Technology | Loving Jacqui

Just a Little Note…

… to test out the ScribeFire extension for Firefox.

OBTWILY.

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Google Chrome Review

Today Google launched a new web browser, Chrome. I’ve been using it for half an hour.

What’s really got me excited is my main using for need for Firefox specifically is bookmark organization.

It lets me keep a toolbar of bookmarks in folders and subfolders for easy organization and productivity.

Well Google Chrome, which I’m using now, immediately installed all my hundreds of folders, subfolders, bookmarks, and placed it in its own toolbar. It knew how to do this!

Internet Explorer can’t do it. Frankly, this amazed me.

So when you’re reading this review of Google Chrome, consider this… it’s beautiful. The page rendering I’ve seen has been pixel perfect. Granted, it’s only been 32 minutes, but still. Not only that, but it isolates the processes of each tab so one tab crashing doesn’t crash the whole browser. This is a huge plus.

It is simple and clean looking. It allows you to put web applications on your desktop or quick launch bar as a shortcut, and when you click it the “cloud computing” application launches without the Google UI so it looks exactly like a native application (program) on your computer, but you’re running it on the web: the future of computing.

And no software then needs to be installed on your computer or a local server. It’s astonishing. Get it here: google.com/chrome

Recommended? Yes!

UPDATE 17 minutes later: No way! When you click the + sign for a new tab, it Chrome you a panel of 9 thumbnails you recently viewed for you to choose from, and a list of recent bookmarks on the right. Below that is a list of recently closed tabs. Below the thumbnails is a link to get your full history with a description of each page and the time visited in reverse chronological order.

It’s convenient and a visual real time saver.

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3rd Toastmasters Meeting – Philosophy – and a Rewarding Productive Day

I went to a Toastmasters meeting organized around business and technology people.

I love both, especially the 1st, and the 2nd to the degree technology can solve people’s problems and allow them to profit personally, professionally, or financially.

For example this blog is technology. I first puzzled out my life-and-attitude-altering written statement on a word processor, and I’m listening to free streaming trance music as I type.

Never was there a century with more opportunity, more change, more chances to love at a distance (Jacqui) and to bridge that distance spiritually and in person.

The young entrepreneur- business owner- president of the Toastmasters club paid me a huge compliment at the end by saying he thought I would fit in there. He referred me to an experienced Toastmaster who is a member of a club which meets once a month for a meeting about humour!

(Just awesome — now I can join 2 clubs and still have time to complete education I want at my own pace, work passionately for the right company when I find it, driving their profitable client acquisition growth, and… this is where it gets truly exciting… asking me if I might want to talk over some business ideas with him.)

Of course, I was honoured and I’d love to. I think this might be one of the 2 clubs I’ll join. I’m waiting to hear back from an email I sent.

The other Toastmasters clubs are awesome. Unfortunately, I only have so much time and must be forthright with myself about that. Some of my biggest interests are business and humour… and I want improvement in both.

Speaking of which, I spoke again today, near the beginning of the meeting! My 1:30 second table topic speech, with 20 seconds over, was on the question, “Does money motivate people?”

I gave a speech and since it was impromptu, I wouldn’t be entirely right in saying I remember what I said.

The gist of it was yes, it does motivate, but it’s only one of many things and for most people, is not the main motivator. Family, expressiveness, pleasure, companionship, moral values, immoral values, ideas… these are the things that motivate people and only a small percentage of the population is motivated to earn big money, anyway.

You have to have a reason to want the money for the effort required to earn more than your immediate needs. This inspires more than a desire for fancy paper printed with the faces of assorted deceased notables.

Hence all the above plus money, yes.

If money was the main motivator, well… there wouldn’t be a lot of use for bridge clubs. Or for that matter (completely different motivations at stake)… night clubs.

On the subject of motivation, my thought is this.

It’s a 2-edged sword.

Everyone says they want more motivation, but do they? Should they?

Here’s the thing.

If a person without thinking it through properly possesses unhealthy goals and a negative attitude as their dominating thoughts whatever their stated thoughts, and they become more motivated… you can see what problems that can lead to.

The reverse of that is you have a positive, clear vision of something really worthwhile… whether that’s your wealth or better yet what you intend to do with your wealth, a change you want to make in the world, an example you want to set (think Amelia Earhardt who wanted to have adventures and prove women can be as brave as men), or some other aspect of people’s noble motives combined with a positive mental attitude…

… well, motivation fueled into that purpose is what blazes a trail forward in any person’s life. We all feel it from time to time. The hidden key I only recently discovered to my delight and benefit is how to persistently reflect on your purpose. There is a way. Some people do it naturally and it can also be learned.

