While browsing through some info on official css specs and best practices, I came across a cool feature on the W3C homepage. They have a tool that lets you view four sites with eight different core stylesheets. You can also view the pages without styling, or you can take a look at just the style source.

If you are just learning css, this is a great way to take a look at a stylesheet that is definitely well formed and made in a web-friendly and compliant way. You can also use them to give your page a pretty good look right away, which you can tweak and tune as you like, or as you learn more and more.

Take a look at W3C core css styles on theW3C homepage

Bad habits surround each and every one of us, and correcting them takes a lot of effort and patience, so I thought I’d give you all my piece of mind on the subject.

First of all, everyone has them. For some people this may be drugs or homicidal tendencies, but even if you don’t smoke, drink or gamble, you may have a lot. Coke drinking for me is one thing, “forgetting” to put the dishes in the dishwasher is another. In other words, to practice the art of breaking bad habits you don’t need to have extreme ones.

Why we have bad habits

Bad habits in my experience are formed by two major factors. One is laziness, and the other one is “muscle memory”. Muscle memory is a term I learned when I started playing guitar. If you learn something incorrectly and it forms a habit, you will find it very difficult to control it. If you try to play it correctly, your muscles will not let you, you will play the faulty note for example. If you really try you will sort of place your finger in between the good note and the bad note, and with a lot of practice, you will unlearn the wrong way, and learn the good way. Some real life habits are formed the same way, and need considerable effort to be corrected.

Positive and negative methods

I think the laziness is harder to beat than muscle memory. I found that the muscle memory part is defeated with ease because the impetus is larger. When playing guitar I spent hours and hours learning things, so taking the time out to unlearn something and do it again is worthwhile, since I will play better and in the process I am also playing guitar, so that’s cool.

Laziness is very hard to stop and you will have to stop worrying about direct productivity for a while. In essence, I could say, just take it like a man, stop being lazy and do it, but that’s not how people work. You need to set yourself some goals, look forward to the time when you will not have the habit any more. Alternatively, you could actually make it impossible for yourself to be lazy, here’s how.

First of all, you need to make sure that it really is very hard to be lazy, you need to create a situation, where being lazy will mean disproportionally more work or hardship. For example, I really, really hate going down in the basement. I would ask my girlfriend to take all but 4 plates into the basement and put it in the closet with the most spiders in it. I guarantee you I will use the dishwasher.

You could also choose a reward, so if I use the dishwasher I get a 3 minute back rub. Again this reward is not controlled by me, if I don’t make good on my goals, I can’t back rub myself.

Productivity

Undoing bad habits will most probably take quite some time. Remember that productivity doesn’t necessarily mean doing a lot in a short time. It means that you do “x” amount of quality work in the shortest possible time. If the shortest possible time for stopping a habit is one year, then it’s not a problem if it does take that long.

Since habits have a bad tendency to come back, I would spend extra time if necessary, since in the end, we are trying to fight these habits so that our productivity increases overall. Remember to be patient, only go for goals you know you have a good chance of achieving and don’t be afraid to think in longer terms.

If you use Google Docs a lot, I found an extension for you that not only helps you in organization, but also lets you upload and view any document in the blink of an eye. Apart from being beautifully done, you can work with added productivity, since you don’t have to have the Google Docs tab open, or visit the page at all. Just open the sidebar and click on any item you need.

The filtering capabilities are great, you can view files by type, arranging them by time, date and author, and you can of course search your docs. The search also looks inside the content, so you should be able to find anything in seconds.

Another great feature is that the app allows for drag and drop uploading, making the organization of files a breeze, you can back up whole folders this way if you want to.

Overall I love both the look and feel and the usability of this Firefox addon. If you use Google Docs take it for a spin, I’m sure you’ll love it!

Download Google Docs Bar from its website found via Lifehacker

A while back ago actually my parents had this awesome idea (thanks guys!), that they’d buy me a tool storage cabinet. You know, one where you store nuts and bolts and so on. This seems like a pretty bad idea on its own, but the reason I got it was to organize all my bits of Lego lying around. Back then I just used it for the basic blocks, but now that I’m older I use it for storing my Lego Technic pieces.

