Discovery Online.

Great Firewall of China : Use this tool to find out if your site or blog is banned in China. WeblogToolsCollection is not. It is interesting to notice that the disclaimer states that some sites might simply not be available for techincal reasons which might have nothing to do with censorship. Some of the obvious culprits that I tried came back with mixed results. Source: Various Wordpress.com blogs that seem to be blocked.
This is also a good time to mention that I am going to be visiting various cities in China and Japan at the beginning of December including Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo and would love to meetup and exchange ideas and contacts with my readers and other Wordpress users and bloggers while I am there. I will be posting dates soon.

“What is a quick way to get a million dollars? besides robbing a bank?” I asked a friend…

“Bet $100,000.00 on a 10 to 1 horse and win.” He answered…

“Great idea but where do I get the 100k and which horse?”

The XP system comes with Windows Media Player which works fine for burning music. The XP system also has CD burning built into it. Drag or send file to the CD drive and then select “Write these files to CD” in the Windows Explorer window. When you send the first file a balloon pops up which you can click to go directly to the CD drive. I have used both of these methods with great results.

Why recommend another program such as Nero? Is it because previous versions of Windows did not have burn capability and everyone is used to using other programs?

Previous versions of Windows either didn’t have or had very poor support for CD burning. But, that changed and yet people still recommend Nero. Here’s why:

What comes with Windows is very basic, and Nero (along with other programs) is a complete suite of tools . It has helpful wizards and clear explanations of what you are going or wanting to do. People find it fast and easy to use. It can burn a CD from many different source files, handle multi-session CDs, and take videos and make them a Video CD. When you get into DVD burning, the options go up exponentially. There is one last thing that is a big factor: It comes with most after-market CD/DVD burners.

The discovery of the believed composition of the Earth was an international effort. It was done in the first half of the 20th century. There is no one name given the credit, and research is still going on today.

The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through any particle they hit. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

The other day, my friend told me that it’s possible to “MOD” a Ps2. Which he told me it is some kind of hard drive for the Ps2 that you can install to save games in there for instant acess instead of adding CD’s like manually. Just asking you people if it is very true.
Its not super hard.
google mod PS2 hard drive for more information.

But, you can use the PS2 hard drive (It came with FFXI or something.) Or a modded hard drive.
Check out:
divineo.com
themodchipstore.com
llama.com
modchipman.com

Then you get a file, that you then run on the drive which allows you to save PS2 games to it and run ISOs.

If you have a slim PS2, as far as I know, you can not use a hard drive, but with a modded PS2 you can burn and play your own games.

I believe two of the better PS2 modding boards is ps2iso.com, and dgemu.com

Time zones were invented by a Canadian engineer, as a way to co-ordinate train schedules…a real problem in a country as big as Canada. From east to west Canada’s time zones are:
Newfoundland
Atlantic
Eastern
Central
Mountain
Pacific

Or, in total 6; there is however, only a 5.5 hour difference between Newfoundland time and Pacific time, because Newfoundland time is only 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic time. At one time there were 7, but the Yukon time zone was eliminated a number of years ago, in 1975.

1. put sin2A in terms of A, by using the double angle theory. also change cotA into cosA/sinA.

2sin²A/2sinAcosA+cosA/sinA =

2. simplify 2sin²A/2sinAcosA.

sinA/cosA+cosA/sinA =

3. combine into one fraction with a common denominator of cosAsinA.

(sin²A + cos²A)/(cosAsinA) =

4. substitute 1 in for sin²A + cos²A (pythagorean identity).

