What I like about this is that it sets a norm – you can’t be right about anything, there’s always some room for error; if you feel you’re always right, you may be in error.

Are there counter examples? Praying should be slow; eating should be done slower; some sports require relaxation, rather than intense concentration; doing things fast can lead to mistakes.

But, overall, I consider that a fast & intense life is the way to go.

First of all, to understand the problem, a photo generally has 1-3 MB right from the camera. Even if compressed to 80% quality JPEG at a maximum 1600 pixels resolution, the picture still has a few hundred kilobytes (the compressed folder had 350 Megabytes, quite big). The problem is, thus, uploading large amount of data to Facebook (it takes time).

But Facebook is different – it only allows you to put pictures with a width of 720 pixels, and a height of 720. Thus, all I had to do was doing a batch resize (I used Irfanview, but there are plenty of other options) of all the pictures, with a maximum resolution of 604×480. With some 80% JPEG compression, at the end I had this result:
1,000 photos with 58 Megabytes!

Thus, it was very easy to upload the photos – only 58 megabytes of data for 1,000 photos.

PS: If you don’t know how to batch resize photos using IrfanViews, see this tutorial.

Update #1: The old resolution of 604×480 has changed to 720×720. Cool.
Update #2: The resolution changed again, this time to 2048×2048 pixels, making the resize somewhat unnecessary.

First of all, what is George HABER‘s solution? That’s simple: close the presentation as soon as possible, whenever required. George Haber’s solution was presented to me and a rather large audience at a Biz Days Conference in 2007.

What was George HABER’s situation? (almost a problem)
George HABER had a presentation time of 15 minutes (that was its allocated time on that particular day). He talked with passion, made me laugh, inspired me into thinking, and at the end of the 15 minutes he was right in the middle of talking.

Then it happened: the moderator of the event (coming from a Germanic culture) wished to keep a tight schedule. He said to George HABER (approximate quote): “you only have one minute left until the end of the 15 minutes”.

What was George HABER’s solution? (detailed)
George HABER did the most unexpected thing: he quickly ended his idea (letting us know the conclusions of that particular thought), he went to the (I’d say) 5-10 remaining slides quickly, briefly explaining in one sentence what’s the slide about, and he finished all this in 30 seconds (anyhow, much less than the allocated one minute).

Why I like his solution?
The solution is great for your own ability to interrupt your own thinking. I didn’t like the way the moderator signaled it’s time to end the presentation (I would have preferred it went on and on), but in the given situation I think it’s the best way to handle it.

He was quick in his actions, he followed the schedule (even if he and I did not agree with the moderator), he managed to finish the presentation, he left us wonder.

So, the solution is great just for being able to control yourself well enough, and put emphasis on the role of the audience and structure, rather than emphasizing your own role as a presenter.

What should you learn from this? Whenever possible, try to follow the schedule more than your own wish to fully present your ideas.

It’s a tough choice, I know, but I do like it.

Any thoughts on this?

I think the one thing that’s most important when writing a press release is … (drums rolling) telling the full truth.

Sure, in Public Relations (acronym – PR) there are alternatives to that:
a. Omitting some truths;
b. Emphasizing the least important things from the journalists’ perspective;
c. Promoting the products and the company.

I think that if you do a Press Release (same acronym – PR) and try to mask the truth, sooner or later the journalists will penalize you for that.

The journalists suffer since you present a not-that-true Press Release.

What could happen?
a. In the first scenario, the Press Release won’t be published at all;
b. The journalist could try to understand the whole picture by himself; He won’t get the full idea, he might get things wrong, and that’s even worse than not having a Press Release published at all – it’s published with the wrong data.

On 13th of February I was reading “The Brothers Karamazov” (by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) and one thing hit me: addiction can’t be fought by trying to fulfill it. You just live with it, it never stop if you try to satisfy your desire.

I once had a feeling that solving an addiction is a simple thing: one just tries to solve it, forces things (imposes, sets a goal), and it goes away. And when addiction comes back, and you really want that thing, the solution is to try to solve that one moment (since you are already out of addiction). This will make things better (I thouhgt), and in the long term you won’t feel the urge anymore

Well, I was wrong. Addiction will always make you have an urge. (or at least me) The solution to solving the urge is simple: keep the urge. Don’t try to satisfy it. This is totally unlike me: I have a tendency to solve a problem by making things worse. I know, it feels bad, you really want that thing, but living with the urge and not satisfy it is the best thing to do.

So, as a personal observation to my urges, it seems I can’t solve an addiction by stepping into it.

I just felt like sharing this with the world.

Why should you block the ads? The answer is simple: they distract you from viewing the interesting content, and even if they are contextual ads (so they are related to the content), most of them are not what you would look for in a page. You might want to keep the ads just to see how other people would promote a web site in two lines. I personally remove ads from FireFox, and keep them in Opera.

Now that you know why should you remove ads, read on to see how to remove them.

What can you read in here?
1. How to remove ads on web sites?
a. Internet security level
b. Browser level
2. How to block the Google ads on this blog?

1. How to remove ads on web sites?
a. Internet security level
Most security solutions like antiviruses now include Internet ad blockers. Which to pick? This is a very broad information for me to analyze, so I will outsource this research. Please see the CNET Top 10 Antispyware apps 2007 page (March 2007), Top Antivirus Software by PC World (January 2006), Anti-Virus Software Review 2008 (2008 data).

I have had pleasant experiences with Kaspersky’s solution for blocking ads, but I haven’t tried anything else than that for blocking ads, so the test presented earlier are a much better data source than my personal test. Go install an antivirus and Internet protector! (not only for ads, but for general security of your PC)

b. Browser level
FireFox has AdBlock Plus (see the AdBlock Plus page on Mozilla web site), and you should also install FilterSet Updater (see FilterSet Updater page on Mozilla web site) to get continuously updated filters for AdBlock Plus (so a recent ad server is also blocked). It also has a manual way of blocking images.

Opera has a manual way of blocking images, and some filters to block the ads can be obtained from: Opera 9 Ad Blocking page and Opera ad block filters page.

In Internet Explorer 7 you can block ads via this tool – IE7PRO.

For any other browser, do a search on Google for “[name and major version of the software] remove ads”. Example: Internet Explorer 6 remove ads. Blocking ads also works for other applications, like Instant Messaging software ads.

2. How to block the Google ads on this blog?
This article explains how to remove ads via the hosts file (Vista users, do a search in the Windows directory for the file): Removing Google Ads Using the Windows Hosts File.

Also, most of the methods described earlier should also work.

Now that you know it, go block the ads!

Do you know a better solution than this to block ads? Do you have a personal experience with blocking ads? Please post your comment below.