30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself in Next year 2012

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give
the right things a chance to catch you.

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself. Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves. Read The Road Less Traveled.
4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. Read Stumbling on Happiness.
11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely. It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company. There’s no need to rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you. But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own. Ask yourself this: “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. So smile! Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart. You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate. Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself! And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too. If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right.
21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. Read Getting Things Done.
24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.
25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while. You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well. You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out. But making one person smile CAN change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So narrow your focus.
28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Top 5 Gadgets of 2011 and 2012

We are here with one more list of the top 5 entries for this year and the coming one. We wanted to highlight the best gadgets of year 2011 and also what gadget to watch out for in 2012. So here we are with the list that shows top 5 gadgets of the year 2011 and also for the next year 2012.

Top 5 Gadgets for 2011:

1. iPhone 4S

With all the hype around iPhone 5 to be released this year, we did see the launch of the next model but this was iPhone 4S. With the new feature of voice recognition based artificial intelligence called Siri, this is the device that tops our list.

2. iPad 2

The leaner, meaner and slimmer iPad 2 beats its competition fair apart and also rules the tablet market.

3. Galaxy Nexus

The Samsung Google phone made news when it was first released in UK. With Super AMOLED display and latest Android version Ice Cream Sandwich, this is the phone worth buying.

4. Amazon Kindle Fire

Famously known as “iPad Killer” and customized by Amazon has definitely made it to the top 5 gadgets of 2011.

5. Canon EOS 1DX

Put simply, this is the perfect DSLR to date. It combines many of the features of the 1D Mark IV and the 1Ds models with many major upgrades.

Top 5 Gadgets to look in 2012:

1. iPhone 5

With new launches of the iPhone till know, we know it is coming just not sure when. iPhone 5 will surely be the phone to watch out next year.

2. iPad 3

Apple has been constantly able to maintain its position in the tablet market with the new models of the iPad, surely we are expecting the iPad 3 next year with new and improved features.

3. Wii U

Nintendo’s new console features a significant amount of power compared to the previous version of the Wii, but it’s the controller that has a lot of people excited.

4. Windows 8

Surely something to wait for the next year, this is going to be one major revolution in 2012. Microsoft has designed it to be similar and accessible on PCs, tablets and phones.

5. Ultrabooks

Thinking of buying more portable laptop? Then it would be the Ultrabook that you all need. We are expecting one soon in the year 2012.

Note: The list may vary person to person and has been compiled by us after some research on the internet. We would still love to hear from you, drop a comment.

Add any item in Right Click Send To Menu easily

Right click context menu is a great way of choosing one of the many options that an item have like we can have the file sent via Bluetooth or sent to a removable drive without the need of copy and paste, or other options like compressing it etc. Right click Send To menu is one of the most useful options a file can have. The only concern here is that the send to menu have only limited options which might not always come handy. Well if you want to add an option or any item to this send to menu, you can do this easily.

You can add any item whether file, folder or a network location to the right click send to menu easily with the help of a small tool called SendToSendTo. You might be wondering when you can add any entry to this menu by placing a shortcut manually in the C:\Users\%username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo location then why use this tool?

Well a simple reply would be that why you would want to do all this work manually when you can just right click on an item, and add it from right there to the send to menu. Yes it is that easy and saves a lot of time and effort. All you need to do is just right click on an item, go to send to menu, and click Add Here option, give a name in the dialog box that opens and click Create button.

This will now place a new right click send to option in the send to menu, isn’t that easy? In case you wish to remove it back, you need to visit the above mentioned location or just type shell:sendto in the Run and delete the entry from there.

Download SendToSendTo

Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

Here's another quick YouTube tip. Need captions for your YouTube video? It's never been easier:

Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

youtube.com – Watch this short demo to learn about machine-generated captions in YouTube and automatic timing for manually created caption tracks. (As you can see ...

SpreadsheetGear – Easy and Scalable ASP.NET Excel Reporting…

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SpreadsheetGear 2010 Now Available NEW! Autofilters, password protected workbooks, macro-enabled Open XML (.xlsm) support, Excel 2010 support, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 support, a number of charting features and more. Download the free Trial. Microsoft Chooses SpreadsheetGear for .NET "After carefully evaluating SpreadsheetGear, Excel Services, and other 3rd party options, we ultimately chose SpreadsheetGear for .NET because it is the best fit for MSN Money." Chris Donohue, Program Manager, MSN Money Reduced Time From 20 Minutes to 4 Seconds "We integrated SpreadsheetGear for .NET with an existing application with about two days work and it reduced the time it takes to generate a critical daily report from 20 minutes to 4 seconds. Thanks for making my team look like miracle workers!" Luke Melia, Software Development Manager, Oxygen Media Over 100 Times Faster Than Other Controls "We just wanted you to know how thrilled we are by the performance we are seeing with SpreadsheetGear for .NET. A 6,000 KB Excel workbook is loading into the WorkbookView control in less than a second. This is over 100 times faster than other controls we’ve tested. That difference makes it possible for us to develop and release a viable product with the Microsoft .NET Framework."

