A Path to mastery

One and only one thing I have realized confidence and mastery over a subject only builds up with time. Time spent diligently with interest and clear end goals in mind.
Goal : Very important here. We need to define objectives well. We may complete a number of tasks and never learn from it. If we don't know what we are going to learn.
Slow and steady diligent work over period of time get you some where in life.
Important 50 man hours over three days is not same as 50 man hours over a week. The second approach is more profound. But the time line should not be over stretched as then our work will lack efficiency.

Important to Plan and execute one step at time.
Have a way where you can measure... You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Greatest Browser Ever: FireFox.

What is not possible FireFox.
I wanted to find two applications to perform two tasks on my Desktop which I traditionally expect to use a Desktop applications for.

1.  Desktop Blogging: I would love to blog often but I want to do it in my spare time and I hate to click so many buttons when I want to write something on my blog. When I was shopping for a desktop app.Guess what I found ScribeFire. A plug in for my FF browser which I can just open up while browsing any website and just blog from there. Its a no fluff blogging tool.
2. Epub reader: I recently bought a e reader so all my material is in e pub format recently. When I was looking around for a reader like adobe reader I found EPUBReader, a Firefox addon which let you read ePub-files just in the browser. You don't need to install additional software!

I dont have to go over the Firebug, I would have been dead with it. I am looking forward for FF4.

What is the greatest skill of a leader ? Answer: Listen more speak less

Inspiration to write this blog came from this article in business week.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jul2010/ca2010075_050913.htm

I have to add a similar experience from the life one of the greatest human being ever alive: Mahatma Gandhi.

When he went to england to study law, his English fluency was not the best. Hence he was forced to listen carefully and rehearse what ever he had to say. In his book my experiments with Truth, he mentions how this helped him in his life time with regarding to his listening skills and taught him how to use words effectively.

And another example would be from the book 48 laws of power."Always Say Less than Necessary" is the 4th law.

Another example is from the Hindu Mythology: The description of Lord Ganesha, commander of the entire army of gods. The scriptures justify his looks (big ears and small mouth) saying that his anatomy helps the lord to listen more and speak less. May be this is what makes him a great leader.

Listening more and speaking less is a one of the greatest quality of leader. I have quoted examples from different times in the history and from different cultures across the world. Should be need more justification??

Opera Vs Chrome

Well Well, Here I go. 

I have been using Mozilla for as long as I remember. I love that thing. Its just simply great. I developed affinity towards that as soon as I started using that. But along the way a new browser catches my eye. Chrome!!!!! I love Google's products. I like the way UI is designed and clean colors and the minimalistic approach. Especially the combination of title bar and the Tab bar.  If you observe the to part of the chrome where all the controls are you can see that they cleverly placed all the controls in just two lines while all other browsers including opera and Mozilla (I am not talking about IE though I love them for being the pioneers in freely distributed browser model) take at least three to four lines.  In this article my focus would be on Opera and Chrome. 

Pros of Chrome:

1. Clean and minimalistic UI. 

2. Fast load time: I am not talking about the pages I am talking about the program itself.

3. I can make the tabs independent windows. Love that feature.

What I like about Opera:

1.Note Taking feature: I admit chrome has taken the plus points from all the other browsers. How did they miss this. I believe that all of us often run into a situation where we copy various clippings from the websites. I use notepad or other note taking program using a regular copy paste method. Opera has given me an inbuilt note taking feature. I could select a clipping and select the option copy to note and it creates a new note in book.

2. I love the speed: comparable to chrome. You can check it out yourself. 

3. Panels:  I feel they are way better than popups. Well you can think of panels as a frames with in the window. Very good use of the Space here. The panels are collapsible and you can easily bring it up.

4. Load the web-page on back-ground option: When we choose this option. your web-page is loaded in the back ground same as open in new tab option in chrome. But in addition to this opera also provides an option to load the web page.