Persistently.

I’m not talking about being persistent in pursuit of your goal. You won’t be if you let other lesser things take its place as the cares of the world or the distractions of pleasure take over your thoughts.

I mean persistently reinforcing your most important thought, your purpose, your desire, until it’s a burning obsession… then keeping the oxygen on it.

If you care about this, I suggest you read my business website carefully… carefully… because I outline it there and reveal resources you can use to learn more and understand it fully. However, I plan on pulling the plug on that business site once it has helped me accomplish my next major business goal.

So if you get there and it’s either not working or it redirects to another site (where I’m now working), and you’re really wanting to understand how to persistently stoke your purpose in life to the point where you find yourself clouding out all your old self-doubts and replacing them with the finest parts of your nature… the parts you’re only used to seeing once in a while “by chance”… if you’re serious about that… then you can write to me at my contact link at the top of this page above the website header and I’ll point you toward some people smarter than myself who, in a very nuts and bolts almost scientific way (backed up by actual science!) know how you can do it.

Top athletes do it. Matthew McConaughey does it. You can too.

Today was a good day.

I woke up and started on my 10 daily next actions, including exercise, eating healthy, saying aloud my statement of purpose, visualizing it, and both reading and listening to specialized useful material.

It got better.

Because I had prepared for it, I went into my first sales opportunity job interview of the day and it went well. Hands down. It was a wonderful conversation for both of us and I’ll say no more at this point.

Walking back to my car, I saw a B2B technology company’s office, rang the buzzer, and made a cold call. The VP of Business Development was not in, but I did leave a note on the back of my business card. I will follow through on my promise to contact him on Friday. I’ll do it by letter because he works from home.

Driving to my 2nd appointment, I was listening to Dale Carnegie’s classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It’s such an amazing book. I have violated every principle in it more than any man who has ever lived, except perhaps for Benjamin Franklin. He used to be very argumentative and undiplomatic with people, and went on to be one of the most persuasive, effective communicators in history. This despite the fact he was not a gifted speaker.

I’ve been learning.

For example, I was writing down names of people in my journal shortly after meeting them because a person’s name is important. People are important and worth remembering.

My 2nd interview was for a more junior position. The person interviewing me said it usually lasts 5 minutes and then, “Why don’t you try it out?”

In my case, it was 90 minutes of back and forth ideas, brainstorming, stories, and we both walked out of the office and out the parking lot together in total rapport. The manager is thinking about creating a new position for me because he sees some of the big picture possibilities of our thinking — in my case, new thinking, frankly — and yet my nuts and bolts methods for actioning them.

I’ve had skills for a while, but I didn’t have a great ability to control my mind and emotions in a lasting way. Now I do since I found a set of education and training I learned for which I’m eternally grateful. What a difference.

I have total calmness because I fully understand if one opportunity doesn’t pan out for me, I will uncover 3 others.

In fact, people who’ve seen my website, email, brochure, etc… haven’t seen my marketing plan. They think they have maybe. But not really, not fully. The most powerful part of it hasn’t been unleashed yet because I simply don’t have time.

I’ve been making great contacts with the lower levels of the plan, and the admittedly higher touch networking. For example, and I really do want to serve my community… I decided to be a better person, I would join a service club.

So I recently sent emails to 3 service clubs, and the President of one and his Membership VP both want to talk with me about selling opportunities.And I haven’t even met them in person yet.

The club President in particular represents a well-known company whose top representatives earn in the half million range, I am sure.

But… the company I met with this morning looks so exciting, with such growth potential, I wouldn’t jump on such an opportunity as above without deep thought.

In fact, tomorrow I have another interview with an agent sales department of a Fortune 100 company. Average earnings are about $50k/year with the top 25% of sales reps earning $80k an up.

And that’s awesome. It could be a long term career and I intend that it will be if I start. I’m incredibly excited by the thought.

So I have options and I will explore them carefully. And when I act, I will act with lightning speed. “Ready, Fire, Aim.”

I sent a handwritten appointment confirmation letter to one prospect, an emailed one to another, thank you cards to the people I met with today, emails to 2 people from the Toastmasters meeting, a personal email to the first person I met with today on the subject of one of her personal passions because by “chance” I met someone who might maybe have a way for her to do what she does better.

