Mind-Manual

The Fall of the Internet

In the early 2000s, there had been a great vision for the Internet. People could seek out important medical information, learn new skills, and even find soulmates online. It was thought that this trend would continue until will were all continually connected to everything. However, in 2013, everyone left the Internet.

In 2011, a consortium of corporations and private interest groups won a decisive victory over Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who were “packet shaping” to limit the speeds of peer-to-peer data. The main argument that the ISPs job was simply to deliver data to the consumer from the source, not to act as a filter. While the Internet cheered and proclaimed the saving of free speech, trouble was brewing under the surface of this victory, and its name was the Electronic Ad Network.

Often derrided as being a front for spammers, the Electronic Ad Network used the same argument against email programs, claiming that email programs must simply deliver the mail to the client, as with regular mail, and allow the client to sort through it. An overzealous octogenerian judge who would later be revealed to be a technophone and who had, in fact, never been on the Internet, ruled in favour of the spammers and this openned the floodgates. Because of the very high signal-to-noise ratio in email, people tried to find very obscure email addresses such as a234Aw5D@gmail.com, however the automated spamming programs were relentless in finding all working addresses and spamming them. People tried to move into using the private messaging feature popular on forums, but the spammers claimed that any filtering there was also an infringement of the first ruling and were again successful with the same judge and asynchronous communication between people fell to nearly nill. This is how E-mail, a staple of the Internet since its inception as the ARPAnet fell.

Realizing there was an opportunity, a number of Internet ad providers for websites realized that the same argument could be used against ad-blockers, including the pop-up blocking function in the world’s most popular webbrowser, Mozilla Firefox, as well as its most popular extension, Adblock Plus. The main force behind this push to ban ad-blockers surprised everyone at the time: Google, the fourth largest company in the world. Their motto, “Do No Evil” was modified soon after to, “Do what’s best for us”. To this day, “Do Not Evil” is still used sarcastically in conversation.

As the number of ads increased on the Internet, surfers fled to the few safe places which did not use ads. However, the additional traffic caused a dilemma for the website owners: covering costs. Some decided to introduce ads, but since they could not control the amount of ads on their site (at least pop-up/under ads), their sites soon lost the majority of their traffic. Other sites decided to charge for membership, which, while helping them cover their costs, destroyed the open and free nature of the Internet.

That is how the Internet, a triumph of modern civilization, fell. As surfer experience on the Internet deterioated, and the costs of having a good experience increased, the number of people on the Internet dropped by nine-tenth’s almost overnight. Last year, in 2020, less than three million people claim to use the Internet on a regular basis, a major drop from the peak of 4 billion in 2014. The Internet, which had become a major politicaly, cultural and sociological force, is a hollow husk of what it used to be. The Internet, which many had believed could not be destroyed, was eventually taken down by ads and overzealous lawmaking.

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Firefox Extension Dev: DOM Inspector & Finding Window IDs

First the tip!

I spent a ridiculous amount to figure two things out about add-on development in Mozilla Firefox 3.

1. DOM Inspector, that thing that can tell you information about firefox windows such as their id is not a part of Firefox installation anymore, it is an extension now. You can find the DOM Inspector for Firefox 3 here. Also, the link that’s most commonly thrown around for the extension (version 1.8 somin) is wrong. The real link comes up when you search for DOM Inspector at the Mozilla Firefox Add-On database as the first item (but not google, the one in google’s first page is wrong, too).  Only DOM Inspector version 2 and above will work with Firefox 3. DOM Inspector is a crucial tool if you’re writing a firefox extension, and a fun little thing even if you’re not.

2. If you want to add a button to the Firefox interface, in the status bar or in one of the menus, you’ll have to use what’s called a XUL overlay. To write that, you need to know the window ID of the window you want to add your button or whatever to. I have yet to find a list of the various window ids. However, the way to find the window id of a specific window or menu or whatever, is to open up DOM Inspector. Have whatever you want to find the window id of open now. Click on File>Inspect Chrome Document>Your window. The cool thing about DOM Inspector is that you actually use it to change the look of Firefox, ON THE FLY. You can find more information about using it here at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Enjoy!

Some updates:

Recently I quit my main part-time gig, partially because I did not want to be one of those people who stays at a place cause they’re too scared, and partially cause I’d outgrown that position. I’ve been casually looking for new gigs, too, so if anyone knows about somin I might be interested in, contact me for a resume or whatever. Anyhoo, now I’ve got plenty of time and plenty of energy (my last job was a big energy drain), so I’m working on projects!

