There was a requirement at work, to setup a personal cloud software, for file-sharing, and possibly enable shared document editing. A solution called owncloud came recommended, but I decided to do some more looking around. A few years ago, opensource content management systems, and even blogs were really clunky things, held together with a lot of duct-tape and warning signs saying ‘Here be dragons’. Now, however, things are quite different. Instead of building monolithic behemoth apps which would prove to be extremely hard to maintain, developers are focusing on minimalist code, to allow one to get services up and running, and depending on what additional features or quality of service that’s required, one can add applications, or even buy the premium version of the software, with additional features and support thrown in.

Exception handling in programming is a means to ensure our code handles exceptional circumstances, such as error conditions, gracefully, instead of dying in a horrible manner. However, computer programming is as much of an art as it is a skill, and over the years, people have come to use programming constructs in a highly effective way, albeit in a manner it was not originally intended to be used. The effectiveness of this innovative method of usage of a tool/construct/product often determines whether the technique becomes mainstream or not, and this is by no means restricted to the world of computer programming; for instance, it’s well known that Coke makes an excellent toilet and sink cleaner :)

I’m going to use the tag ‘bulletjournal-hacks’ henceforth, for additional notations/conventions I come up with, to enhance/improve upon the basic bullet journal. Today’s addition is ‘Email Reference’, or EMR. What is it used for?
If your task/note is related to an email you’ve received or sent, it would be handy to make a note of the email in the journal, to allow you to easily lookup the email later, should you want to do so.

I started maintaining a bullet journal today, in a bid to improve productivity and get better organized. A friend observed the diary and enquired with some curiosity when I’d started, and seemed to find it a tad funny that I was going old-school. I’ve always been minimalist, the bullet journal is a perfect example of something extremely minimalist, but still very effective. What I liked best about the idea is the ease with which it can be created and maintained, while still being in a standard template. I don’t have to try and setup my own conventions or experiment till I find something I can use, and instead dive right in.

The human mind and working of the human brain have been the subject of innumerable studies, and have over the years, inspired both discoveries, and the spread of myths and urban legends. A popular myth is that human beings utilize only about 10% of the capacity/capability of the human brain; it even inspired the critically panned Hollywood movie Lucy. While it’s been proved that the brain is almost always working at full capacity, the efficiency is probably very low. As any programmer knows, efficient scheduling is an extremely challenging problem, and scheduling tasks for the brain is no different. In this post, I’ll also use the words brain and mind interchangeably, as I’m just too lazy now to decide on ground rules as to where which term is to be used.