And that chance occurred because I was there and struck up a conversation with that person! For no other reason.

And isn’t that what business should be about? Helping people.

Back to my table topic speech evaluation. The evaluator said:

Good opening

Good eye contact

… and he also said I should:

move around more because by coming forward, I include the audience in what I’m saying

I take that as a great improvement because I moved beyond the lecturn in my speech whereas on Monday I was “locked” behind it! Also, I left my pen behind and did not grasp it to distract people.

Yet my speech wasn’t near the best.

There were wonderful speeches about an Italian architect with revolutionary luxury futuristic environmentally friendly skyscraper designs; eliminating procrastination, having more joy through planning, and building life-changing self-confidence; and even some mathematically intensive and fascinating technical understanding of public-private key encryption.

That last one was better than it sounds, at least if you like to grasp how things work so you can explain the benefits in plain hard hitting language.

Toastmasters is an outstanding organization. You should come out as a guest sometime if you don’t already do so. And yep, you can keep your religion and politics out of it. It’s all about learning how to speak well, listen well, and gain the benefits of (personal and wider) leadership.

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Dinosaur Technology

I received a fax:

Photo of Jacqui's fax saying 'I love you' in both our hands at the same time'

… using ancient, primitive technology. But it was a nice fax, so I forgive her. On the technology front, at least we were able to see each other 14,822 km away using the internet.

Why do I have a feeling in a little under a decade that will be outdated technology too? Is this the future? Or just plain silly?

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XHTML

Yay, I recoded ChristophDollis.com from HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) 4.01 Transitional to XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) 1.0 Strict.

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The Best Kind of Birthday Present: Technology

Hey Jac,

I had bought you flowers and chocolates ordered online, but they messed up so bad they didn’t give you the right balloon that I chose six months earlier to communicate a message… which escapes me right now…

Instead, they sent you an anniversary balloon! And if that’s not bad enough, didn’t give you the included birthday balloon that was supposed to come with it.

The day after it was delivered, the owner was emailing me to say they didn’t have everything they had confirmed a week before. After going back and forth with him by email six times, I pointed out his online “Guarantee and Refund Policy” (Javascript required).

Eventually… he accepted my request that he honour it verbatim. While he was making me somewhat fair counteroffers, the fact is, he chose the refund policy he posted online, not me. I was within my rights to expect him to honour it.

So you got $120 AUD worth of free, if rather early since we have never been married, anniversary goodies.

So… here is your next present… the best kind… something for me to enjoy… seeing you…

Logitech Quickcam Fusion

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Web Design, CSS, and (X)HTML

Just finished making Loving Jacqui all Christmassy… we were talking about fellow British Columbian, Dave Shea, the creator of the Loving Jacqui template (before heavy modification).

He’s one of the luminaries behind CSS Zen Garden.

A year ago I had a roommate, Barry, who is a generation older than I, but he was just a very good friend to me.

I had a website I wrote in Microsoft Word. Here it is:

lovingjacqui.net/originalopenletter

(although I’ve since rewritten it in something other than Word!)

This is how I met Jacqui, of course, and writing it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

But I couldn’t have cared a less about web design. Heck, I wanted it in old school “typewriter” font because it is the closest thing to handwritten and I wanted it to kind of read like a handwritten letter.

It did kinda bug me that when I opened it in other browsers other than Internet Explorer, it looked awful. But since most women I knew used IE, it worked anyway.

My roommate told me that he designed his websites in Notepad. This kind of floored me.

“Notepad?”

“Yep.”

I had no idea about this at the time, but all a website is is a text file using a simple language, (X)HTML: (extensible) Hypertext Markup Language.

It’s very logical and simple. Write it in a text file, change the text file “extension” from .txt to .html and you’re in business.

This realization floored me, but I was intrigued.

Anyway, when I found myself understanding that Jacqui was attracting my attention in a way other women aren’t, I created this blog for her.

Barry had also introduced me to the CSS Zen Garden as an example of how powerful Cascading Style Sheets are.

Go there and see the design. It’s attractive by itself, but look deeper… on the right hand column you’ll see several other designs by other web graphic artists.

They all use the exact same HTML. Try them out.

They are identical even if they look different. What has changed is that each uses a different CSS file. You can visualize why “Cascading Style Sheet” is the perfect name. Everything just flows from it in this neat cascade that you can control by assigning unique “classes” and “ids” to different (X)HTML page elements. It’s how on Loving Jacqui you can press the button on the top right and switch the webpage from “Original Blue” to “Ghastly Pink” and fortunately back again.

