September 28th, 2009 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
So, I met this christian pastor that in MHO, is not doing a good job. I wanted to find positive things in the midst of all the hurt that I see him causing. Here are 10 good things I chose to learn:
1. Life is always about the people. When you have the opportunity to focus on your dreams or on people, focus on people. People around you need you. That is why they are around you in the first place. Make them happy. Make them comfortable. Make them feel loved and appreciated.
2. Sometimes we all make mistakes. Even you pray and you try the best to make good choices, still there is the possibility of being wrong. People that care for you will approach you and tell you that. Make space for some criticism in your life. Let people tell you their opinions and pray to God to see if what they say is justified.
3.When you pay attention to other people’s opinions, you will find that they also pay attention to yours. Many minds think better than one, so allow people around you to share their opinions and gather as much information from those opinions to build your own. Make an honest effort to elect the best decision even if it is not your own.
4. God’s direction is sometimes hard to determine. Lots of prayer, quite time and silence can help. However ultimately God has given your heart and mind for a reason. Making good and intelligent decisions is God desire for his children. In case of doubt, do what the bible says, be obedient instead of trying to be “right”. Make God first and then your own opinions second.
5. Try your best to be transparent. Do what you say and say what you do. The bible says it very clearly: “May your yes be yes and your no be no”. It is easy to find yourself in situations where small lies are easier to say than the truth. Give yourself a chance to tell the truth and to be free. Tell people your real motivations and fears and they will truly support you.
6. Don’t rely on your talents in order to avoid hard work. BJ Penn is the best example that I can think of this. He is such a talented MMA fighter, however, sometimes he has allowed himself to rely on his talent instead of paying the price of discipline and focus. Most people won’t notice in the short term. Everybody will know in the long term. Is like a tree that looks strong from far away, when you lean on it, it falls down.
7. Don’t pay attention to your legacy and to your accomplishments; when you focus on what people will remember of you, you are paying too much attention on an empty bucket. People’s opinion is like the wind, it comes and goes and it changes direction very easily. Put your legacy and your self-worth in the hands of God and he will make you feel that your life is worth his son’s life; not only that, Jesus will prove it in the cross.
8. Be of service to other people. Treat other as if they are more important than you. Give them all your respect and admiration. Don’t let your inner desires to be served, take root in your heart.
9.Pay attention to what you do wrong and then make adjustments. Be sensitive to your mistakes so that you learn and improve for future ocassions.
10. Don’t think that decisions are black and white situations. Always try to visualize multiple opportunities and find many answers to a single problem. Don’t push people into believing that things will never be the same after a decision, remember that God can restore and repair like nobody can.
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September 7th, 2009 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
When you are trying to learn something new, there are many problems, and many complexities that make it extremely difficult to learn. Usually, when I am learning something new and complex, what I tend to do is to simplify the processes and memorize the procedure. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out. The reason is simple. There are many things that are not easy. For example, if I wanted to build a plane I would say: 1. Study aerodynamics 2. Study Mechanics 3. Buy materials 4. Build the airplane 5. Test it to make sure it works.
Of course, you probably would agree with me that it is more complex than just that. If I truly wanted to build a plane that worked, I would have to study for a long time, I would have to practice and perhaps I can’t even do it on my own.
Approach
So, how to approach learning of difficult subjects?
1. Are there people who know what I am trying to learn? How did they learn it? How long did it take for them to learn it?
2. What are the steps in learning this subject?
3. How can I make the process of learning it:
- Fun
- Different
- Challenging yet rewarding and achievable
- Procedural
- Applicable
- Relevant
- Significant
- Social
The only way to do so is to do it in steps. And it has to take time.
Example
If you are trying to learn a new language (Spanish for example) where do I think you should begin? Well you would do something like:
- Learn basics of conversation. Try to listen to people talk the language ( see it in action ). Try to figure out its functioning.
- Get a conversation tutor, somebody who can explain to you what you don’t understand about it, and that can push you in the right direction to find your own answers.
- Start having conversations with native speakers.
- Make little adjustments as you continue to practice and make mistakes.
- Take on new challenges, talk about new subjects and make adjustments.
- Read books and learn smaller distinctions.
- Teach others what you know.
- Put yourself in “do or die” situations (for example speaking in public) that way your brain is forced to expand and grow.
