The Winter Olympics 2010

I was on Digg today and found an amazing time lapse video that was made in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Tuvan Throat Singers

I am always looking for news sounds an ideas.  I am definitely interested in looking at different cultures and especially their music and pottery.  I have a thing for collecting find pottery from around the world.  The over tones found in this Tuvan throat singing I find fascinating. If I was making a movies I could find a million places put a song or two of this into the script.  Here are two examples that I really like:

Being More Efficient

So as per my previous post I want to become a much more efficient person.  Well here is an area that would help me to learn to read much faster…I am going to try this tutorial and let you know how it goes.

More DIY videos at 5min.com

Efficiency is the Key

I have set a very high set of goals this year.  I want to focus on me this year. I know I know that selfish however if you hear me out you will understand that everyone wins.  My goals this year are three-fold become super-fit, have a focused mind, and to enhance my wealth.  Well that is a tall order.  However that being said there are few things I happen to know:

  1. Balance is the key to success
  2. Long-term self discipline only works with rewards
  3. Only well planed strategy will work

So that means for my success I need to focus on balancing my life to accomplish these things.  I need routine with rewards and breaks.  I cannot run faster than I have strength.  So here are a few things that I have thought to conquer in the future:

Super-fit:

  • Exercise
  • Diet
  • Sleep
  • Relaxation

Focused-mind:

  • Be healthy (see previous goals)
  • Read
  • Learn
  • Focus

Enhance my wealth(this doesnt not necessarily mean money):

  • Work daily
  • Balance Play/Work
  • Increase my efficiency
  • Learn
  • Contribute to society

So now lets convert these meta goals now that they are defined into tangible goals with tangible rewards:

Super-fit:

  • Sleep 8 hours a night-reward buy a new mattress
  • Eat according to the food pyramid daily with no more than 1500 calories a day–reward once every month get a binge day
  • Exercise daily–
  • Run 3 times a week
  • Workout 3 times a week
  • Play one sport
  • Go for a walk at least 1/2 hour daily

Focused-mind:

  • Read for half an hour daily
  • Find a new hobby ( balance)
  • Take a course
  • Learn a new skill
  • Go out of your comfort zone daily
  • Journal(blog) daily

Enhance my wealth:

  • Participate in a philanthropy project
  • Work an additional 1 hour a day on a personal project ( balance)
  • Balance my budgets weekly
  • Work on a new project

Now that I have some concreate goals to work I do two things once a week:

  1. Select two goals from each category
  2. Plan my week around those goals
  3. Select an productive reward for each goal

Now I just need to do. :-)  I will let you know how it goes.

Paul

Who Am I?

For those of you have asked. Who is Paul? Well I have now updated the blog to include a bio about me. So if you need to know here I am.

Canadian Bands-I Can't Get Down

Someone sent me an email the other day that I should split my blog to my personal life and my tech ideas. I will definitely look into doing that.

In keeping with my latest theme of Canadian bands I though I would post a few more that I totally love. I cant remember when I first heard these bands however they are awesome. The first one is a band from the maritimes. Great Big Sea is definitely a Canadian institution. I dont believe there is a single Canadian who doesn’t know who they are.

The second band is a little less known but just as good. A Toronto based band that also has tons of appeal. Blue Rodeo is a band from way back. I am not much of country fan but these guys are good. Their music is not exclusive to country either. They sit on the border of country, rock and folk. Here is two songs that I love:

–Paul

When The Night Feels My Song

Here is a Canadian band from Toronto that gets very little coverage in the US.  I honestly don’t know much about the rest of their music but I love this song.  It makes me feel like despite all the troubles somewhere inside of we can find our center.

Glee!

If  there are two things that make me nostalgic about high school the first would have to be the Movie Can’t Hardly Wait the second would be the TV Show Glee.  This youtube video posted below is a musical clip from Glee and boy does this lady have a voice.

Twenty Two Days Until iDay

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On December 27 the entire tech world will hold its breath.  A new device dubbed the ‘iSlate’ is going to be released on Wednesday January 27th, 2010 by Apple. Apparently from various sources this new product is in a tablet format. This new product is supposed to represent the crown jewel of Steve Jobs’ career. Let the endless debates of price, shape, functionality, networking, and business sense to be debated for the next twenty two days. Anyhow stay tuned to have a review on release day.

–Paul

   

Dropbox

Over the past few years as “the cloud” has become a source of delivery it has also become a place for your repository.  I write on this blog if nothing but for myself.  Backup has become key when services such as Mozy, Carbonite, and my personal favorite JungleDisk have become key players in cloud storage. While these services cannot be construed as expensive they are still not free or less than free.  These solutions are not good a syncing across say my work and home computer.

Others have used services such as gmail with plugins.  Or better solutions such as SkyDrive or Mesh. The problem is these services have a limited amount of data available for sync.

Dropbox.com is finally the solution that I wanted. Web and desktop synchronization.  This solution tops my web application of 2009. Dropbox is the perfect solution to say a Mesh/Jungledisk hybrid.  The software is simple to install and configure.  I can access the web from anywhere and my folders are in sync when I work from home.

www.dropbox.com