Today, I’ve decided to write diary everyday. I should have a lot to write about on the first day of my resolution; but to my surprise, I could barely reach 3rd quarter of the page.
It’s been long since I scribed anything on a diary. I remember when I could write 4-5 pages a day! I guess I should continue this habit of writing daily, if not on blog, least on paper…
Category Archives: personal
Productivity boost: Rotate the monitor to portrait mode
One of the best productivity hack, I’m fond of is rotating the widescreen monitor into portrait mode.
I highly recommend this on your workstation/ production computer. For media consumption such as watching movies, pictures etc widescreen horizontal display is suited. But if you use the computer for work and content creation (blogs, forums, word, excel, emails/outlook etc) portrait mode would benefit you a lot. Just try it on your regular monitor and see the difference. Let me know about your experience. At first it may be bit awkward but later, I’m sure you’ll find increase in productivity. 🙂

Portrait mode of monitors
Buying Dell’s (swivel, tilt, & pivot/rotation enabled) ultrasharp monitors has been in my wishlist for years. But c’mon! It’s twice the price of regular LCD widescreen. So if you dont want to shell out extra for the flexible stand, you can literally rotate your monitor by 90 deg.
Micro-blogging at wordpress
What is your blogging style? thorough, detailed, long or quicky, short, fresh amd relevant?
I’ve many unpublished/ pending posts on this blog as ‘drafts’. Once they lose freshness (mostly news) they remain there in draft-mode. For instance I was writing an article on how Microsoft can launch office suit to iOS device at a premium price without having to share its revenue with Apple’s app store. Before I could finish and publish the article, we have office mobile for iOS- just what I had in my mind.
I must confess, I give lot less time and preference to the blogging than I shlould/meant to. And when I write something I dont release it soon (not good). This makes article stale, irrelevant and remain in draft stage, forever.
This bad habit of mine is about to change. In fact it’s gone already. I’ve decided to push my post as quickly as they pop in my head. I took an inspiration from Seth Godin’s blog, that blogpost doesnt need to be long and thorough. In blogging, freshness and relevance matter more.
So here on you might see me micro-blogging on this space, thanks to wordpress app for mobile.
Taking control of Life [Part -IV Battle at Kruger]
Recently while browsing best-of-the-best youtube videos I stumble upon video below:
Battle at kruger has more than 6 crores views (67 million+ views) on youtube alone. The video is about buffalo vs lion vs crocodile at Kruger National Park located in Africa. Everything you watch and hear in this video clip is incredible, including the comments of tourists shooting the clip. I was stun and speechless for 5 minutes after watching the entire film.
And it deserved something more than sharing it on facebook or twitter. Yes it definitely deserves a special post in blog.
Although on the surface the film is about wildlife hunting in African jungle, there’re takeaways and it taught me a lot in 8/9 mins. It’s more than a film, it’s an inspiration to live, lessons for life and struggle for existence- the ultimate natural instings of all living beings.
The film is about winning, fighting back, fighting for life and existence, fighting against odds, fighting for hope. Reminded me of that cartoon we ‘share’ & ‘like’ on facebook and used to forward in emails. It recharges you to make a fresh start. In my case, yes I want to come back and start blogging (or start creating /publishing content on the web again. So as I mentioned in Part-I about the new venture it’s about to take off.
Taking control of Life [Part III Dont break the chain]
This is a supplementary/add-on post to my earlier post about 30-days challenge. On the same line I recently made a dont break the chain calendar and posted in my ttbid blog. Dont break the chain is motivational chart for your long term goals. Read the details and description of how to use it.
Click here to directly download the chart. I know you’re gonna thank me for this 😉
Taking control of life [Part-II 30 days Matt Cutts way]
Doing things first hand is ^greater^ than reading, analysing or experiencing it vicariously. You cannot shape up career or life in general, simply by reading Tony Robbins. The progress starts when you actually start implementing what you study or what you know ‘should be done’.
I see blogs- writing about procrastination & not doing/delaying things that you want to do. It’s everywhere & I might have written something similar in past as well.
I’ve been reading Matt Cutt’s blog & his updates through social media streams (since years) and I was fascinated by his 30-day challenge. I wanted to share the idea with my friends (and those who’re reading this) but I knew I’m not eligible to preach it, unless, I do it first-hand. So I tried it myself few days back. I know it’s a great concept & we see the results in MattCutts’ blog regularly. For some (especially those who’re not webmasters/SEO enthusiasts), his blog articles are too lengthy, so I’m attaching his famous video clip of speech at TED instead. It’s concise.
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Quoting verbatim from his speech:
A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit — like watching the news — from your life.
There’s a few things I learned while doing these 30-day challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture everyday for a month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work — for fun. Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my 30-day challenges.
I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days.Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel from scratch in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’ve written your words for the day. You might be sleep-deprived, but you’ll finish your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No. I wrote it in a month. It’s awful. But for the rest of my life, if I meet john Hodgman at a TED party, I don’t have to say, “I’m a computer scientist.” No, no, if I want to I can say, “I’m a novelist.”
So here’s one last thing I’d like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they’re a ton of fun. But they’re less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked like this.
So here’s my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to tryand give it a shot for the next 30 days.
Thanks.
So we have live testimony of this formula. Matt Cutts has been inspiration to many, including yours truly. To begin with I started with ‘cleansing’ staying away from online social media for a month. And result was amazing. Not only my addiction to the facebook reduced after 30-days of fast. I also started taking control a typical habit of getting carried away on the web.