The CSS Zen Garden is known around the web for being a beautiful example that has inspired many including me.

I was also talking with her about how I don’t like “alpha-channel transparency” background images.

“What the —?”

Before on the Internet it used to be that your only option for transparency was you could take an image and save it as a .gif file (as opposed to the equally common .jpg usually used for photographs because it offers small file size and millions of possible colours: .gif only offers 256).

When saved as a .gif, it is possible to make certain pixels (picture dots) 100% transparent, which means you can see whatever is behind them.

This allows you to put an image of a dolphin, for example, on your aqua web page and it looks like it belongs there. Even if it really belongs in the ocean.

Newer, more capable web browsers than Internet Explorer: contenders like Opera and Firefox, the one I use, follow more closely Internet standards laid out by the World Wide Web consortium (WC3).

This makes things easier for web designers because while Internet Explorer is common, you’re always trying to make it do things that it “should” do, but won’t do, not without significant tweaking and, “Why the hell does it do that when I just told it to do the opposite?” that you just don’t have to bother with with these other browsers.

For years these other browsers have supported alpha-channel transparency.

You know how when you look through the water, you can see the water and the person swimming beneath it?

Partial transparency = alpha-channel transparency.

Now that the new release of Internet Explorer, IE7, supports alpha-channel transparency, more web designers are placing a background image on their page and then make the surface you write on partially transparent so that you can see the background image like a watermark. They then fix it in place so that when you scroll down, the picture stays and the text itself moves.

This looks very cool and gives the website a certain “unearthy” feeling that makes the site seem light as a feather. It’s beautiful.

But damnit. I come to a website to read and having a photo with light and dark spots behind a partially transparent page makes it hard to read. I guess I’m not 18 anymore, but as a 34-year old, I shudder to think what it’ll be like to read this when I’m 80-something and Bear is lovingly blowing the dust out of my eyes as we send instant telepathic emails enquiring about our prescription drug plan.

So we’re having this conversation, and I’m telling Bear about how I dislike alpha-channel transparency and I’m reading a comment on another blog and I discover this link:

α-channel transparency done right: A Jacqui Bear style “Pretty in Pink” theme even I can approve of

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It’s ALIVE!

Jacqui gave me an awesome digital camera, but even though it seemed to work great, I couldn’t get my computer to “see” it when I plugged it in by USB, so I couldn’t upload the pictures.

After a couple days of puzzling over it trying to figure it out and even contacting the company to inquire about getting an RMA (Return Material Authorization) form, the young salesman at a local computer store showed me how to fix it… by pushing the USB cable all the way into the camera to complete the connection.

Aha!

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Oops! I Did It Again, Britney. Yet on the Bright Side…

Now that the big day has passed (Singles Awareness, Relationship Surprise, or Married Celebration Day depending on your perspective) I am still left with a sense of awe and gratitude.

Awe: when I walk around my apartment seeing in every nook and corner yet another beautiful and well-thought gift, book, letter, card, or Mylar monkey balloon [which almost 2-weeks later is still floating happily to my right as I type these words from my office – I being such a Spartan fellow that I decided to turn my place into a "bachelor apartment" with an office (the bedroom) rather than the typical 1-bedroom setup].
Gratitude: as I find myself taking unplanned breaks while I do my chores just staring for a longish moment into Bear’s eyes… at her picture that I just hung up beside my bed.

I should have done this when I moved in, but wasn’t sure where I wanted it. I placed it on my dresser, but the frame I have it in is only good for putting on a wall… not standing up. I realize now that the right place for it is where I can see it.

Okay, well I’m way too tired to keep writing and I have a busy day tomorrow starting with helping my sister set up her computer, which I have too much recent experience with since I screwed up not one, not two, but three Windows installations recently on my own.

I have better taste in women than I do in operating systems it seems! (Actually, Windows can be great – I truly messed it up! When Windows warns you not to edit a file, please don’t.)

As I said to the cute and perky grocery cashier tonight when she asked me how am I doing:

“I’m doing great!”

“Well, actually, I’m not.” She asked why and I said, “Windows”.

She kind of looked at me like I was crazy for a second, asked what kind of windows, and I said, “Windows, problem… put those two words together and what kind must it be?”

She figured it out and smiled again: “Oh right, Microsoft.”