1/(cosAsinA) =
[ can be rewritten as 1/cosA x 1/sinA if you need that extra step ]

5. substitute in secA for 1/cosA, and cscA for 1/sinA.

secA x cscA = secA x cscA

My friend Fred, a talented blogger, asked me for advice the other day. Here’s a partial answer, with a few apologies to Swift:

1. Use lists.
2. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
4. Break news.
5. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Announce news.
9. Write short, pithy posts.
10. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
11. Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
12. Write long, definitive posts.
13. Write about your kids.
14. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
15. Be sycophantic. Share linklove and expect some back.
16. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
17. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
18. Coin a term or two.
19. Do email interviews with the well-known.
20. Answer your email.
21. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
22. Be anonymous.
23. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
24. Post your photos on flickr.
25. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
26. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
27. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
28. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
29. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
30. Point to useful but little-known resources.
31. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers–like gadgets and web 2.0.
32. Write about Google.
33. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
34. Don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses.
35. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
36. Run no ads.
37. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
38. Write about blogging.
39. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
40. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
41. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
42. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
43. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
44. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
45. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
46. Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
47. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
48. Be patient.
49. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
50. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
51. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
52. Write in English.
53. Better, write in Chinese.
54. Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
55. Don’t be boring.
56. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

Bad days happen to the best of us. Days where you just wake up in a really bad mood. Where something (or nothing) has made you angry, sad, frustrated, disappointed, whatever. Days where you know up front that “MAN, this is going to suck”.

You still have to get up and go to work, but before you even get there, you’re already seething inside. You try to do your job but somehow all the angry, dissatisfied clients have conspired to call you and complain on the same day – though you have no idea how they coordinated that little feat.

Everything your co-workers say to you sounds incredibly stupid. Everyone seems out to annoy you. The next person to open his mouth is likely to get his head ripped clean off.

Not much fun, huh? Luckily, you can do something about it. Here are six ways to turn around a bad day.

1: Accept your bad mood

Being in a bad mood is not that hard. Being in a bad mood while trying to force yourself to cheer up really sucks.

Fighting a bad mood only prolongs it, so if you’re mad, be mad. If you’re sad, be sad. This does not give you license to be rude and unpleasant to innocent bystanders, it just means that you need to recognize and accept your bad mood to be able to do something about.

2: Tell others

In one chapter of the Happy At Work Book, I describe how the IT support department at medical company Leo Pharma give employees permission to say when they’re having a bad day. With the result that people have fewer bad days and recover faster from the ones they do have.

You can try to keep you bad mood a secret and put on your happy mask. Guess what, you’re fooling nobody. Your co-workers will notice and they will wonder what they’ve done to piss you off.

The best thing to do, is to tell the peope you work closely with. Simply tell them “listen guys, I’m in a really sour mood to today. I’m not sure why, but it’s nothing you have done. If I bite your head off, I apologize in advance”.

3: Look inside first

In the extremely influential book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that EQ, your emotional quotient, is what makes you successful, not IQ. This means that the truly successful people are not the smart ones but the ones with the best emotional skills.

Goleman defines five emotional competencies that make up EQ, two of which are:

1. The ability to identify and name one’s emotional states and to understand the link between emotions, thought and action.
2. The capacity to manage one’s emotional states — to control emotions or to shift undesirable emotional states to more adequate ones.

In other words, EQ relies on your ability to recognize and deal with your own emotions.

When you’re in a bad mood, it’s extremly tempting to look around you for sources of that mood. “Man I’m annoyed today. Must be Paul talking loudly on the phone. Or Lisa being late with the specs once again. Or…”

We tend to think that a bad mood is always caused by something or someone else. And when we’re in a bad mood, everything suddenly becomes annoying, making it even easier to find justifications for the bad mood.

But not every bad mood has a reason. Maybe you just slept badly. Or you’re coming down with the flu. Or you’re just having a bad day. In these cases, trying to justify a bad mood is a sucker’s bet.

Instead, you must look inside yourself first, to see what might or might not be the cause of your negative emotional state. Here’s one way to do it.

4: Remember the good stuff

When you’re in a foul mood, everything is bad. But the good things you appreciated yesterday, where you weren’t as annoyed, are probably still there – you’re just not seeing them.

Spend a few moments to try think of at least one or two things that aren’t all bad. Something you look forward to. A person you like at work. Something nice that happened recently.

5: This too shall pass

You’ve been in a bad mood before. It passed. So will this one. It’s no big deal.

6: Take some quiet time

And if you’re having a really bad day, it may be a good idea to withdraw a little if you can. Take a walk in your lunch break. Sit and work somewhere quiet. Take a loooooong bathroom break. Consider going home early or taking the day off.

Author: Alex @ Positivesharing.com