Taking control of life [Part I: New venture]
I'm starting up the new venture. And I'm feeling great about it; well all my past or present projects seem exciting to me but this one is special. The reason is: I am working on a project with my father. It's about social entrepreneurship. And yes, it'll be launched on the same website archive.amrute.me/! I'll utilise couple of sub-domains of the site for this project (ah! Do they call it micro-site?)
When I moved from free blogging service, blogger (blogspot.com) to premium blog of wordpress with self hosting website, it was clear that I have to spend money for my publishing pleasures every year. Over the time, my articles writing frequecy reduced marginally and so my Amazon or Google Adsense earnings. Although I've never been a regular blogger and never expected steady income through blogging. I thought to buy domain-name to look at it seriously. That was late 2008; I booked archive.amrute.me/ and moved my all blogs to pranav.amrute.me. I could never give proper justice to parent site & had to keep it static html for long 2 years. My time was more spent on serving clients than building my own website. And when you have local customers, website doesnt have 'business showcase' role anyways.
But this month, I'm finally working on building website. So expect my home office business on its root site. (hey, by the way did you happen to see my home office tour? Things haven’t changed much since Nov 2010. & yeah! Sorry for the accent. 😛 ) In the process, I'll make some changes in blog- write my unfinished articles, schedule my article-series. link within the network, check some basic SEO, might add book-shelf for Indian viewers who can buy GMAT books from flipkart instead of amazon. All in all I'll be working majority of my time re-building this website archive.amrute.me/; which also includes my social entrepreneurship project.
We have been thinking about launching an informational website related to social entrepreneurship. There's certainly big gap in the market infact a void space if I dare say & our project could be popular & go big, who know! I'm very excited about it. So stay tuned. You'll see a lot of changes in & google bots gonna go crazy indexing new pages in coming months 🙂
[continued… partII]
What’s on my bookshelf
I’m not a bookworm and I don’t remember the last time I purchased fiction … it must have been five years since I glued to computer screen and ditched books but I still cherish what I have. I keep my books organized and tidy. So just for the records I made a quick video about the things on my bookshelf.
You might notice that I deliberately missed few very popular books such as freakonomics by Steven Levitt or Rich dad Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I tried to cover the books which are rare and not much known. Now, of course there’re some GMAT & MBA related books here but I’ve talked in depth about those; it’s not a GMAT books review video by the way. (maybe some other time).
I know you would not understand my accent well, so here’s commentary/ transcript:
Let’s see what’s on my bookshelf: Starting from the top what you’re seeing, right now, here are some over-sized books. It’s an encyclopedia of engineering workshop in Marathi language. It’s rare and one of a kind book, but it’s not well marketed and distributed so it’s not much popular or easily available. Second: it’s visual encyclopedia- good for kids, informative, entertaining.
RC 2- chemical engineering; (Richardson & Coulson’s Chemical Engineering Volume 2)it’s very important book for your graduation studies in chemical engineering. I bought it for fifty rupees (50 Rs.), the retail price is actually about four thousand Rupees (4,000 Rs.) but I bought it from the ‘withdrawn-section’ of British library.
…Then again few workshop handbooks- comes handy for gears manufacturers and workshop owners in general.
These three books- actually it was a big thick book- Unit Operations by McCabe & Smithbut I tore it into three parts for easy reading.
…Then again few chemical engineering books from my college days.
OK. Let me open the window… yeah, it’s much better now.
Then there’re some magazines that I subscribe,
Entreprenuer… they just arrived, India, last year. Then, chemical engineering world by Jasubai media. Again some engg & business related magazines that I subscribe.
Below here are some English aid books: Reader’s Digest How to write and speak better- very interesting book. Then webster’s thesuarus; my favourite Oxfard Advanced learner’s dictionary. Then, it’s reverse dictionary, Marathi-English Then vocabulary, grammar. And then, it’s a pocket dictionary, my sister bought it for like ten Rupees. Then there’re some fictions & non-fictions & fiction: Sherlock Homes’ hardbound complete all stories. Then, I haven’t read most of these books… recently started Papillon.
OK.
And below here; I’ve got some GMAT books, MBA preparation books and Management… Kotler Keller’s, & 10 day MBA, yeah I recommed this highly for those who don’t want to do MBA or those who don’t want to spend two years studying MBA. Then, Jack Welch, Tony Robbins, ok, Jack Welch again.
So I’ve got telephone and a diary. And below here’ I’ve go fax machine and printer- ‘all in one’.
And here we’ve got another gem from Reader’s Digest- it’s a ‘complete Do it yourself manual’ for construction. It’s a box-book; in first part it has got theory and instructions, how-tos and second part is project gelleries. So all projects with nice pictures are in this section & theory and how tos are here. It’s nice, it’s a gem.
That’s it nothing else to show, thanks for watching.
Watch Dabangg in HD for free
Kamal karte ho Pandey ji! Puri ki puri film hi dekhadi youtube pe?
Badhiya hai! chalo hum bhi apne network pe share kar dete hai!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZz6sbxNsg&hd=1
That’s probably a good way to surprise pirates! Now watch the Dabangg movie in high definition HD absolutely free on their official channel at youtube.
Hello world again!
Here we go again!
Heavy server migration: Today I’m moving my websites to new server. I’ve been with bluehost for last two years & I thank them for their uninterrupted service and next to nil downtime. (As if I cared about down times! there were times when I didnt check website/blog’s status for weeks… so down time was not that important anyways.) But ultimately I think I had to move from same shared hosting.
Also new attraction: you might realise that this is not an independent blog anymore. It’s become part of multi-site blog of Amrute Online Networks. (ya, ya, same site which needs to be tuned) That means I’m part of the community now. Oh yes, soon I shall open sign-up/registration window so people can jump in.
Till then stay tuned 😉
Oh and by the way wordpress says, “This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!”