Text Substitution pre-built into any text area.

One thing I deeply missed when I started using a mac as my main system was the auto-capitliazation of the letter “i”. When I was typing an email, or document it was almost second nature to just type “i” because I knew that Word would have me covered and auto-capitlize that puppy into “I”. I wouldn’t have to worry that I might look like a fool when I shot off an email or document with lower case i’s in it. Well, hello OS X, the dream OS with funny commercials. Low and behold the all-mighty mac doesn’t auto capitalize i. So when I went to write emails or documents, I had to always remember to go back and capitalize the i’s so I didn’t look a lazy teenager when I sent stuff out. I googled a couple times to find a solution, but nothing stood out as a simple fix. Until I found the ‘Text Substitution’ option which is an OS X option, prebuilt into almost any area where one could type text.

• Right click (or control click) anywhere you don’t actually have text
• Select “Substitutions” -> Show Substitutions.
• Click “Text Preferences”
• Click the + sign on the lower left, and add the substitution i and I.
• Then on the Substitutions window select “Text Replacement”

There you go. And the beauty is that you can do this in almost any area where text is available: Textedit, Mail, Addressbook, iCal, Web Sites, etc.

http://twitterrhea.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/icons/

Say your company has blocked twitter and/or you don’t like all the extra bloat on the twitter home page. I have found it very useful to create my own page. Even though facebook and other social networking sites are accessible, and even more ironically some of my companies own advertising actually promotes following them on twitter, the site is blocked on our network. But, here’s a simple work around I created.

Using some simple API calls to twitter, I’m able to recreate my twitter feed home page, and gather some basic information about myself and my followers. The page works fine behind the firewall because the twitter calls are actually being done from my host (godaddy).

Here’s what I wanted:

• Simple feed (possibly with icons) of the people I follow.
• Ability to add people I want to follow
• Some basic information about the people I follow, and about myself (Number of followers, time, etc.)

Here are the API’s and functions I used to create my own (useable behind a firewall) version of twitter.

// Adds ‘friendname’ to the list of people you follow.
http://twitter.com/friendships/create/friendname.xml

// Updates your ownstatus. Add status=’foobar’ as a post field to update.
http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

// Get list of last 50 updates from your friends.
http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml?count=50

// Get various information about yourself. (Number of followers, number of people following you, your number of tweets.
http://twitter.com/users/show/russds.xml

To make these API calls, I used PHP functions of curl. Most of the calls are all the same, and involve these simple steps:

$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT, ‘http://link.to.api.page’);
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, username:password); //your twitter username/password
curl_setopt( $curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “”); //empty string to just make the call. Populate if you want to send something, such as ’status’.
$result = curl_exec( $curl );
curl_close( $curl );

When printing the list of status, I added similar functionality to the ‘@’ and ‘#’ symbols, I used these functions:

// Add links to strings that look like links.
$str = ereg_replace(“[[:alpha:]]+://[^<>[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]”,”<a href=\”\\0\” target=_blank>\\0</a>”, $str );

// pull out the words with # in the beginning for use with searching (not implemented yet)
$str = preg_replace( “/\B\#\w*\b/i”, “<a href='http://twitter.com/#search?q=$0' target='_blank'>$0</a>”, $str );

//get strings that start with @ to follow them.
$str = preg_replace( “/\B\@\w*\b/i”, “<a href='t.php?follow=\\0' title='Click to Follow'>$0</a>”, $str );

The corporate ladder

http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/ / CC BY 2.0

What’s the difference between you and your boss? Seriously, what’s the difference between you and your boss? If you could narrow down the differences to tangible character traits, what would they be? Experience? Education? Knowledge? Determination? Honesty? Friendliness? Tenacity? Creativity? Relationships? Ambition?

Even if your boss is Michael Scott, there must be a reason they have that position and you don’t. Some of us may have many more skills than our boss, much more knowledge, etc, but how come they have their position and we have ours? What skills or traits gave them the opportunity for the job and not us?

There are two scenarios we may find our selves in – we are very similar to our boss, or completely different from them.

If you find that you are actuality very similar to your boss, you might get some great perspective by figuring out why. What exactly is holding you back from being more successful? Is it fear? Is it your education, experience? By finding those minute differences, you might find it very easy to obtain what you lack. Maybe it’s as simple as a couple classes, or knowing the right people. Whatever it might be, when we reduce it in this way, we can see clearly what we need to get to the next level.

Sometimes, however the differences may be large, you may be completely different than your boss? What can you glean from your boss then? In this case, I might ask if I was in the right industry, or the right area of that industry. If I was that different than my boss, I would have to wonder if I was really pursing something I’m passionate about. If I really have the desire to move forward and become more successful at what I’m doing, I have to have at least have some similarity with my boss.

Even if our boss is a micro-managing bozo, there must be some reason (even if it’s just plain luck) they have their position and we have ours. What’s holding us back from finding those differences and overcoming them?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/ / CC BY 2.0

I heard an interesting message yesterday at church. One of the questions asked of the leaders, and volunteers was this: “do you have a leadership accent?”. What is a leadership accent you ask? Well, the message went on…

Most of us have an accent. You can tell almost immediately if someone is from the south, or from the midwest, or an eastern european country, south africa, etc. Even Californian’s, who I actually thought were the only people on planet earth without an accent, have been said to have an accent.

But what is a leadership accent? Leaders speak with “we” and “us” instead of “they” and “them”. Leaders take responsibility, and work with the people they lead. A none leader might say, “they have decided to do the music like that”, or “It was them who thought it would be better to do it that way”. On the contrary, a leader would say, “we have decided to do this”, or “Let us try to do it like that”. Leaders are in the game, they don’t speak from the outside in, but from the inside in. Leaders know the people they work with and serve. There is no distinction, or segregation – we work together, helping us grow.

Next time someone speaks, listen to their use of “us” and “them” or “we” and “they”, you’ll be able to tell quickly if that person is a leader or not.

Next time you speak, listen to what you use. Are you a leader?

I love this commercial. I think of it almost any time I say to myself, “I’m tired”, or “I just don’t feel right”. It’s usually around the time I need to go to the gym, but it happens other times too. “I don’t feel like changing the baby”, “I don’t feel like getting up”. It’s so easy to talk ourselves out of things, and to let our ‘feelings’ control our actions.

Listen to your internal values, set your goals, and then go after them. Any self talk that deters you from your goals, don’t listen to it.

This posts outline for staying motivated…

1. Just Do It.

Done.