GetJobDone.eu site for freelancers is finaly online

Hi everybody,

I’m thrilled to announce that my little-big project, website for freelance auction is finaly online. I encourage everybody who has some job that needs to be done OR everybody who has some services to offer as freelancer (part-time/remote worker), march to this site and get registered for free:

City of God (2002)

Good movie from bad part of the town somewhere in Brazil, based on true story.

7/10

IMBD

My first testing post to XML course category

This category is dedicated to course XML for Web Application Development Level 1

Tenzin Gyatso: How to See Yourself As You Really Are

Nice and short book written by great man, current dalailama, Tenzin Gyatso. I read few books from buddhist philosophers, and most of them were good. Interestingly, I found that flow of those books in general is quite crazy - they jump from political issues to your innermost and deepest feeling that you maybe not even realize. It was strange at first, but soon you’ll figure out dependencies.

This book will give you what title says. It’s surprising how many people are not aware of what’s going on in their own minds when they’re angry, happy or whatever feeling they’re experiencing. You’ll not become spiritual guru by reading books like this, but you’ll have a chance to better understand things around and inside us. While reading, you may not even realize that you are reading a book written by buddhist, rather book written by a man, who experienced a good deal of lifetime and wants to share some knowledge to help others to fulfill their lives.

wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzin_Gyatso%2C_14th_Dalai_Lama

Jane Hamilton: A Map of the World

This book took me a while to read, but it was definitely worth it. Despite of fact that it has almost 400 pages, I had a feeling all the time that I don’t need to rush it to the end. It seemed to me as there was something to learn from and to achieve at every page. In fact, the ending wasn’t very spectacular or surprising at all. This book will guide you through story of few regular people and if you commit enough attention to every page, at the end you will feel as you experienced the story yourself. Recommended.

wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Map_of_the_World

Intellij IDEA after install tips

I worked with IDEA on OpenSUSE 10.3 linux distribution, but most of the mentioned settings should be cross OS. I also found blog post by Hamlet D’Arcy over THERE. Hamlet describes his top 10 list for IDEA. Check it out too.

1. Set proper VM setting for IDEA, according to your machine. You can find one useful and straightforward property file at %idea_install_dir%/bin/idea.vmoptions. I don’t remeber defaults, but I have 2 GB of ram so I set it like this:-Xms64m
-Xmx768m
-XX:MaxPermSize=768m
-ea
2. Print-out keymap and stick it somewhere where you can see it. You can find it at IDEA welcome page. From the beginning, IDEA keymap seemed a little unconfortable to me, but after a while, I get used to it and now my writing - generating :> - speed is much faster than in eclipse. Early investment into keymap is totally worth it.
3. IDEA has best plugin system I ever seen. Look into Amount of plugins isn’t as huge than eclipse repository, but it’s big enough. It’s worth to notice that most useful plugins are installed by default. Browse to File -> Settings -> Plugins. Most of the time there is no need to go to internet, complete plugin repository is here and can be installed on click. From optionals, those are quite good in my opinion:
   1. ‘Identifier Highlighter’ - if you are used to have variable usages highlighted (as in eclipse), this is it. Most of the people disagree and find it annoying, but I like it. It has many settings.
   2. SQL Query plugin - very nice universal SQL client built in to IDE. Contains DB browser and many features you could expect from others stand-alone SQL clients.
4. use keyboard shortcuts! Main strength of IDEA is in high-quality editor, which is not perfect, but surely better than other two’s (eclipse, netbeans)

Stop being lazy programmer!

I recently read two articles - Fire and Motion by Joel and The theory of one by Michael. It is very interesting reading for somebody who is interested in idea to be more efficient in his life. It doesn’t matter in which area.

What? One line of code every day? Why should I write one line of code only for sake of fulfilling some kind of daily routine? And, honestly, what can one line of code achieve? When I was reading Joel’s post for the first time, I was on my way to leave - I don’t believe in such psychological theories. But as I was digging into it deeper and deeper I realized that this one could work, and the best part, it does (for me).

When one decides to be more successful in something, one can have pretty strong attitude and be able to commit huge amount of energy in the beginning towards this thing. I see it on myself. However in my case, long-term focus on one thing is a problem. After few days (weeks) I always see myself watching movies in free-time, playing games… let’s say I’m trying to amuse myself with everything else except the thing that I’m supposed to focus at. Maybe it’s personality thing, maybe not. Good news is, we can fight with that. Don’t get me wrong, I can deliver some kind of product almost every day, sometimes it is school lab, sometimes work. Now we are talking about what to do with time that left, and sometimes, there is a lot of time that left and I decided from now on, not to waste that time.

I wrote myself spreadsheet with “one line that goes to x”, I have to accomplish every day. x = { book, blog, code } in my case. This one line of x really isn’t as important as you can see. Important thing is to get up and write that 1 line. Sometimes it will be only this 1 line (when you really don’t have time or mood), sometimes it can be 100. Important is to do it and break that barrier in your brain. As far as it is 2 weeks now, I forced to be self-disciplined in this and to finish at least one line of x every single day, without exception. And I must say I just love it. Last two weeks I am more productive than ever. Every day after I finish my daily duties, I will sit down and write few lines to my book, few lines to my blog (as today) and few lines of code. It really doesn’t have to be much and it costs me only few minutes per day. This approach is very refreshing and it confirmed, once again for me, that I need some kind of policeman sitting on my shoulder to look after me, because long term self-discipline simply doesn’t work for me. When pressure or attitude fades out, my effort tends to be lower and lower through time. This is my success story and I thank to guys mentioned at the beginning for great articles, lots of good points were mentioned there.