Life, the universe and everything - Technical Ambitions

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

I have just heard one of the most amazing lectures ever. It was delivered by Randy Pausch and is available for you to hear on the interent. When Randy realised that he had pancreatic cancer he realised that he could do nothing with the cards he was dealt, it was how he played the hand that has made his lectre so popular. Millions of people the world over have heard his inspiring lecture. It is all about living life and what is needed to ensure you get something out of life.

The one big lesson I have taken from it is that when you dream, you must not dream small little dreams. DREAM BIG. It is only when you dream big that your life takes on a more significant meaning. You have to fulfil those dreams ad it is too easy to fulfil small little dreams. These are also needed to allow you to focus on the smaller little more achievable goals.

A man without a dream is a lost man. Wandering around without purpose or passion. So go ahead now and start dreaming big. The dreams are your minds way of telling you that you can achieve them. Your mind will never set you up for a fall. So dream big and trust in your dreams. It is probably the most important thing you can do for yourself.

Thank you to Randy Pausch for teaching me so much in so little time. Even though the lecture was meant for your kids, it has inspired me in my life and I feel great that I was able to listen this life changing lecture and hope that you (the reader) also take the time out of your life to listen to it. It might just be the first act in your changed life.

The lecture, even though Randy does not talk about his impending death is charged with sadness and life. Randy shows little or no sadness throughout but you as the listener is charged with the knowing that he will die soon and that the positive attitude that he is exuding is about to change a lot of peoples lives.

ENJOY.

It is extremely frustrating now that Google shows the revenue that one earns in the currency for the country you reside in. Due to the exchange rate for the Rand for instance the amount changes per day. It is never stable and one really never knows the exact stats for the month since the figures change so drastically from day to day.

I rather preferred the fact that it showed in US Dollars and not ZA Rands.

The other thing that I have noticed that was changed for the worse on Google Adsense program was the fact that you could view the revenue you have made since the last payment. This feature is no longer visible and it really is a crying shame since it was actually quite a nifty feature.

A short while ago, Google held an opinion poll regarding the service they were delivering via Adsense and I am guessing that the rework they did was based on that research. It just goes to show that research is also just one way of measuring satisfaction of service. There should be many more ways used to judge satisfaction of a service or site.

Priceisright.co.za is a free service aimed at stretching the South African Rand for Joe Public. All too often I hear "There is just too much month left after my salary" and it is getting to be more true every month. Costs of groceries increasing every month.

This is the perception out there and I have decided to do a test and to measure this exact growth per month on my grocery bill. The site currently just shows a few lists of prices that have been taken from various sources online. However the idea is actually that the visitors to the site actually grow the list of prices and shops organically. We do have people out there checking prices and getting shopping lists but it will take a bit of time to get the site to have a good list of prices throughout the range of suburbs and shops in South Africa.

The future development of the site will allow the visitot to the site to create his or her own shoppinbg list and then get a feeling of how much the groceries would cost if purchased from Store A compared to Store B maybe.

This comparison can actually take a considerable amount of money off your end grocery bill and if the prices are updated by the visitors to the site when they purchase their own list of groceries, very soon it will be a very useful service.

The site has been created by the owners of TAGGA - Proactive Searchable Stolen Goods Serial Database and is a FREE service as is TAGGA.

Please let us know what you think about this great idea. Lend a hand to make it a successful service please.

Here is a link to an interview held by HandyTechTipper regarding Priceisright.co.za

This is probably the best classical guitar piece I have ever heard. Edgar Cruz plays it to perfection. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

If you ever wished you could play guitar, this piece will either deter you for life or it will encourage you to do just that. Practice over and over till you get it right.

I have renewed enthusiasm to practice after seeing this piece of music played so flawlessly. Stunning.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen


Edgar Cruz website with many tunes

So here is an awesome way to start generating some bucks on the internet with no initial outlay. You set up a shop and choose a few of the millions of products that will get shipped without any hassle to the buyers. All you do is set up the shop and market it online. The rest as they say should be history.

So here I have set up a shop with a number of exciting books on electronics and a few little gadgets. Lets see what sort of money one can make with this idea.

http://gadgetfreaks.zliogifts.com

To set up your own shop go to
http://www.zlio.com/

http://hootsuite.com/

This is one of the most awesome Twitter help tools I have found to date. I have seen many but none allow you to do so much for so little (free in fact).

