I've been making my room more minimalist. 

The catalyst for this being a love for simplicity and the beauty within it. Coming back from holiday I want any future moving to be as easy as possible. Clutter causes stress and distractions on the brain on a conscious or subconscious level. I work better with less clutter, ergo I will be a better entrepreneur. 

On mentioning my crusade @AlexLeeDee told me about Cult of Less. Kelly setup the site on a quest to have less clutter in his life. He has listed all his possessions, and wether he is keeping or selling (or giving away). It's brilliant, we share the top 2 items from his list. Here is my snapshot list:

MacBook Pro 15" - keep

32" Samsung 1080p HD screen - keep

Toshiba 1TB external hard drive - keep (review to come)

The following lists extra steps taken by me, which may be verging on OCD. I've taken photos of every page in my notes / design / inspiration pads from over the years, transfered photos to computer, then recycled the pads. It gave me a chance to have a brief look over, and they are now much more accessible. All my essays from university are now on Google Docs -  thanks to having to submit all on a CD. I have ripped all from CD, uploaded to google Docs, and recycled the paper and discs.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. - Marianne Williamson

Ok so going a bit deep with this post, but I think it's worth sharing.

Some realisation of this started with going to a rowing camp. Out at 5:30 am rowing 20k (2hrs) before breakfast, 3 training sessions a day, with full exertion race speed exercises throughout. Skin was literally falling off my hands from blisters by the end. I didn't think I could do it..I thought even if I wanted to.. my body would just give up or fail; but it didn't. You can do more than you think. It was the toughest week of my life, but immediately after that everything else in comparison seemed easier. I got back, walked into pizza hut and had a buffet on my own.

Taking this onto a coding / business sense, I've been coming across problems and 'I'll get someone else to do that' or 'I'll put that out for a freelancer' but often, as I have found, you can do it. There will be times when you need help, but with Google at our fingertips you can often find / learn a solution, or just trying it first will allow you to specify your problem more or have more details to tell someone else who can complete it. We create barriers, everyone creates barriers to say why we can't do something.. I try to realise when I do this now, and treat it as a challenge to overcome. Write down a list of things to do to smash through the barriers and do it.

I'll leave you with the full quote from Marianne: 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Marianne Williamson, 1992)

Ok i'm flying (driving) around europe from friday morning for 2 weeks. Taking laptop, hopefully supress desire to work on project - pintbet, relax and enjoy. Enjoy your time people.

Itinerary:

La Rochelle, Barcelona, Nice, Milan, Lake Garda, Frankfurt, Amsterdam

Things to come back with:

Me (in one piece). Some remaining money. A new outlook on life?

THIS is great if your looking to do an image rollover.

I never liked having to bloat a page javascript for an image rollover so this is perfect.

This is a repost. (I don't use Disqus comments anymore but got this out of old Wordpress database to help some people)

My link showing the number of comments on a post was not displaying for a single post, it would just say "Comment", but was displaying correctly on the index page "0 Comments" - zero being the prevalent prefix on my site. There are a few possible solutions mentioned out there like:

• placing <?php wp_footer(); ?> just before </body> in your footer.php

• checking 'Check this if you have a problem with comment counts not showing on permalinks' within disqus plugin advanced settings.

None of these solutions worked for my problem.

The Solution:

On line 272 of the DISQUS plugin in disqus.php (accessible via dashboard - plugins - editor), it has the following:

} else if ( (is_single() || is_page() || $withcomments || is_feed()) ) {

change this line to:

} else if ( (is_page() || $withcomments || is_feed()) ) {

This solved the problem for me. Thanks to Steve O'Hear from this thread

Another solution:

From Andres Climent:

You can also add the following to you theme's functions.php file: 

<?php remove_filter('comments_number', 'dsq_comments_number'); ?>

David Heinemeier Hansson does it again, more inspiration for doing your own startup. He's REAL.

Hey

I've updated the placeholder page for PintBet. The main improvement is the newsletter signup option. Signups are important early so I have a list of possible testers of the site, as I plan to launch as early as possible and develop as we go. Newsletter signups are also important as it is these people are possible users, and users are what will determine the success of PintBet.

Signup if you want to be a beta tester or see what my first newsletter looks like : >

Thanks and godspeed to anyone else developing their own project.

PintBet - A site allowing you to place your tips on real sporting events at real odds for zero cost.

A site allowing you to make prospective bets for free.

PintBet  - New site holding page design up, allowing for users to register interest; those signing up will be offered beta invites in the next few weeks.

Follow us on tha twitter @pintbet and we shall return the favour!

Yeah... that little thing. 

I wanted to produce something that would be useful and new, not a rehashing of what has been done before, something cutting edge in web design / user experience, etc. It turns out this isn't really an option, and a rough proposed topic of mine ~ 'Can 'achievements' used in web applications increase user participation?' was more of an industrial / scientific research paper than a media dissertation. 

It's a shame a research type paper isn't an option but I guess that's down to my degree, there will be plus points to the course, like looking more into the cultural elements and what effect that has. I'd love to look at something like that a new research paper in the future, however then i'd probably just build into a website, make some rough analysis and judge that way, maybe even a blog post on it, but not a 8-10k word dissertation.

Current dissertation, purely in the form of keywords: Games, Japan, Western, Eastern, America, Culture, Final Fantasy, Gears Of War, Zelda.

Yesterday I read a twitter post that said 90% of blogs created in 2000 are now dead. I'm surprised it is not more.

When I stumble across a blog that hasn't had a post for at least a month, I get a sad feeling, like 'this is over', im reading something that is dead now. So i'll update my blog so at least someone similar to me doesn't get that feeling.

Currently, my PintBet (coming soon dunDunDunnn) is now my major project for my final year, replacing WikidTutorials. I'll skimp on the details for now. I'm also writing a dissertation, about what yet i'm not 100% (hand-in is in < 8 weeks) but I'm doing a lot of research into achievements within games currently. Some interesting quotes from gamers on achievements and games:

It's encouraging because in an MMORPG (Mass Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) you can see a consistent progression of development in your skills...you are getting better at a steady rate...In RL you don't level up when you get ahead, it isn't as obvious.

As children, we are taught to 'achieve' by being given milestones with specific goals. 'If you eat your green beans, you can have ice cream.' 'If you get an A in biology, you can get your driver's license. There are direct relationships between 'doing' and 'accomplishing' that I think disappear to an extent after we enter the 'real world. 

So from this i'm thinking - turn life into a game. Create goals for yourself (or others), get rewards.

Map life out, quantify it as much as you need.

Ref: The Daedalus Project: In Their Own Words: The Achievement Component