Lots of things happen in modern movies, there’s a lot of action.
On the plus side, I feel engaged, I like watching such movies.
On the negative part, I feel like it’s too much, I need some space and time for reflection.
Știrile lunii decembrie 2021
Mai jos, resursele cele mai importante, pentru mine, din luna decembrie 2021. Pot fi suprapuneri de la o secțiune la alta.
Pricing for old clients
In the past, I used to have different prices than I have today.
These days, on my hourly rate, for example, I have various rates, based on how long we work together.
At one time in the past, I increased the pricing of my services for a client.
He was very upset with my decision, telling me he doesn’t do so with his own clients.
His way of interpreting things stayed with me, and I tend to do the same with my current clients – if we establish a price per collaboration, I tend not to increase it, as time passes by.
It was a tough lesson, but I hope I learned something from it.
Modern problems with modern solutions
Modern people today tend not to care about tomorrow. It’s all settled – they have a shelter, some food to eat, and they have their basic (and more) needs met.
But there are many people who live in difficult conditions.
The problem of moderns seems great, but they fade in the face of the hunger of many.
On a human psychology part, sometimes life seems overwhelming.
Ecology, overcrowding, stress.
We live an easy life in a world of stress.
In fact, the studies find that anxiety has increased so much that typical schoolchildren during the 1980’s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients did during the 1950’s. (Source – Studies show normal children today report more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950’s)
Why you shouldn’t use flags language selection
I don’t advise others to use flags for language selection on a website.
The reason is obvious – I can live in Romania, and although I might speak Romanian, there are some people in Romania that don’t speak Romanian.
Therefore, it’s much better to offer an option to select by language (Romanian, English), as opposed to the flag of a country (Romania, UK).
Thinking about this issue this way might also make you realize that there are other languages spoken in a country – Hungarian and German, in Romania, for example.
Resources on this:
- Flags are not languages – A blog about designing global user experiences: beyond language, location & culture.
- The UX of Flags. Flags are amazing. They’re these icons… | by Elizabeth Chesters | Medium
- Flag Problems
- My take on language selectors. Part I: Help users find their preferred… | by Zsolt Szilvai | UX Collective
- Inside Design: A Language Selector Is No Place for Flags
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other – Eric Hoffer
“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” – Eric Hoffer
There’s a book titled: “Nebunia de a gândi cu mintea ta” (on the madness of thinking with your own mind) by Gabriel Liiceanu.
It’s so hard not to imitate others!
Whenever faced with a choice, the usual solution is “What would another person from the society do?”.
Of course, each person is unique, and on a regular day, most likely people take their own choices, each of them has a unique set of values and acts accordingly.
But, all-in-all, I think it’s rather difficult, due to social pressure and conformity, to constantly try and think with your own mind, as opposed of copying others.
CDN for WordPress – Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a popular solution for a CDN (content-delivery network).
You might want to know that you can have a free WordPress plugin to help you power up your website.
Do note that this change, once done, might make your website a bit more complicated to manage.
Due to this reason, I didn’t install Cloudflare on any of the websites I manage.
A plugin like Imagify for WebP images and LiteSpeed Cache for powerful caching are great solutions to improve a website’s speed.
Also, choosing a fast WordPress theme.
Favorite promotions
I would like an online store like eMAG to have, in addition to the wishlist/favorites, a place to put notes. “This is a personal note about product X”. And to be saved in my account.
Also, I would like to be informed of price cuts, but due to special occasions, and “real” price cuts, not due to daily changes in pricing.
Number one criteria for sorting – Top Sales
For me, the top criteria for sorting the products in a category of an online store should be “Top Sales”.
Yes, there are other criteria (best rating, the newest added, alphabetically, by price).
And, of course, people should also be able to filter, not only to sort.
But to go into a category of an online store and not see the option of sorting via top sales is a huge miss for the store.
Imagine going to an actual store. You see three types of milk, with similar pricing. Wouldn’t you want to know which product has the most sales, and which people tend to skip?
If I am to choose a keyboard, I go to an online store’s website, pick a category, and sort by top sales. The top products in the list are likely to have a product I need.
That’s the main difference between an online and a physical store – access to data about customers/sales.
Be a nice company and also give me data like this, it really helps with the process of buying.
How to memorize a phone number?
Let’s say you’re in a cab, you don’t have your cell phone with you, and you need to memorize a phone number the cab driver gives you.
How to do it?
In Romania, we have some major telecommunication providers, so, for example, 0743- would belong to Orange, while 0724- would belong to Vodafone.
The lines of separation got very blurry once a person can move the phone number to another provider with ease, but, still, there are some general rules (at least in my mind).
So, the first step – associate the phone number with the provider.
Then, for each provider, remember just the final digit – So 0743, the last digit is 3 (it can differ from the same provider, they might have 0741, 0742, and so on).
For the remaining 6 digits, try and form some associations. “1 less than the birthday of”. “Double of a bad luck number”. “The first two and last two digits are similar due to”.
In my opinion, it’s much easier to remember a rule between digits, rather than try and memorize 6 unique digits.