Recently I completed a video, have almost finished a short humourous short (just waiting on the musical intro) and am working on a few other video projects, which I will release when they’re done. I’m also working on a Firefox extension, which I will be revealing in the next few days, as well as a wordpress plug-in, and a PHP/MySQL database program which I might open-source later as well. I will write up the process of creating a Firefox extension, not to be a tutorial, but more as an Anatomy of a Firefox Extension Development. Wow, that’s a diverse group of things. Awesome! I like my life.

Cheers!

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Windows File Management Utilities

I do a lot of work with files. I have a lot of files, too, so I’m always on the lookout for little programs that will improve things, here’s a few I’m trying out right now:

DiskUseAnalyzer - Analyzes your disks and helps you figure out which and where are the biggest files for cleanup. Unfortunately, this keeps crashing on my computer, so I use a command line utility from Microsoft called diruse, which in included in Support Tools for Windows XP and Windows 2000.

FlashFolder - Adds some awesome things to your Save As… dialog boxes, such as selecting open folders. A more detailed and excellent review with screenshots here. You can also set shortcut keys for things, like I have Ctrl-E for opening a list of open folders and applications. Very handy. Install required, but its a very light program.

Q-Dir - File Manager. I’m looking for a new file manager to help me setup my GTD system. Has a lot of nice features, including being fast, but the one feature I’m looking for is being able to open up txt files in the pane doesn’t seem to be there. Excellent all around. Review with screenshots here. No install required in Portable mode.

WinMerge - Tool for merging and telling you the difference between folders and text files. Very handy. Doesn’t have to be installed.

JkDefrag - Defraging program. Defragging can help speed up your computer. Might be faster than the windows defrag program, but I use it cause it doesn’t require you to have 15% free space to run. Review here. No install required.

DM2 - I keep Wikidpad, Palm Desktop and a few other programs open all the time, and I want to be able to get at them easily, so I want to put them in the system tray on the button right. This program allows me to do that + more stuff, such as minimize things to a floating transparent icon. I changed the shortcut settings so that middle clicking on the minimize button minimizes to system tray. Another less-featured(which isn’t a bad thing) alternative is TrayIt! Neither require installs.

I’ve just installed a few of these recently, so some of these will drop off the wire later during real world testing.

Criteria: I prefer programs that don’t come with installers (to prevent messy system sprawl) and are light on resources. I obviously prefer free programs, with a preference for open source. Programs have to be light, as well.

I’m trying to create a good system for managing GTD stuff on a computer. Reference is a key problem. I have a Reference folder, with a Folder-tree view on the side, but its not good enough, for a number of reasons: large folders get lost in there, so need some way to highlight the fact that a folder is large so if/when I have to cut some of the file usage, I know where to do first. I also have a lot of text stuff that I manage with WikidPad, that I would prefer to manage with a file manager similar to Linux which would allow me to open text files in the same window as viewing files. I also often have to store files related to an idea (pictures or internet shortcuts, etc). So I’m demoing a few programs for that, with Q-Dir being the first one.

BTW, I’ve decided to use my Desktop in two ways: 1. Inbox. I save stuff on there and process it later. 2. Workspace. I’ll keep shortcuts to folders/files in my Reference folder for projects I’m currently working on. I manage my GTD system with Palm Desktop and my Palm M125.

Cheers!

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The Most Important Piece of Career Advice You Probably Never Heard

Cal Newport over at Study Hacks posted The Most Important Piece of Career Advice You Probably Never Heard, and I agree. The big question to ask yourself:

Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.

Defining Lifestyle

What do I mean by lifestyle? Roughly speaking: a detailed feel for what your day to day existence would be like. Some questions to consider when imagining an ideal lifestyle:

• How much control do I have over my schedule?
• What’s the intensity level of my job?
• What’s the importance of what I do?
• What’s the prestige level?
• What type of work?
• Where do I live?
• What’s my social life like?
• What’s my work life balance?
• What’s my family like?
• How do other people think of me?
• What am I known for?

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Finance for Young Folk

A lot of systems for managing money focus on dividing up your income or figuring out your expenses, but what if you don’t actually pay for all your expenses or have your own income, such as if you’re young and in school? Say, your parents or loans could be paying for your lifestyle. These systems then fall flat on their faces for young folk.

The way I figure it out in a general way is thus: I calculate what I call Lifestyle Cost and then figure out what money is coming in, whether through income or loans, or just costs that I’m not covering myself.

