Posted by geetarista May 29, 2006
Having been a person who has struggled with getting the best sleep, I’ve always looked for ways to improve my quality of sleep. I have even thought several times about going to a sleep center to see if there was anything they could do to help. Sleep has a huge impact on the way my day goes and the way I feel every single day. I recently read an article (and for some reason I can’t find it right now) that talked about how the eight hours of sleep that everyone needs is just a myth. For some people it may be more and for others less.
I just read a couple of articles that talk about find the right amount of sleep you need and how to achieve it. The first article talks mainly about the science of sleep and how it works. He explains the sleep cycles and offers a quick way to find your own amount of sleep needed. The second touches on how sleep works and offers more on finding the amount sleep that you need. From people who have commented on both sites, it sounds like it is something worth looking in to. I will experiment with this during the week and will post my findings here.
Via: Cómo despertarse sin sueño
Posted by geetarista May 15, 2006
For a while now, people have been talking about Google Notebook and how cool it’s going to be, and now it’s here! I was reading an article on ZDNet and it showed the login page for Notebook and I was able to get in. From the Google Notebook help page:
Google Notebook makes web research of all kinds – from planning a vacation to researching a school paper to buying a car – easier and more efficient by enabling you to clip and gather information even while you’re browsing the web.
And since Google Notebook lives in your browser, you won’t be left with a scattered collection of notes, Word docs, and browser bookmarks to sort through; all your web findings will be gathering into one organized, easy accessible location that you can access from any computer.
I’ve been looking at getting an account with Backback for a while, but now I think that I’ll give the Google Notebook a try first. It doesn’t look like there is much functionality to it right now, but that may be that it just went up a few minutes ago. Right now I can just add different notebooks and add textual notes right now. There is also an extension that makes it easier to be able to take notes from any page that you’re visiting. Hopefully, we will soon be able to see how powerful this little toy will be!
Posted by geetarista May 11, 2006
Recently I talked about (K)Ubuntu being my choice as the best Linux distribution for me. Things were working out fine for me, but the only problem that I had was getting my Linksys WMP54GS to connect to my router in Kubuntu. I tried to find how to do it all over the internet, but none of the tutorials and help that I found didn’t work. So, while reading a topic in the Ubuntu Forums, someone said that everything works better by installing Ubuntu, and then just to install the KDE packages after that. This way, you can use the original KDE instead of using an adaptation for Kubuntu.
So I downloaded a new DVD for Ubuntu, which led me to a few more problems. After downloading and installing the first time, I kept getting an error that meant that the ISO I downloaded was bad. So I re-downloaded the ISO again and burned it to another DVD. I soon got other problems when it was installing packages saying that it couldn’t read the DVD and that I should burn the ISO at a slower speed. I did that two more times, and kept getting the same problems. I thought all hope was lost, but I tried messing around with the installer (I don’t really remember what I did) and everything started working. Instead of trying to install the packages after installing the base system, it restarted the computer, started loading Ubuntu, and then installed the packages with no problem. So, after a few nights staying up late trying to get it to work, I finally got it.
Since I made the change, I think that the system is running a little better by just using Ubuntu and installing KDE. Moreover, most people use Ubuntu, so many of the tutorials out there are specific to Ubuntu and may not work on Kubuntu. Personally, I think that they should just put KDE with Ubuntu and get rid of most of the confusion from having two separate distributions. Isn’t that the whole point of Linux anyway? Having options? What if someone is turned off by the way Gnome looks to them and decide to go with another distribution because it has KDE, or worse, go back to Windows. It happened with me–I tried Ubuntu about a year ago and didn’t like Gnome, so I decided to go with Mandriva because of the way it looked.
I think that one problem that Linux veterans have is that they believe that what they want or like is what others want, like, or even need. I thought that my wife would like KDE because of the eye candy and other cool features. But when I showed it to her, she didn’t really care for it. After all this happened, I was working in Ubuntu installing packages and updating the system, she said “Oooh, that looks really cool!”. I thought What?! But she just liked the color scheme and the way it looked. Maybe it’s something that we all should pay attention to.
