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Review of Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod

Overall Ranking: 8/10

The first book I purchased on my new Kindle was Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I bought it based on this review by Derek Sivers. On the whole, I liked it very much. In fact, I read it in one sitting. Here are my thoughts:

What the book is not:

• A step by step manual for doing anything
• A specific guide to doing anything
• Case studies

What the book is:

• A collection of generalized lessons learned from 20 odd years in the creative business
• Extremely well written
• Largely a collection of aphorisms, similar to the work of Eric Hoffer
  
• Highly motivational

I think I'll just let the items I highlighted tell the story of the book (thank you Kindle) -I recommend it to everyone.

My Highlights

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.d3665701B0026NBZFI

I think one of the main reasons I stayed in advertising for so many years is simply because hearing “Change that ad” ticks me off a lot less than “Change that cartoon.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

We think we’re “Providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “Helping America to really taste Freshness.” In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every form of media is a set of fundamental compromises; one is not “higher” than the others.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fueled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.d3665701B0026NBZFI

It’s hard to sell out if nobody has bought in.d3665701B0026NBZFI

MAKING A BIG DEAL OVER YOUR CREATIVE shtick to other people is the kiss of death.d3665701B0026NBZFI

To me, it’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books or a Nobel Prize winner sells diddly-squat. Those are just ciphers, external distractions. To me, it’s about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.d3665701B0026NBZFI

PEOPLE ARE FOND OF SPOUTING OUT THE OLD cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure. Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.d3665701B0026NBZFI

There’s a famous old quip: “A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

THE LATE BRITISH BILLIONAIRE JAMES GOLD-SMITH once quipped, “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.”

Upon reading over this, MacLeod really is a lot like Eric Hoffer. Anyway, go get it and read it.

Review of the Amazon Kindle

Overall Ranking: 10/10

This Christmas I succumb to pressure and purchase a Kindle. First thoughts

The Good

• The clarity is superb
• The Kindle screen increases readability slightly compared to the printed page
• The Kindle page is slightly smaller than an ordinary paperback page. This was nice actually.
• The software is intuitive
• It arrives pre-setup for the most part
• Taking notes is quite easy and easy to review
• The dictionary feature is wonderful
  

The Bad

• It is far too easy to purchase books accidentally. The purchases are reversible
  
• They should include a cover and light as accessories. Those two items are essential to the safe operating of the Kindle (the cover anyway) and are not included with the Kindle.

On the whole, the Kindle is wonderful and I reccomend it to everyone.

A quick guide to prioritizing email

Estimated read time - 3 minutes
Estimated completion time - 20 minutes
Estimated payback period - 10 working days

I have had my current work account for seven and a half years. I signed up for many email newsletters and alerts over the past seven years. I did a quick check and found I had over 7,000 emails in my inbox in the past year alone. I also need to keep all of my work-related emails forever.

In the past I had created rules to send the newsletters to different folders. I had "Marketing", "Microsoft", "Offers" folders, and the like. However, this proved impractical as I tend to sign up for lots of newsletters and seldom updated my Outlook Rules.

As part of my preparation for 2010 I decided to merge all of my separate folders and create a single "ReadThenDelete" folder for all newsletters and other automated mailings. I then modified all of my existing outlook rules to move all newsletter type emails to the new folder. I then went through my inbox and created a lengthy rule based on sender's address to move all of the stragglers into the "ReadThenDelete" folder.

It took about 20 minutes, but it created a 50% reduction in my inbox emails, while losing nothing of value.

Benefits:

• I now have only one rule to update as the new subscriptions arrive
• I can skim the subjects and delete everything at once, instead of browsing by topic, and then deleting everything

This is not the most life-changing productivity tip I, but it has helped me save several minutes each day.

Before anyone says anything, yes, I know that reading newsletters subtracts from productivity, but I can skim and sort the written word extremely quickly and I probably spend less than two seconds per email (most get deleted based on the subject). My skimming process is now much easier now that everything is in one folder instead of categorized by subject.

Also, the "Read Time" and "Completion Time" was blatantly stolen from Tim Ferriss. Go read his blog right now

Merry Christmas Everyone

How to fix "The entry 'ScriptModule' has already been added." error

The Problem: The web application works just fine on the local machine, but when you upload it to the web server you get the error "The entry 'ScriptModule' has already been added."

The Cause: It is a conflict between asp.net versions.

The Solution: Simply comment out the <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> line in the web.config file and you should be good to go.

A surprise productivity tip - posture edition

Try this, I went through an abnormally focused period today and it seemed to be caused by a slightly different posture.