This post is really my own abstraction on how to learn to program in a new language. I hope you can appreciate the analogy.
Alex_
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September 5th, 2009 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
So I am browsing the web and found a banner that advertised Abby’s DIet Journal. It had the logos of NBC and CNN so I decided to check it out. The first line of the site, said the following: Dear fellow weight-struggler, Hi, I’m Abby. I’m 25 and I’m from Apex, NC.
This sounded pretty interesting to me, because I am not located on Apex, however I am aware that my IP appears as APEX to the browser detection engines. So that automatically made me suspicious. Then I decided to use a proxy to visit the page and see what it would say. Just to confirm that my suspicions where right.
Now, the first line said:
Dear fellow-struggler weight, “Hi, I’m Abby. I’m 25 and I’m from Mountain View, CA.
Technically
Technically what is happening is a simple string replace depending on the location detected by a browser script. Pretty simple.
The problem that I have with the site is not the technical implementation. The problem with abbysdietjournal.com is the deceit it is using. In fact is lying about the identity of this so called Abbey in order to manipulate potential customers into buying their product.
Do the pills work to lose weight?
Do I need to check the product to see if it works? Of course not. It obviously doesn’t work. How do I know? Because if they are willing to lie about the location, they are willing to lie about anything in order to get money. They are willing to put together a product that perhaps damages your health in exchange for your money.
Of course, the regular internet user wouldn’t necessarily understand that there is something weird about the fact that this girl in the testimonial lives close. So she feels closer in terms of needs and rapport.
Moral of the Story
As an online marketer I am always exposed to many techniques to gain an advantage online. Some are great techniques. Some, in my opinion, are not marketing techniques, they are deception.
Somebody ends up buying this product, they obviously experience no result, and then they lose trust not only on that site, they give up hope on all the web. Do I have a problem with that? Well, I make my living creating and marketing web properties. Yes, I do have a problem with people trying to take that away.
Anyways. I am not sure that this post is useful at all, but the main moral I can give to our readers is this:
Do not trust all you read on the web, as in the offline world, there are people out there that don’t have the best intentions at heart. However, don’t stop trusting the ones that you have tested. There is plenty of people and ideas that are very worth it.
Until next time…
Alex_
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September 3rd, 2009 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Hey there… I have been testing this new technique that I wanted to share with our readers. Sometimes you have a website that requires some dynamic loading of its background. An example of usage could be a surfing website. Depending on the forecast or tide, you could parse the xml information and display a different background in your surfing site. So when a user arrives to the site automatically knows if it is a surfing day or a sleep-in day… You get the idea!
Anyways, the code is fairly simple in php and I am sure you can translate this fairly easily to other languages out there.
First you are going to setup the php page that handles the dynamic nature of the background image. For example, create a file named: back.php and then add the following to it:
/*Comment of Code*/
$now = date(a);
if($now == 'am') {
$img = "morning.jpg";
} else {
$img = "night.jpg";
}
$contentType = 'Content-Type: image/jpeg';
header($contentType);
readfile($img);
/*End of Code*/
The above code says: “Check the time of the day, if is am – then change the image variable to morning.jpg, if it is pm, then change the image variable to night.jpg. Then change the content-type of the document to image/jpg.
That is it. Then, you go into your site’s css stylesheet and add the following:
/*CSS Code*/
body {
background: url('back.php')no-repeat;
}
/*End of Code*/
And that should do the trick. If somebody visits the page in the morning, then background morning.jpg is used, if somebody visits the page at night, then background night.jpg is used.
Obviously this is a over simplistic example of what can be accomplished with this technique. You can set up backgrounds with animations in GIFs. You can dynamically control the opacity of your background depending on time of day for a better experience for your visitors. You can detect the location of the users and change the elements of the page to show a more customized page to them.
For example: In landing pages for your Google Adwords ads, you could detect the location of the users and if they are in let’s say New York, they would land in a page with a background of the Statue of Liberty, however if they visit from Vegas, they could have the background of the Bellagio Fountains.
The possibilities are endless, and as always, you don’t have to use it in every project! Take this technique and put in your bag of tools. When the time is right, you’ll know it.
If you have any questions or you need custom website design, please visit Merkados. Perhaps we can help.
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