Posted by geetarista May 10, 2006
Touching upon what I recently talked about, I read another book on Linux: Moving to the Linux Business Desktop. This was another book that was made for people who can’t figure things out on their own. It wasn’t a bad book, it just didn’t have very much that was original. In my opinion, the book should have just been named Moving to the Linux Desktop. The book mainly goes through the most popular applications that are used in Linux and shows how to use them step by step. It does go into a little more detail than the Linux for Dummies book, and it does cover a few more complex situations that are very important to beginning Linux users. Between the two books, I would probably choose this one for a newbie to read and get aqcuainted with Linux.
The book does come with a bootable CD-ROM that includes an altered version of Knoppix that has most of the applications in the book. This way, the reader can go along with the tutorials and learn faster through hands on experience. It is nice to have a few lessons on how to use Linux, but it just isn’t enough. Eventually, one must delve deeper into Linux to find out what it’s really all about. I just don’t think beginner books like these are going to help more people become aware of the power of Linux.
Posted by geetarista May 09, 2006
A while ago I talked about the Flow book that I read. Well, I just finished another book by the same author called Finding Flow. Although it was a very good book, I think that it was just the scaled down version of the previous book. Some of the chapters even have the same exact names, namely, The Paradox of Work and The Autotelic Personality. If I were to refer someone to read either of these two books, I would go with Finding Flow. Although it doesn’t go into as much detail as Flow, it still covers the main idea. Most of the people I know are not psychologists who would find Flow a great read.
Of course the book isn’t just Flow with the detail removed. The ideas in the book are presented in an entirely different way with different context, but it is generally the same information presented from Flow. There are a couple new graphs and a different graph showing what optimal experience looks like.
If you want to read a little more about Flow Psychology, check out my del.icio.us flow page.
Posted by geetarista May 08, 2006
In my quest for switching to Linux, I’ve decided to check out a few books to see if I could find a better resource to find information. The first one I’ve looked at is Linux for Dummies. I think that this is a great book for someone who is still unfamiliar with even the basics of computing. There are quite a few things that I did learn from the book, however it wasn’t much.
One of the main problems that I have with these kind of books is that it tries to fill in the pages with as much as possible. This book mainly uses the different distributions of Linux to present more information. I’m not saying that it’s bad–I just think that most of it is unnecessary.
The book starts out showing how to get prepared for Linux and then how to install it. Then it goes into booting, using, and configuring Linux. After that, it shows how to manipulate files and directories, installing software, keeping Linux secure, and how to use the GUIs. Finally, it shows how to get started with OpenOffice and multimedia. It then adds a few tips for troubleshooting that was probably the only part of the book that I found useful.
Again, I don’t want to be too harsh on the book. I just don’t think that showing step-by-step with cute pictures is the best way for people to learn Linux. I’ve learned more about Linux by just throwing in a live CD and playing around with it than from just reading though a book. If I do need a reference to guide me, there are more than enough ready to use all over the internet.
Posted by geetarista May 04, 2006
I finally finished a book that I’ve been reading for a while, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. It took me a while to read because, honestly, it is very repetitive and boring in places. Of course it’s because the book was written to prove the ideas from research the author had done. Included are tons of notes and references at the end of the book showing his research. However, I feel that the ideas should be shown in a condensed form without having to sift through all of the stories, etc.
After an introduction on the topic, the author talks about the anatomy of consciousness, then enjoyment, and then goes deeper into what flow is and how it affects different facets of our lives. He shows how flow experiences are what truly brings happines in one’s life. Of course it is not a how-to book since every person is different and must find their own happiness. However, it does give many examples from other people’s lives and how they were able to experience these flow activities. I believe that the ideas presented in the book are very important and that everyone should be living by those principles. Happiness is something that everyone aspires to have, yet it seems that few truly find it. |inline
