Thought of the day…
It is no secret that I rarely update my blog - so much in fact that I feel a bit guilty myself, and also I've had "complaints" from friends that my blog is dead. On Tuesday one of my friends challenged me to write a weekly post:
i challenge you to write a weekly entry to your blog on 7 new things you learned about this world, 1 new item for each day. not too difficult hey?
There was no reason I could think of to decline this challenge, so I have decided to take the challenge! Though I'm going to cheat a tiny little bit, instead of "7 new things I have learned" it will be things I have learnt, found interesting, would like to share. So here we go - my first weekly post and hopefully the first of many more to come!
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Thought of the day: www.example.com, www.example.org, www.example.net are reserved domains that are not available for registration!
In the past couple of months, I've written and done a fair bit of testing and as expected there are always going to be "dummy" email addresses, web-links etc. The most common being ones like: admin@example.com, www.example.com. One random day I thought to myself "Hey, what if someone registered 'example.com' as their domain name, wouldn't they get a tonne of random traffic?"
Well, to my surprise, the domain names: www.example.com, www.example.net and www.example.org are actually all reserved and not available for registration. If you want to read all the details you can have a look at RFC 2606 (warning: I've found RFCs have the tendency to be sleep inducing).
ps. didn't quite discover this on Sunday, but discovered it relatively recently - and trying to remember something that happened on Sunday when it's Tuesday is surprisingly hard!
motivation and time
It's probably safe to say that pretty much everyone has problems with motivation and time - if not, I certainly do! This problem has meant there are many things I want to do (and should do) end up not getting done. A simple example...the last time I blogged was November 16th 2007! A few months ago while uni was still on I would've blamed it on lack of time, however I now blame it on lack of motivation.
It probably sounds weird that I have no motivation to blog as it is something that I want to do. However, over the holidays I've discovered something that is annoying me. For many things (especially those you want to do) when you are tight on time your motivation levels are quite high - it's just that there isn't time to do it. While given the same objective if you have plenty of time motivation levels seem to drop so low that it just gets put on the back burner again. Of course there are exceptions, but to me it feels like a good majority of things that I want to and need to do are neglected because of this.
To me, the most logical reason for this is when you are short on time, chances are it's because there is something you don't really want to do, but have to do is taking up your time - so anything that is slightly more attractive will be high on your "must do" list. On the other hand when you have heaps of time it is probably just easier being lazy. While the other things you've always wanted to do seemed super-interesting and you'll do it just when you get some spare time, doing nothing is even better, so nothing ends up getting done.
Having said all this, I think the main problem of the two is motivation. The problem for me is finding a way to get motivated. Given enough motivation and determination, it should be possible to get pretty much anything done. Last year, I was having a conversation with someone and complained that I had no time - he replied with "We all have the same amount of time, it's just how we use it."
Apologies for the rather mashed up, nonsensical and late blog post, but I'd like to see what other's think about this problem.
Who Moved My Cheese?
On Monday my family and I arrived at the airport nice and early to be sure that I would not miss my plane, only to find that the flight had been delayed by an hour. So what was there to do in that hour? Visit the newsagent and read books of course!
Unlike most times where I just randomly pick up books that look interesting and read snippets, a particular book caught my attention: "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Being one of the books on my 'To Read' list, I was happy to see that it was only about 100 pages with nice big font. The blurb claimed that it would only take half an hour to read, so with one hour to kill, I decided to stand there and finish the book.
If you haven't heard of this book, it is one of the best selling motivation books. In my opinion, a quick and simple summary is:
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese