Language: English

„Simple” websites are better web sites

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This idea is a very basic one and with big repercussions – „make your site simple, this is, generally, the better strategy”. „In a study by Google in August of 2012, researchers found that not only will users judge websites as beautiful or not within 1/50th – 1/20th of a second, but also that “visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts. Moreover, “highly prototypical” sites – those with layouts commonly associated with sites of it’s category – with simple visual design were rated as the most beautiful across the board. In other words, the study found the simpler the design, the better.” (source and more details: Why „Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Better)

The most powerful self-assertion to tell yourself whenever you want to break a habit (to give up a bad addiction)

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Sometimes, I want to break a bad habit. So, there’s some „poem” that goes inside my head, there’s a „story” I like to tell myself.

I heard a lot of times that assertions like these work very well to break a bad habit:

  • „I’m better than this. I can overcome this. I have the power in me. I am the master of my behavior.”
  • „Think of the future! The advantages of giving up this habit are so big! Look at me, two months from now, one year from now, five years from now. I’ll be [habit ABC]-free!”
  • „What would the future me say of my bad habit of today?”
  • „When I was little, did I imagine myself doing this?”
  • „What stops me from achieving my goal, of being [habit ABC]-free?”
  • „habit ABC is evil”.
  • „Don’t postpone giving up the habit! Give up [habit ABC] now!”
  • „What would others say of my habit?”

For my experience, I found a much more powerful assertion. A single one, simple & easy:

  • „I don’t even enjoy this!”

It’s very negative, and it manages to cut any enthusiasm I have in having a bad habit. For example, eating some tasty junk food. If I say to myself „I don’t even like this cookie”, I come to realize that, actually, I don’t even like it. Just by using the assertion forces me to come up with some additional questions („Do I like this? Is it good for me? Should I buy the cookie?”), and, generally, it’s much easier to break a habit with this question.

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Facebook: WordPress code to display the number of comments / shares / likes for the current blog post for administrators only

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Hi,

Let’s say you have a Facebook page and you want to know how many likes / shares / comments does the current blog post has. I made a script, based on this article, which allows you so see how many likes / shares / comments a blog post has.

It will give you an information like this:

sharesvslikes

How to do it? 

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The sick pleasures of rich people

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Sometimes, I meet people driving expensive cars and running big business who want to negotiate with me things. Making a site, things like that. And what strikes me is their willingness to negotiate. At first, I thought „hmm, they must have made those money by being good with power & negotiation, so this is an explanation”. But I think it’s more than this. Once you reach a level in your life, you get bored of things. You have pretty much everything in life, and nothing really excites you. And you enjoy the thrill of negotiation. You actually like & have pleasure in being better than the person in front of you. Most poor people would have two problems in negotiation: The lack of experience & practice. The feeling that they’re, somehow, inferior when they negotiate. The rich people don’t have any of these problems. They have lots of experience with negotiations (1) and they perfectly know they’re better than the person in front of them (2). The second point excites them, so they keep on doing this. So, the next time a guy driving an expensive car comes to you and tells you you should leave your prices them, try and have your excitement. Negotiate with them, smiling, knowing that you won’t care if you lose them, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing them annoyed by your lack of cooperation. Enjoy the game and don’t let them run over you. But, on the other hand, if you do need the name of that client on your portfolio, …

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„I’m good, you’re evil” – What should come out of this?

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Let’s say X does something wrong. What should you do? You have the option of complaining. You’ll help others avoid the same mistake you’ve made. You have the option of putting some rules. If X damages your property, you want to make sure the next time something will be different, from X knowing that the thing is a wrong thing to do, to not having a contact with X anymore. You have the option of ignoring this and moving forward. I’ll talk about this option here: If you ignore the thing X does to you, it will haunt you. You’ll think about that thing, and it will consume you. But, mostly, you will tend to focus on your mistakes in the relationship with X (not filtering things right at the beginning, ignoring some signs, not taking precautions). Thus, you’ll tend to solve things better next time. You’ll be better at handling business the next time. X can change. If X does something wrong to me, yes, I can tell everybody about my side of the story. But I am believer in human improvement. I don’t think that one who did a mistake will always repeat that mistake. That person may do so, but it also may not. It’s OK to give detailed feed-back to X, in order to improve. But, mostly, that feed-back needs to be asked for, not given without a request. You can and may give feed-back chaotically, but it’s not always a good idea. It is possible that if take action and …

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – a brave movie

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They say The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a comedy. I’d say it’s a bit more serious than that. The main two characters – M. Gustave and Mr. Moustafa (Zero) have great courage. To be what they want (noble). To go after a psychopath, to fight police and armies. To protect nobility, beauty, poetry, kindness at all costs. M. Gustave is very polite, at times flirting, at times seeming he is as polite just to get better in life. But events prove otherwise. When escaping, he is polite. When he has an alibi, due to politeness, he doesn’t use it. He doesn’t confuse politeness with being weak. He fights until he dies. A hero! The movie itself has the courage to be different than others. It’s not an easy take. It tries to makes things simple, but it present powerful things, shocking at times. Yes, it is lots of fun, but mostly due to the fact that the main characters are different. I watched it two times. I really really enjoyed it. I recommend it!

Backgammon Strategies

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I played some backgammon these days with my father. He says the following: I should focus on winning. I should focus on learning the optimal route. I should avoid making mistakes. He seem to enjoy winning. I say the following: I should focus on learning. The best way to learn something is by making mistakes. I deliberately allow myself to make mistakes, even if this makes me lose some games. I really enjoy the excitement you get by being very close to winning and then to see him try so hard to beat me due to a mistake I make. We have some disputes based on this. :) In chess, I tend to have some fixed moves at the beginning, and then adapt to the situation. My father is very close to having an algorithm good-for-all at backgammon, which makes the game dull and boring. He just have to learn and remember his algorithm. A computer could do this very easily. Chess, and my style of backgammon, are not like that. You need flexibility. Sure, this implies some mistakes, but it’s more fun (I think).