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Thursday, March 22, 2007
A Nobel Upbringing
Here's an example of a man whose upbringing I hope to emulate for Jack. He is Richard J. Roberts who won The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993.
Here are excerpts from his bio.
* Mom was a homemaker. Read to him and tutored him from an early age.
I am a passionate reader, having been tutored very early by my mother. I avidly devoured all books on chemistry that I could find.
* Received interesting present as a child.
This changed quickly when I received a chemistry set as a present. I soon exhausted the experiments that came with the set and started reading about less mundane ones. More interesting apparatus like Bunsen burners, retorts, flasks and beakers were purchased.
* Father encouraged and supported his interest in chemistry.
My father, ever supportive of my endeavors, arranged for the construction of a large chemistry cabinet complete with a formica top, drawers, cupboards and shelves. This was to be my pride and joy for many years.
* Father introduced mentor to further encourage his passion.
Through my father, I met a local pharmacist who became a source of chemicals that were not in the toy stores. I soon discovered fireworks and other concoctions. Luckily, I survived those years with no serious injuries or burns. I knew I had to be a chemist.
* Mentor in headmaster.
At St. Stephen's I encountered my first real mentor, the headmaster Mr. Broakes. He must have spotted something unusual in me for he spent lots of time encouraging my interest in mathematics. He would produce problems and puzzles for me to solve and I still enjoy the challenge of crossword and logical puzzles. Most importantly, I learned that logic and mathematics are fun!
* Found school boring. :p
Formal chemistry at school seemed boring by comparison and my performance was routine. In contrast, I did spectacularly well in mathematics and sailed through classes and exams with ease.
From age 16 on I found school boring and failed A-level Physics at my first attempt. This was necessary for University entrance and so I stayed an extra year to repeat it. This time I did splendidly and was admitted to Sheffield University, my first choice because of their excellent Chemistry Department. After Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in the first year, I opted for Biochemistry as a subsidiary subject in the second year. I loathed it. The lectures merely required rote learning and the laboratory consisted of the most dull experiments imaginable. I was grateful when that year was over and could concentrate wholly on Chemistry. I graduated in 1965 with an upper second class honours degree.
If you read the book Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph, he mentions specifically the criticality of a mother's attachment to her son, his father's involvement and encouragement, and the need for parents to introduce good male mentors to a boy. In Richard J. Roberts's case, it certainly worked out well.
Lately Jack has been content to read by himself. He would flip the pages his favourite books patting the characters in them cooing to himself. His favourite books are Little Fish, One to Three, and Just Like Daddy.
He has a sound for everyone and we each identify our own sound. :) I am eh-eh or Mom-Mom (or food). Grandma is ahhhh. Let me memorise the rest and I will write them down too.
His new game is using a piece of paper to slide himself along.
For me, I found new use for PDA. Penning notes and letters.
This kickstarts a new column on the usability of daily things.
In this edition, I'll talk about my PDA. An iPaq.
I'm one of those people who really like writing on paper OR typing. Somehow writing on a PDA never caught on, despite valiant attempts to arm myself with a nice state-of-the-art PDA.
However, even for pen-loving stylo-hating people, there are some useful uses for a PDA:
1. Play games on long boring flights.
Download some free games or buy some games you know you like and play them while on the plane. Trust me, that $6 you pay for that game where you match three different items to see them poof is worth it.
2. Reading while nursing (or bored).
Copy episode synopses of Prison Break from Wikipedia to a text editor and save as a text file. Copy via SD card to PDA. Use hand to scroll while reading. Yay.
3. Surf web while nursing (or lazy to get up).
Self-explanatory.
WARNING: This will cost quite a bit on your bill.
4. Store photos and stare at will.
Self-explanatory.
5. Appear tech-savvy.
Show your friends. "You see (and click deftly and quickly so they don't see you're just fudging) and here's that spreadsheet... *distract* Oh look, a talking cat!"
I am very thrilled and honoured to be invited to write for the Blogdrive Help Forum. If you're a Blogdrive member or even if you're not, stop by to find great help articles on blogging.