Let’s take a hypothetical university student who lives at home and makes 600 dollars a month from a part-time job, in Toronto:

• Assuming cost of living will be around 800 dollars a month (eating out, clothes, rent, food, etc), even though “rent” and “food” aren’t actually paid for by this student, but instead by their parents.
• Assuming school related costs add upto 6000 dollars a year, or 500 dollars a month (I like to have a monthly number to work with, as I do my calculates monthly, year and daily).

Add them up and you get $1,300 a month is the cost of the student’s lifestyle, which is likely what they’d pay if they were paying for it themselves. If you’re in the States, then you have to factor in health insurance, which is mostly free in Canada.

From here, say the student takes out the whole school cost in loans of 6000 dollars a year, or 500 dollars a month. So, on the incoming side: $600 (job) + $500 (loan) + $200 (what’s left, picked up by parents, though they’re picking up more). You can figure out a good mix of what to do with the money for yourself, such as paying a sort of rent to your parents, for example, or saving it to pay down your student loans later, etc.

You can calculate this lifestyle cost into an annual or daily cost. Annually that comes out to $15,600 and daily it comes out to 43 dollars a day. If your income + parents’ help doesn’t make up $43 dollars a day, the difference could be in loans, meaning that’s more you of have to pay later when your student loans come due. I think that recognizing this figure can also help you figure out what it really might mean to live on a dollar a day as many people in impoverished nations do.

There’s two good reasons to know this number:

1. If you wanted to move out, this number would help you figure out how much it would cost. Though, it will likely be lower than what it will actually cost you (your parents aren’t trying to make a profit off of you, while a landlord will, so they’ll charge more for rent).

2. It can help you figure out where you stand in terms of quality of life in the world. You can take this lifestyle cost and plug it in to this Global Rich List and be surprised at how high in the world’s rich list you are. If you live in a developed nation, you’re pretty much automatically in the top 15%. IE, there’s over 4 billion people poorer than you.

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Keeping Perspective

I’ve been spending a bit of time lately trying to keep perspective and being grateful for what I have. Here’s two ways I do that so that you too may enjoy some gratitude:

1. Remember what are the real bare necessities for survival and recognize what I have above that. We throw the word “need” around a lot in our lives, such as, “I need that purse!” or “I need those pants”. I’ve consciously chosen to say “want” instead of “need” because is reminds me of my choice in the matter. The only things I need for survival are some clothes, food, water and shelter. Everything else is optional and I am grateful for it. That includes having nice, clean clothes, being at a comfortable temperature and food that’s both healthy and delicious for me to eat. This computer, my own space, a job, friends and family around are all something I am grateful for.

2. Remember that I live the lifestyle of the top 12ish% of the world, according to the Global Rich List. If you live beyond your means for whatever reason (in debt, school, living at home, etc), try to put in the cost of the lifestyle you live, rather than your income. My income puts me lower than 12%, but the fact that I’m going to a top university puts me at around 12%. Try it out, you will be surprised.

Cheers!

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Rumi Quotation

“When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from someone who has never left home.”

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Are You Working Off Contaminated ToDo Lists?

Recall when I suggested that things talk to us and let us know what to do with them. Similarly, todo lists talk to us. In fact, every item, as David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, claims is either pushing us away or pulling us closer. I’ve noticed in my own efforts to be productive that any time something has gotten onto a todo list that I did not want to do and tried to procrastinate on, I stopped using the list all together.

Of course, because I stopped using the lists, I fell out of the GTD zone, things started creeping back into my head, my clarity of mind was destroyed and I became hugely unproductive. The consequence of one unpleasant thing on my list sent me off the rails. That is what I call a contaminated todo list. One thing that you’re procrastinating on contaminates the list and contaminates your energy.

So, now I realize what procrastinating on one or two things does to me. It ruins my energy for everything else. Occasionally I can leverage something very unpleasant by procrastinating on it and doing something that’s simply unpleasant but appears less so in comparison, but that generally does not work.

Unfortunately, since I’m a student I’m procrastinating 8 months out of 12, and thus am fairly unproductive during that period. That’s why there’s been an explosion of productivity since school ended for the summer.