Why is Windows so slow?

Why is Windows so slow?
I’m a fan of Windows, specifically Windows 7. For the most part I like it better than OSX. I have 4 Macs, 3 Windows machines and 3 Linux machines that I access regularly.

But…I work on a relatively large project. Windows is literally an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE slower to checkout, to update and to compile and build than Linux. What gives? I don’t know this is the fault of Windows. As far as I know some of it is the fault of the software I’m using not using Windows in the correct way to get the maximum speed.

You can reproduce this yourself though. Download the code.

The simplest test is this: On Windows open a cmd, cd to the src folder and type

dir /s > c:\list.txt
Do it twice and time how long it takes. The reason to time only the second run is to give the OS a chance to cache data in ram

Now do the same thing in linux. Check out the code. CD to src and do

ls -R > ~/list.txt
In my tests, on 2 exact same machines (both are HP Z600 workstations with 12gig of ram and eight 3ghz cores) on Windows it takes 40seconds. On Linux is takes 0.5 seconds. Note I used git to checkout the files on both machines so there are more than 350k files in those folders.

Why is Windows in this case 80x slower than Linux? Is there some registry setting I can use to make it faster?

Similarly compile the code. Using Visual Studio 2008 follow the instructions here. Select the chrome project and build it. Edit one file, say src/gpu/command_buffer/client/gles2_implementation.cc. Just change a comment or something then build again. Try the same on Linux. For me, these incremental builds, on Windows it takes about 3 minutes, most of that time is spent in the linker. On Linux it takes 20 seconds. That’s 9x faster. I can install the new ‘gold’ linker and take it down even more. 7 seconds or 25x faster.

Come on Microsoft, step up your game! Personally I’d much rather program on Windows than Linux (yea, I know, sacrilege to some). Visual Studio’s debugger is far more productive than gdb or cgdb (maybe there is something better on Linux I don’t know). Plus, our users are mostly on Windows so I’d rather be on Windows so I get the same experience. GPU drivers are much better on Windows as well plus there are other apps I use (Photoshop, Maya, 3DSMax) that don’t exist on Linux.

But, I can’t stay on Windows with Linux being so much faster to build. It’s the difference between being totally productive and taking a coffee break every time I change a line and compile.

That’s not all of it either. git is EXTREMELY FAST on linux where as on Windows not so much. It’s probably no slower than svn on Windows as far as I can tell (I haven’t timed it) but one of the many reasons people switch to git is because it’s so fast on linux. Again it’s in the 10x to 100x difference between Windows and Linux.

All I can think of is 99% of developers that use Microsoft’s tools are writing Windows only code. As such they have no way to compare times and so Microsoft has no incentive to make it better. Except of course they do. If they themselves are using the same tools then their own developers are losing valuable time waiting for these tools to do their jobs.

Here’s hoping Microsoft will step it up.

PS: Of the 3 OSes, OSX is a mixed bag. git on OSX is slower than linux, faster than Windows. Building on OSX though is SSSLLLOOOWWW. Nearly 3 times slower than Windows using XCode.

PPS: Chromium has the option to build as a set of shared libraries instead of one large executable. This helps the link times in Windows significantly but it also helps link times in Linux. The relative speeds are till the same.

YouTube launches YouTube Schools for Students

I remember the days how I used to study and complete a work assignment that was allotted to me, those were so difficult but seriously the days have changed now, we have so many things to help us like the technology and so many resources like the Internet.

Seeking help from the Internet is quite common these days and in fact schools also use internet media like the educational videos to impart knowledge to the students. Thus YouTube is one of the favorite medias used. However one common problem with this is that YouTube have all sort of content and it gets very distracting to use it at the schools.

Recently YouTube have launched its new service called the YouTube Schools and as the name suggests, it is specifically launched and designed for students and the schools. The main features of it are the thousands of educational videos, math help, videos on foreign languages, university lectures, science experiments and world events. In short, every educational thing you are looking.

Additionally, the YouTube Schools don’t display any comments, no related posts which preserves the attentions of the students. All the distracting items are removed from here making this place one of the best places to study and learn.