Here's a nifty new way to get listed. At Big Web Links Directory you can pay to be listed and the more you bid, that will be how high your rank will be. So if you have a million bucks or a little less, you'll be assured to be number one for a long time. And who said money can't buy rank? :D Stop by and check out this cool new concept.
I was immensely honoured to wake up this morning to find 2 new favicons in my Inbox from the multi-talented Ilker Yoldas from The Thinking Blog, which I reviewed some time ago. Thank you, Ilker. :)
Email compliance is an often neglected corporate expense, even with spam at an all-time high in corporate emails. Shockingly even higher than that of personal email providers such as Yahoo (the most notorious one since Hotmail cleaned up its act), Gmail, Hotmail, and Gmx. But if you stop and dissect this, it makes sense.
Conglomerates like Google and MSN have put in place powerful spam filters used worldwide in all their subsidiaries. For considerably smaller organisations of 1000 and less, the cost-effectiveness of purchasing an expensive logic-based email security program with a growing blacklist may not make financial sense to them.
This decision is often made by management, which may or may not have any technical knowledge of how spam can damage your infrastructure. As spam becomes more advanced and potentially malicious, it falls to those in the IT department to remind the decision-makers once again how critical securing our email is. After all, when the blame comes, we always get it. :p
It is essential to filter content (particularly malicious content which can come wrapped in seemingly innocent image and html files nowadays, in addition to the old school exe files). Hence an effective solution must provide at least attachment scanning as well.
More effective are compliance dictionaries and encryption for your and your organisation's own security. Having a white list and black list helps to an extent, but these must be set and maintained organisation-wide by the security administrator.
Having worked in an IT department where security was much needed and not adhered to very well, I realise policy controls will go only so far and attempts at education moot if users are unable to comprehend the extent of damage their clicking on one file containing a worm can cause. Similarly, the security team needs to read the audits and examine all reports frequently, or slippages will simply be missed.
Whether you are an individual concerned about your email security, or an organisation looking to protect your assets regardless of organisation size, get an effective security solution now. Here is one to consider: BorderWare's suite of Internet security programs. Their trademarked (or trademark-pending) and award-winning solutions provide state-of-the-art security for organisations of all sizes.
This post on email compliance was kindly sponsored by BorderWare.
Managing your personal and family finances is an ongoing learning experience. I never tire of surfing to find ways to save money for my family. As many money management gurus love to say, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Here's what we've done so far:
1. Cancelled our cable TV
If no one is using it, then why waste $22 a month on it? That adds up to $264 a year and $2640 a decade. Or an extra pizza meal a month.
2. Cancelled our home phone account
Everyone uses their mobile phone nowadays so that $8 a month to just keep that phone number alive isn't quite worth it. The humble $8 a month adds up to $96 a year and $960 a decade.
3. Cancel memberships that give no return
I had a supermarket membership card but found that the $9 monthly fee exceeded the 5% rebates I received from shopping there. Plus it compelled me to shop there more which wasn't always so convenient.
4. Redeem your points for cash off your bill
Check with your service providers often if you can use the reward points to reduce your bill or subscriptions – the value is usually more than that of any gift or vouchers.
careOne has a wealth of money saving ideas on their website. This one is a gem: Ways To Stretch A Dollar.
I have been pondering about whether to move my blogs to my own domain. This naturally involves the tempting and very splendid task of having to test out some blogging software.
Primary among the rest are Wordpress(.org) and Moveable Type. General feedback from some kind Posties was that Wordpress is easier to use in general. AnnaBella even sent me the URL for 1500 templates. Kat, however, mentioned that MT may be easier to use but separates the templates which are more helpful.
Now with Blogdrive, the templates are in 3 parts: the main template where all the coding goes, the profile (left nav) and the sidebar (right nav). If MT works like that, I reckon it's a better bet.
Still, we won't know till we test it. Won't we? ;)
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
A woman's romance with motherhood, green living, finance, and this heady thing called life.
by Steve Biddulph, he mentions specifically the criticality of a mother's attachment to her son, his father's involvement and encouragement, and the need for parents to introduce good male mentors to a boy. In Richard J. Roberts's case, it certainly worked out well.
I was immensely honoured to wake up this morning to find 2 new favicons in my Inbox from the multi-talented Ilker Yoldas from 