Right now, though, there is something on my todo lists that threatens to push me away from GTD yet again. I have to call Bell Canada and ask them why they didn’t let Rogers know that they were taking over our home phone service, so that Rogers kept charging us and we had to pay over 150 dollars in extra fees, and then try to get that money from Bell. As you can imagine, this might result in confrontation and I’m not a big fan of confrontation. However, 150 dollars is an amount that I don’t want to just forgive without at least trying to get it back, and I know that if I leave Call Bell perpetually on my Today list without handling it TODAY, the whole list will go dead to me, and then I’ll fall off the wagon again and be back to bored unproductivity. So, I’ve to bite the bullet and do it.

In case you’re interested: I use pretty much the regular GTD system on a cheap $30 Palm M125 except with a few changes. I have a Today category and a ProjectsBacklog category. For the Today category, it’s more like a regular daily todo list, where I figure out what contexts I’m going to be in that day and just move tasks over from their respective context categories (ie @Home, or @Work, etc). That way, I have a short list to work through on a given day instead of flipping between six different lists. ProjectsBacklog is to hold a very short list of projects I will do next. I have a really long Someday/Maybe list and I don’t want things to get totally lost in there.

Another thing I’m very careful to do is make sure all my NextAction lists remain short. Having too long a list does two things: gives me ample opportunity to pick and choose which actions to do while, in theory, any action on my NextAction list has to be done ASAP; and secondly, it is just a turn off to see a ridiculously long list. It’s just so much more motivating to see a short list of say 5 things that you know if you put an hour into, you can make that list empty. While I like the win of marking things off as done, my favourite is marking a whole list off as done. While I recognize that my work is never done, I like to completely work a list down to nothing, enjoy that for a bit and then add more things to the list rather than continually adding and completely. It just works better for me. And it might for you.

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Time to Switch to Linux?

My laptop runs Windows XP and its not likely that I’ll be going upto Windows Vista any time soon. Nor is it likely that I’ll be getting a Mac (the cheaper/older ones won’t be able to dual boot to windows if/when I need it, and the new Intel ones are…expensive). So, what’s left? Linux.

I dabbled in Red Hat Linux a few years ago but found it to be terribly lacking in a few areas: It was hard to install anything, the GUIs tended to be slow even on a fast computer and sorta bloaty and it just wasn’t slick at all. The last criteria may seem strange, but it wasn’t nearly as smooth as Windows XP and XP isn’t except super-slick.

Today, I burned myself a LiveCD of Ubuntu Linux which allowed me to pop it in my CD drive, reboot the computer and play with linux without having to install it or touch my harddrive.  First impression? Super slick! I’ve been using Mac OS X lately and I can tell you that that is SUPER slick and Ubuntu was almost as slick as Mac OS X. And PRETTY. I never thought I’d say that Linux was pretty, but by god Ubuntu is pretty.

They also fixed up that annoying application problem by adding an Add/Remove Programs app similar to the Windows one, except you can search for, download and install whatever app you want from within the program itself. You can uninstall things the same way. Super easy. Two down, one to go.

I found the LiveCD to be amazingly responsive even on what’s now an old computer. I do believe it’ll be much faster if I actually installed it. Programs were fairly quick to load, too, especially Firefox.

As an added bonus, most linux flavours have a multiple workspaces feature, which is essentially like having two or more monitors and you can group different programs on different monitors and select between them using some buttons on the bottom. This is one of the features I really missed going back to Windows after Linux the last time around.

The other thing I really liked about Linux was how customizable it is. I’m a tweaker by nature, and I love the way everything is customizable and the source code for most things is available. Previously I’ve tweaked/hacked satellite boxes, bikes and a few other things. These days I’m messing around with my cellphone and Palm. Some interesting hacks on these things, so its just in my nature. And I know I’m going to love playing around and exploring Linux.

Verdict: Linux has come a long way since I tried some of the earlier versions and I’m certainly impressed. While I’m not completely sold yet, there’s a very good chance I’ll be installing Ubuntu on my laptop and trying it out for a while dual-booted with my Windows XP. You can’t beat the price: Free. I highly recommend you download a copy of the LiveCD ISO and burn it to a CD or order a copy of Ubuntu Linux, pop it in your drive and testdrive it without any commitment at all. You, like me, may well be pleasantly surprised.

Interested? Still have doubts? Check out this list of linux myths. DownloadSquad is having an excellent and easy to read series on switching to linux.

BTW, you can try out linux on PCs and Macs.

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Random Photos

There’s a good chance I’ll regret this, but I recently uploaded a bunch of amusing or strange photos I’ve taken with my cellphone in the past year. They can be found here:

Enjoy! Feel free to leave me some comments!

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