Once you have set up your account you can automate your twitter account to start doing things on your behalf. One of my favourites is the fact that it will automatically feed you new blog entries such as this entry to your twitter account. This allows you to not have to concentrate on too many places when adding a new blog entry, the work gets done for you automatically.

The adsense plugin that allows your google ads to show when you shorten a link using their Ow.ly link shortening is also allowing me to earn more google income.

It is amazing that Twitter seemed to be such a useless tool and now it seems to be one of the bigger internet phenomenons. Go figure.....

I love reading books about successful people and I love to hear stories of people who aspire to amazing things in life. It is so awesome to be able to spend a few minutes listening to someone who really knows a thing or two about life. It is a moment in time that I grant myself in order to learn something which took others maybe many years to learn. It is a gift unto myself when I do this.

I play guitar, I have spent thousands of hours learning guitar and it is so interesting to note that the people I have taught and that were willing to put in hours and hours just doing what I had showed them, pass me by in a ridiculously short time. I have taught them within hours something that took me years to perfect. Somehow I manage to switch something on in them that may have been lying dormant or may just have needed a bit of a push to get them started. But it is really surprising everytime I see how fast people can learn when they are being shown what has taken others many years to learn. It allows them to go forward in leaps and bounds.

What I have noticed though is that they have an ability which I do not possess. They have a feeling for music which I do not possess. I have a technical ability and a love for music but they hear things which I dont. This allows them to take what I have learnt and make it their own and make it much better.

Anyway, I have just had the opportunity of listening to an audio file that was given to me when I registered for the newsletter on Zig Ziglar's site at http://www.zigziglar.com/newsletter.php

It is called Biscuits_Fleas_and_Pump_Handles and has a size of 31.8 MB (it is worth every bit of your bandwidth to download this file after registering)

Do yourself a favour and listen to the message of inspiration on this audio file. I have for number of months now been quoting Zig Ziglar on my facebook daily status update as I enjoy positive messages. I am actually surprised at myself for taking this long to google Zig Ziglar and find out why he is so popular for his sayings. One of his most popular sayings is the following: You can have anything you want in life just as long as you help enough other people get what they want in life.

This is so true and I have lived by it without realising it. It is a way of life for me. I first build bridges with people and then they inevitably build bridges beyond my normal reach. That I think is the secret to success.

This 60 minute recording of one of Zig Ziglar's messages will remain with me as it is a truly motivational message which gives me great hope and I trust that it will be of great meaning in your life as well.

So after having checked out the Twitter scene for a while I have finally managed that it is a very cool way of staying in touch.
Being aware of everything happening with your friends and family is a tiresome task to say the least. Now with Twitter you can stay in touch with what is happening in their lives without having to even call them. Remember personal communication is still the best and only effectiove communication, however Twitter and its tweets are really great for informative purposes.

Go to http://twitter.com to register.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/johnkweber

Have fun and let me know where you are.

Regards johnkweber

One of the best things about listing your stolen items on http://tagga.co.za is that the item becomes searchable under google search engine. Due to the way that the TAGGA site has been created the stolen goods become searchable under google.com

SO if you for instance entered your serial number such as I have done on some of my stolen items such as the IMEI of my phone, 353659014407270 If you use this IMEI number to search in google you will see that it points back to the TAGGA site. This way you have a much better chance of people finding your stolen goods.

The other nice feature is that your item is becoming searchable in a host of other programs and websites that we link to. We provide a daily dump of all the stolen goods in our system which other programs or websites can include in their sites or maybe imnport the list of stolen goods into their programs. Programs such as Pawnboss, http://www.crimex.co.za and others as we start forming links and associations with them. This way your items have a better chance of being found than if it were on TAGGA alone.

So now Second hand goods dealers really dont have an excuse as they can now even search google for the serial numbers of the items that they are buying in as stock from the street. They have really got no way that they can now say that they were unaware that the items were stolen. Maybe now we can start seeing a difference in the way crime is being dealt with on the street.

No buyers means no market, means less theft.

Link to TAGGA