1. Sit in chair normally with good posture, nothing special.
2. Arch back slightly
3. Lean forward about 3 inches more than normal
4. Open your eyes about 5 millimeters more than normal

See if that works. I happened into it today and it seems to bring a much higher degree of focus than one might think.

The wisdom of Tim Ferriss

If you know me personally, then you've heard me rave about the work of Tim Ferriss. I heard him give a talk about the release of the new edition of his book, the Four Hour Work Week. Here are some adages I thought were particularly powerful, and true, at least in my case

Whenever you depend on willpower, you will fail.
and
It's easier to control environment than behavior.

and the Oscar Wilde quote -

If you're going through Hell, keep going

How to create a fully validated asp.net calendar control

The Problem: You have to have a fully validated date box. The dates must be valid dates and there must be data entered in the field.

The Cause: Not a problem really, I wind up rewriting it slightly differently each time. I thought I would put a definitive version here.

The Solution: Use this code
<asp:TextBox ID="tbDate" runat="server" CssClass="body" />
<ajaxToolkit:MaskedEditExtender ID="meeDate" runat="server"
TargetControlID="tbDate"
Mask="99/99/9999"
MessageValidatorTip="true"
OnFocusCssClass="MaskedEditFocus"
OnInvalidCssClass="MaskedEditError"
MaskType="Date"
DisplayMoney="Left"
AcceptNegative="Left"
ErrorTooltipEnabled="True" />
<ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender ID="ceDate" runat="server" TargetControlID="tbDate" PopupButtonID="imgDate" />
<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvDate" runat="server" ControlToValidate="tbDate"
Display="none" ErrorMessage="<b>Required Field Missing</b><br />You must supply a date"
SetFocusOnError="true" ValidationGroup="MainB" />
<ajaxToolkit:ValidatorCalloutExtender ID="vceDate" runat="server" TargetControlID="rfvDate" Width="300" />

<asp:CompareValidator ID="compVDate" runat="server" ValidationGroup="MainB"
ControlToValidate="tbDate" Display="None" ErrorMessage="<b>Required Field Missing</b><br />You must supply a valid date"
Operator="DataTypeCheck" Type="Date" />
<ajaxToolkit:ValidatorCalloutExtender ID="vceCompDate" runat="server" TargetControlID="compVDate" Width="300" />
<asp:ImageButton runat="Server" ID="imgDate" ImageUrl="img/icon_calendar.gif" AlternateText="Click to show calendar" />

That's it!

How to fix problem with intellisense in Visual Studio 2008

The Problem: For whatever reason Intelliense in Visual Studio shows up for standard asp.net web controls appears on some pages and not on others.

The Cause: Visual Studio is a tricky little program, I have no idea why this happened. I went though the web.config files, encoding, rebooted and still got no resolution.

The Solution: Recreate the master page for the web form pages where the error occurs, then change the master page on those pages to the new master page. For whatever reason this works well. All told, it took me 45 minutes to get the problem resolved.

How to fix the Adobe Acrobat "Save As" error

The Problem: You attempt to save a dynamically generated pdf built from a website and get the error "The document could not be saved, a number is out of range"

The Cause: Incompatibility of settings between the version of Acrobat that created the pdf and the version of Acrobat that is being used to view the pdf

The Solution: Go to preferences, go to "General" and uncheck "Save As optimizes for Fast Web View" and see if that fixes the problem. HT Planet PDF for the tip.

How to programmatically create an Excel Spreadsheet in ASP.net/ C#

The Problem: You need to create a dynamic excel spreadsheet in C#/ASP.net. There are several ways to accomplish this, but this is one I use when I don't need to specify the column names order to any great detail. I've included it in the How To Fix series simply because it took me more than 15 minutes to find the code, and rules are rules.

The Cause: No cause really, this is a method. The cause of hte problem was being a bit disorganized today.

The Solution: Just copy and paste the following code into your C# code behind and let her rip! Utility.dsGrab is just a function that returns a dataset.

DataTable dt = new DataTable();
DataSet ds = Utility.dsGrab("SampleDataSet");
dt = ds.Tables[0];
GridView gv = new GridView();

if (dt.Rows.Count > 0)
{
gv.DataSource = dt;
gv.DataBind();
System.IO.StringWriter oStringWriter =
     new System.IO.StringWriter();
System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter oHtmlTextWriter =
     new HtmlTextWriter(oStringWriter);
Response.ClearContent();
Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel";
Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;
     filename=SampleExcel.xls");
Response.Charset = "";
Response.Buffer = true;
EnableViewState = false;
gv.RenderControl(oHtmlTextWriter);
Response.Write(oStringWriter.ToString());
Response.End();
}

That's it! It won't open up in the browser window either.

