted to us, Using a new system (software) and Trouble in man management.
We had a discussion with the Dy.GM and she wanted us to take this responsibility. Her argument was that we gain an additional pair of hands. However we were apprehensive of the whole proposal and could not find a way to wriggle out of it. Then back in our division we went on discussing about the various options and found out that we had none but to accept it. Without knowing we started brainstorming. We went on to ask why this step was taken. What is the need? It is because our old way of doing things was slow in updating. Many ideas started flowing from our staff to ensure that the data gets updated fast enough. Then we had struck the exact answer. Providing of data at periodic intervals. This way the other division need not divert their staff to us and we were free from all the issues mentioned earlier.

Situation 2: Extending a service to another product.
Issues. Non-compatible data, No support.
This too was not announced as a braintorming session but we were encouraged to offer ideas.It did lead to a solution whereby we can use the same data structure with a few substitutes. A field that is to denote invoice number was used to mean account number and so on. However at the end of the meeting I accepted to do something I do not do. I had to write a program. (FYI - I am an accountant not a programmer.) Anyway, I guess it helps me in my career as a person who takes on challenges and gets it done( Yes. I did it.)

The post may at best be rated as vague, as I did not divulge much of the information about the problems, making it difficult to see where is the brainstorming. The reason can be found here in an old post.

Finally, the reason why I feel that these are brainstorming is we did not arrive at these solutions thinking about it.

See Wiki, here and here.

Standing meeting

I read a post in Lifehacker about conducting meetings without chairs. Seems to have helped them in finishing meeting in less than half the time. I wanted to try that out in our office. But then something struck my mind. The average age of employees in our organisation would be around 50. I'm not expecting a good response.

Things to come.

Brainstorming.
Productivity.

Any requests?

Template changes...

I'm planning to change the template so as to exclude the currently reading and just finished reading sections. Either I don't get time to update the section or I am reading a lot or nothing. This is not a very good combination. Especially the not updating as often can be explained like this.

The Personal excellence and goal were completed so long back and did help me. I exercise regularly (except for the ;last few days when I'm down with back pain), identified critical tasks in office and streamlined them.

But then I have read Cat-O-Nine tales by Jeffry Archer, பாரதி இருந்த வீடு, கற்பனைக்கு அப்பால், both by சுஜாதா and Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The tamil books were completed in half a day. It cannot progress from currently reading to just finished. So this section is finished. It goes off the page tommorrow.

Update: Done. 9th March 2007 0715 hours IST.

அனைத்து வலிகளும்....

தலைவலியும் பல்வலியும் தனக்கு வந்தால் தெரியும் என்று பழமொழி. அது உண்மை அல்ல. எல்லா வலிகளுக்கும் பொருந்தும். இன்று உடற்பயிற்சி செய்யும் போது கர்லா கட்டை (எம்.ஜி.ஆர் சத்யராஜுக்கு கொடுத்தது மாதிரி) தோளில் இடித்து முதுகு வலிக்க துவங்கி விட்டது. அடி பட்ட இடத்தில் ஒரு வலியும் இல்லை.ஆனால் உட்கார நிமிர முடியாமல் முதுகில் வலி. ஒரு வேலையும் ஆகவில்லை. Officeக்கு மட்டம் போட்டது தான் மிச்சம்.

Search skills

Not so long before there lived a young man in India who had a thing for searching on Internet. He would search the net thoroughly and find answers for his questions, doubts and also for others (He wished all items in his home were listed in his computer and were search able digitally). Time passed by. Now he work in a company in the accounts stream and recently got a broadband connection for his computer. Then began trouble. The BBS would not work if LAN is connected. Every time he wanted to connect to the Internet he needed to disconnect / disable his LAN. It was a pain in the neck and also elsewhere. He decided to resort to his old technique. And he did. He searched the whole wide world but could not hit upon the right link. Whenever he said two connections the search term was taken to mean one to be wireless. Days passed with no answer. Then he knew that the rules of the game have changed and his rusty search engine cannot work here.

PS.1

His undying spirit helped him find an answer within. Not within himself but in the settings screens of his network connections. Stumbled upon the idea to add a port to exceptions list in window firewall and there it works.

PS.2

No need to mention that it is about me.

PS.3

The idea in PS.1 failed even before this post can get to the blog. But today both networks are co-existing as if there had never been compatibility issues.
--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

There is nothing permanent except change.

“There is nothing permanent except change.”
Heraclitus of Ephesus quotes (Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, 540-480BC)

It is the most truest (is the emphasis enough) of all I have ever heard. My blog shows three suggested downloads which I don't use anymore. The first is "Post it notes for PC" which at one point of time seemed to be very important for carrying out my day to day work. The second is “FireFox extension for Time Management” used by me to track time spent on web (am I spiderman). More a tool to restrict my surfing time. Finally “A43 file manager” a replacement for windows explorer. That was expected to save time for me in opening command windows and searching file within a folder.

I am not using any of these today. Being organised does help. As I started to streamline processes in office by prioritising the tasks according to the urgency, pendency and importance monetarily or information wise thing began to fall in place themselves. Once the back logs are set right it is now really possible to go ahead of schedules by over a week. This has done away with the use of sticky notes on the screen.

This was a more simple one. Time management is done by me for the whole of my time. Not just surfing time. Respecting of the priorities I have set gave me little time to be on the web (mostly during lunch time). So I need not be looking at the bottom right corner of the browser to see when to stop ( usually how much time has been lost ).

The file manager is still installed in my PC, though it is not in the quick launch anymore. The credit goes to “Open command prompt here” tweak by MS. Moreover being organised has some thing to it. Now I don't need to search for files every now and then. I know where they are.

So why this title. Because only a few months ago I thought these tools to be indispensable, now completely dispensed with. And more changes are expected too. That's why.