Axles sorted by length, begs by type, long bars, short bars, you name it, I got it. I don’t mind telling you that Lego is the best thing ever, the more the better, and these cabinets are ideal for storing your pieces. If you buy more than one model, you will frequently end up with a multitude of odds and ends here and there and its nice to have a way to productively put them away.

This is one geeky post, but if you need the Stack On Drawer Cabinet with 60 drawers, feel free to buy it by clicking on the link. Oh, you can use it to store screws and so on, but who cares about that?

Recently I had a wonderful opportunity to put my productivity to the test. Due to a storm, we had a power outage of about 24 hours, and not having internet access was the least problem. No power means no lights, no heating, no hot water and a lot more nastiness.

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Nevertheless, I did have to find ways of working, since I have a lot to do, both with the blog, and my other job. So how do you do anything in this day and age without power? Well, you work with what you have. First of all, stock up on candles! Since it’s Winter, it’s dark at about 17:00 - 17:30 and the sun only comes up around 18:30. Candles are surprisingly bright, you will be happily writing away with only one bigger one if you have to, but I recommend at least two-three at once.

You also have no choice but to use pen and paper to do things. You can still write articles if you’re a blogger, you’ll just need to copy them later on. You can come up with ideas, write down goals, manage your stuff, you have the time since you’re sitting in the dark right? If you’re a web designer you could sort of code a page on a piece of paper, either coming up with the design, or actually writing the code.

If you have a load of old photo albums lying around like I do, you can go ahead and organize them finally, writing down some captions and so on. If your desk could use some tidying, this may be the time to do it. Productivity doesn’t get much better does it? Since people thing doing zip in a black out is normal, if you do anything, you are reaching unlimited productivity mathematically speaking!

By the way, phones still work in a power outage, so you can use jott if you like, and you still get SMS reminders from Google Calendar and other services so you aren’t totally cut off. If you feel adventurous try switching to a paper based productivity system for the time the power is off, perhaps you’ll come to love it, many swear that going paper is the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

Giveawayoftheday is offering Password Generator 2008 for free for another 6 hours, so hurry up and grab a copy if you want to have some security.

Usernames and passwords are the place where internet security could really be improved. One commenter sparked a post, Information security on the internet, and something I probably left out, or at least didn’t mention specifically, is that the source of most attacks is the inability of users act normally and safely.

When you’re at the ATM, you don’t read your PIN number out loud as you type it, but on the net many do the internet equivalent of it.

Don’t use a birth date as a code for example, seeing that most of the users are below 50 and above 12 I can break any password in about 40 goes. Also, don’t use your name, or any meaningful word, since those again are breakable. You are up to about 5000 variations then, but for code breaker software, that’s about 10 seconds.

If you want to be safe, use a password like A.;ksb#cv@72=1AHdi;p. Try and break that. You can use a program like Shortkeys to paste these codes safely without fear of someone “listening in” and that’s it. To create these passwords you can just make them up randomly like I did, or use the help of sophisticated applications like Password Generator 2008.

You can control a huge load of variables, so if an application restricts the password to 8 characters and “;” can not be used for example, you will have no problem programing this into the generator. You can generate user names to go along with the passwords, you can generate pronounceable passes, and you can export them. In addition you can create up to 1,000 passes at once (50,000 for pro users) and you can set to block consecutive characters, both alphabetical (abcde) and keyboard (asdf).

The program also has a very modern user interface, mimicking Office 2007’s ribbon. This makes navigation a breeze an I just love the ribbon, so developing an interface like it is a definite plus in my book, even if it is a slight ripoff. I think this program is worth the download, especially since it is free for the next few hours. Normally it costs EUR 40, which is about $50, so at least a test run is warranted, if you don’t like it, just uninstall it.

Get Password Generator 2008 via Giveaway of the Day