How to fix problems with SSL certs in Plesk

The Problem: You attempt to install (or renew) an SSL certificate in Plesk (web hosting management software) but when you follow the instructions (meaning add the certificate in Plesk, and then going to the "Setup" screen for the domain, you do not have the option of selecting the renewed certificate.

The Cause: This is the first domain that was created and an SSL cert was immediately added, then other domains were added via Plesk. Plesk no longer sees this domain as having a valid IP address it can use. There is no way to change this in Plesk.

The Solution: Bypass Plesk and install directly in IIS - go to this link on installing an SSL cert and follow the directions very carefully.

How to fix invisible view in ASP.net mvc

This is not the most significant I know, but the goal is to document every problem that took more than 15 minutes to solve, and I did try the more complicated methods before I tried the obvious one, so here it is.

The Problem: When programming in ASP.net MVC in Visual Studio 2008 you create a new folder, in the views directory, then create a new view in that directory called Index. For example I was working on the Stronico public site (coming soon, really) and created a directory called "Contact", and a view called "Index.aspx" so the url could be http://www.Stronico.com/Contact/. I also created the Controller "ContactController.cs". When I went to the staging site on LocalHost, I got the "File Not Found" error.

The Cause: I never did find out. I tried changing the verbiage slightly, in case contact was a protected word, I reset IIS, I did several other things. None of the usual methods worked.

The Solution: I finally just closed the solution and restarted it and I was able to get to the contact page. No idea why that worked, but it did.

Sort of a a lame post, but I did spend slightly more than fifteen minutes trying to see why the page would not appear, only to find it to be a simple Visual Studio error.

How to fix Quickbooks 2010 printing problem on 64 Bit Windows, (Error Code -30)

I intended the focus of the "How To Fix" posts to be Silverlight, but as I've encountered other problems while setting up the business, I'm posting those. The rule I established is "If it takes more than 15 minutes to fix, it gets documented" so here we go.

The Problem: You finally get Quickbooks 2010 installed and your old data migrated, and you get the "Printer not activated, error code -30" error window when sending an invoice, pictured below.



and



If you Google the error messages you will see that there are many, many reasons this error can occur.

The Cause: In my case, this was due to running Vista Ultimate 64 Bit. I assume it is the same on Windows 7 64 Bit or Vista Business 64 Bit. The cause is the pdf driver for Quickbooks not working with 64 bit Windows.

The Solution: You go to this QuickBooks help page and change a large number of properties. Why? Who knows, but that solved the problem for me. Intuit did not include any warnings about 32 vs 64 bit differences in their program, to their shame.

Quick review of RescueTime

Yesterday I downloaded and installed RescueTime - So far I like it. It hasn't had that much time to gather data but it does identify many weak ponts. A longer review will be coming as soon as there is more to work with.

At long last QuickBooks will work

After recreating an XP 32bit Pro installation on two different drives, I finally get QuickBooks 2010 to work on my machine. Now to actually use it and see if it is the fun everyone tells me it is.

A step forward in Stronico marketing

As of today Stronico is sponsoring one of my earlier projects, JargonDatabase.com. This is my first step in grassroots marketing.

QuickBooks Conversion tool will not work with 64 bit Windows, or Accounting software wants to kill me

First Microsoft discontinues Office Accounting 2009 a mere four months after I install it and spend 40 hours trying to get it working over the network with XP. Then I make the move to QuickBooks due to this press release, and discover that their oh so magnificent data conversion tool will not work with either Vista 64 bit or Windows 7 64 bit. I now have to wrangle one of the old computers from the closets, do a clean install of 32 bit vista on that, install both Quickbooks and Office Accounting on that computer, convert that over on there, and then move the Quickbooks file to one of the two 64 bit computers I have here in the house. Such joy. No wonder I hate accounting.

How to migrate a user profile in Vista

In a previous post I detailed the simple procedure of leaving a domain and joining a workgroup in Vista. The catch is...

The Problem: When you leave the domain, the user profile is basically destroyed and a crippled version is put in it's place. Very little documentation exists on how to prevent this, and the market has not supplied many programs to help either. Copying files and folders did not work for me. I tried both Windows Easy Transfer and the User State Migration Tool from Microsoft, to no avail. Curiously, none of my knowledgeable tech friends knew of an easy way to do this.

The Cause: As near as I can tell - there is little software market for downgrading your network, or providing documentation. Happily there is at least one company that will step up.

The Solution: Download the User Profile Wizard from Forensit. (It took me much time to find it). Make backups of everything, then run the Wizard. You will probably have to create a new login to use, but the profile will be pristine once it's transfered over.

I imagine this would not be much of a problem for someone more knowledgeable, but for me it was quite vexing.

Okay, hopefully the next blog posts will be all about startsups and Silverlight.