If you are a person who likes spending time in learning, then this is the place to be.

Visit YouTube Schools

Free Flac to MP3 Converter for Windows

By default our Windows Media Player support lot of codecs but there are some which even it is unable to recognize. Like there is Flac audio format, which is the best audio quality available. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.

Like jpg is an image format in compressed form of RAW quality images, we have FLAC format which is uncompressed form of the audio. Now some people like to save audio in this quality in their system, if space is not an issue as FLAC consumes around 5 times space as compared to mp3. But if you want to convert this format into mp3 you can do so with some audio converters.

There are many audio converters available but not each come without any restrictions. Here is a converter that can convert FLAC as well as other formats into mp3 and others for you easily. The converter is called Free Mp3 Wma Converter, and is a freeware.

Free Mp3 Wma Converter can Convert all your Mp3, Wma, Ogg, Aac, M4a, Ac3, Ape, Flac, Wav files:

• Mp3 to Ogg, Mp3 to Wma, Mp3 to AAC, Mp3 to Wav

• WAV to Mp3, Wav to Ogg, Wav to AAC, Wav to Wma

• Wma to Mp3, Wma to Ogg, Wma to AAC, Wma to Wav

• Ogg to Mp3, Ogg to Wma, Ogg to AAC, Ogg to Wav

• AAC to Mp3, AAC to Wma, AAC to Ogg, AAC to Wav

• Ape to Mp3, Ape to Wma, Ape to Ogg, Ape to Wav

• Flac to Mp3, Flac to Wma, Flac to Ogg, Flac to Wav

• M4a to Mp3, M4a to Wma, M4a to Ogg, M4a to Wav

• Ac3 to Mp3, Ac3 to Wma, Ac3 to Ogg, Ac3 to Wav

You will also be able to convert your Itunes music library (m4a format) to mp3, wma, ogg, etc.

The tool is a freeware just be more careful while installing this as it tend to install some other shareware tools along and also make some changes to toolbar, homepage etc. but this can be avoided if you install only what is required.

Download Free Mp3 Wma Converter

See how long your Computer has been Active

You think that your computer has been active for quite long in the last week or is it you want to monitor if someone has logged in your machine for long, then you don’t need to worry you can just monitor how long your system has remain active in the last 3 weeks.

It is also a good idea to see how much you have worked on your system to analyse if you are using your machine exhaustively or under utilizing it. Whatever be the situation you can see the active times of your machine in an easy presentable form with the help of a tool called PC On/Off Time.

PC On/Off Time is a free time tracking tool that shows the times your computer has been active during the last 3 weeks, with no previous setup required. You don’t even need to install this tool as you can directly double click and use it.

Windows, by default, tracks the logon and logoff or standby times and this is what is analysed by this tool to provide you the results. This is another reason why you don’t even need to keep it running in the background. The results are displayed graphically which are easy to understand.

Features:

• Doesn’t require runtimes

• Doesn’t require installation

• Doesn’t write to the registry

• Doesn’t modify files outside of its own directories

• Isn’t adware

The tool is free to use and is very small in size. It is also compatible on all versions of Windows and requires no installation.

Download PC On/Off Time

List of Top 25 most common Passwords

Passwords are the highly confidential string of characters and numeric that can provide access to anyone on any restricted place. Setting up the most difficult password is equally difficult in guessing. Thus it is advisable to have a password that is long enough and also is a combination of all three criteria:
• Letters including both the cases
• Numeric letters
• Special characters like @ # etc.

If you feel that setting a password like some random name of a person or even replacing letter o with a 0 (zero) would help, then believe me there are tools with the hackers that can guess even this.

Not even setting the password like 11111 or your own car number would help. I know it is very difficult to remember password for each and every login form, but it is equally risky to set the easy and common passwords.

Here is a list of the top 25 most common passwords that people around the web use for their login access and if you are using one of these, then do change it before it’s too late:

• password
• 123456
• 12345678
• qwerty
• abc123
• monkey
• 1234567
• letmein
• trustno1
• dragon
• baseball
• 111111
• iloveyou
• master
• sunshine
• ashley
• bailey
• passw0rd
• shadow
• 123123
• 654321
• superman
• qazwsx
• michael
• football

There are many things that you can do create a stronger password, like you can create a password with a mix of two things like your phone no and street address somewhat in this fashion, +998-west+AreA_2496. Well this was just an example.

You also need to stop the password reuse which is using the same password for different personal and social login websites. Here you can make use of the name of the website in the password for example: for facebook you can set a password like FB=Pss613_westArea.

Well it is always a good idea to have your password changes right now. Better safe than be sorry!