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Zen of laptop management June 25, 2008

Posted by darashikoh in Presentation.
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I spend about 10 hours a day on my laptop and I take great pride in maintaining it in good shape – right from what’s in it to what’s on it (read: dust, daughter’s fingerprints, ants etc.)

I keep a small cloth in my bag with which I clean it everyday.  Every weekend I spray a cleanser and remove finger prints etc.

May laptop is a HCL one with an LCD screen, inbuilt video camera, memory card reader, cd writer, data card slot, mike and the other standard stuff (usb ports, head phone socket etc.).  The only hitch is that my laptop is a Core Duo and not a Core 2 Duo processor.

Of late I have this itch of making my laptop boot and shutdown real fast.  The first thing I did was to upgrade my RAM from 1 GB to 1.5 GB.  It didn’t make a great difference and so I did not bother to upgrade it further to 2 GB.

I further did some research on the internet on improving your system performance.  Along with that I installed a software from the DIGIT magazine software dump cds.  While it made some of the applications run faster – my boot time is still 60 seconds.  It take 1 whole minute before I can get started with any work.  No matter what I did – I could not get further.

While I was doing this – I had these thoughts on minimalism.  The whole thing goes like this fundamentally:

I install only what I need on my laptop and at all times I stick to only what I need. My boot sequence, desktop feel, boot type, file organisation, usage of drives – everything should be aesthetic, minimalistic and clean.  Aesthetics is also the key here.  While some features really add to the aesthetics – they bring down the performance.  In such a case – I take a call on a case-by-case basis and balance out aesthetics and performance.

So the key words are:

  1. Minimalism
  2. Aesthetics and Beauty
  3. Performance
  4. Cleanliness
  5. Organizing  data neatly

Before I sign off I would like to mention the following resources:

http://avesh.com/blog/DesktopZenReducingVisualClutterOnYourDesktop.aspx

The above URL has a nice and crisp exposition on keeping a zero icon desktop – while still making it functional.  My wife …….while she appreciates a minimal icon desktop – simply does not like a zero icon desktop.  As for me I don’t mind a zero icon desktop.

Two other resources on system boot tuning are:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1819187,00.asp

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1785999,00.asp

Two softwares which helped me tune my system are:

RegToy and

Bootvis .

Would like to leave the reader with a picture of my desktop. My taskbar is these days on the top instead of the bottom (as usual).

Presentation Overkill June 18, 2008

Posted by darashikoh in Presentation.
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While I have always harped on a the way you present material which flows out of your mailbox (like docs, ppts, xls, vsds, mpps etc.) ………….I would also like to quote Stephanie Kreiger – the author of ‘Advanced Microsoft Office Documents – Inside Out’ where she says ………………

” A poorly crafted business graphic is like wearing sweaty gym clothes to walk the red carpet at the Academy Awards.  You’ll definitely get attention, but is that really the impression you want to make?”

Elsewhere she also mentions …………its the content that matters and the way you present it. These should only go to hilight the content and not kill it or hilight it in the wrong way.  She compares it to a lady with good body features – who chooses an attire and jewellery ……..to hilight her features and not to hilight the attire itself. 

She also quotes Coco Chanel ……”Dress sharply and they notice the dress. Dress impeccably and they notice the woman.”

So it is very mandatory to choose the appropriate kind of way to present whatever you want to present. 

We tend to ignore the way we compose our mails.  We are okay if it is less than perfect.  We do not realize that our emails are the brand ambassadors which carry our image internally within and across the organization. I am not going to get into email etiquette ……..but would definitely like to leave the reader thinking about how perfect do we really bother to compose our emails.

I recently received an email from a colleague ………..who is quite a perfectionist.  This is the email I received:

Hi All,

                Please find below the activity sequence and coverage for the Cairo visit.

 

Let me know if there are any activities missing – which we may add.  Please note that although the initial part of the activity sequence covers Smart Cards – the later part of the activities is to cover both the Portal and Smart Card discussions.

 

Regards

…

 Now I would leave it to the readers to interpret this mail.  Do you feel this was overkill – that the author was resorting to pictorial representation of something which could have otherwise been represented as a drab bulletised list or a table of some sort. 

Yours truly thinks that picture was appropriate and well represented ……………and even complimented the author of the email.  It did create a minor split amongst the recepients of the email.  Some applauded ……and some thought it was grossly unnecessary.  But what do readers think?

 

 

 

 

The importance of a really good report April 19, 2008

Posted by darashikoh in Presentation.
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While we all create power point presentations, word reports, excel tables etc. as part of our day to day work – very few really realize the importance of a very well done and exceptionally professional looking artifact.

That’s where creativity pitches in and the knowledge of tools and the works ……..comes into play.

  • Knowledge of Visio and the usage of good stencils in Visio to create an impressive looking picture to represent an idea …………there’s nothing like it.

or this

While visio has some fantastic options ………porting a completed work from there to word/ppt ……..is not a straightforward task.  There is a trick to it …………….and if you need to know it ……..ping me.

  • Moving on……………. Office 2007 has something called SmartArt ………..which with its Fluent interface allows you to create some fantastic outcomes.  While I don’t have any images to show you right now …………the top image of this blog was created using Smart Art and Clip Art.
  • ClipArt is another treasure trove of images which cannot be done away with.  Suitably using it in your slides and reports …………….makes the outcome all the more presentable.
  • Usage of colours and the appropriate combinations ……..also makes a lot of difference.  While straight colours are boring ………..colours which are dark to one side and gradually lighten to the other side can add a wonderful effect to the outcome.
  • Creating a presentation in flash is another very high end way of putting across your ideas or presentation ……………than in the staid ppt mode.  However that requires a lot of effort, audio recordings and a lot of creativity (some companies hire professional designers to create corporate flash presentations).

The list can be endless.  The point still remains the same.  Do not under-estimate a document/presentation/report.  It can at times make or break the business and the image of a company ……….as you don’t just represent yourself ………..you more importantly represent the corporation!!! There is nothing like a good first impression.  This can hold good even while creating a resume.  There could be hundreds of resumes which recruiters sift through.  A very well done resume ………..will certainly catch the eye.  When the resume is complemented with a well presented individual ………..who is good at his/her stuff ………………whoa!!! as simple as it sounds ……….is quite a rarity.

Readers who are interested ………..are welcome to contribute your ideas.