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30 Day challenge – Stay out of social media

Yesterday I was reading post from Matt Cutts about his last 30 day challenge, so I decided to take one as well.

For the next 30 days, I will not visit Facebook, Twitter and social media in general. Also, I will stop with reading online articles, and I’ll try to minimize my email activities. Instead, I will study and read more books.

Next blog post I will write in 30 days, and tell you about my results.

The challenge starts today at noon ( meaning, in about 40 minutes ).


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Test Download Speed From Console

If you sometimes need to check download speed on a remote computer, to which you are connected through console, here is a nice tip how to do this:

 wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test

Yes, simple as that. Download a 100 MB test file using wget, and you’ll see a download speed in console.


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3 Twitter Search Ideas You (Probably) Don’t Know About

Last few days I was working on developing simple Twitter console client in Perl, and I got some interesting results while playing with Twitter search.

Have you ever thought that you can find some ideas for startup on Twitter? Well, if you try searching for:

"should invent"

you can get some pretty interesting results, and if you search for a while, you can even get some cool ideas.

 

Another interesting point. Since lots of people are sharing their emails in tweets, Twitter search can be a nice source for spammers. Try searching for:

"email me at"
"email me on"
"email me to"

You’ll get lots of emails. I even wrote a simple Perl script to download all those tweets, and parse the emails into a text file. Quite an easy way to get some emails.

 

And the last one I will share today. If you are looking for a job, you can find a lot of job offers. Try searching for “jobs <country|city> <keyword>”. Here are few examples:

jobs uk
jobs usa linux
I'm hiring london

That’s it for now. Happy tweeting ;)

 


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How to install LAMP (Apache MySQL and PHP) on CentOS

This is first article from next few I will write about LAMP.

I will not write about what LAMP is, I guess that you already know since you are reading how to install it.

So, to install LAMP in Linux CentOS, follow next steps:

First, make sure that your system is up to date:

# yum update -y

Once update is finished, you need to install Apache:

# yum install httpd -y

After installation, you need to add apache service to system startup:

# chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

and then start it up:

# service httpd start

Now, open your browser and go to localhost, or http://yourdomain.tld and you should see Apache default page.

Next step is to install PHP as an Apache module (mod_php). Do it like this:

# yum install php -y

After you install it, you have to check is everything’s fine. You need to create an PHP info page, and put it in Apache root ( /var/www/html ), so you can check that PHP support is enabled:

# echo -e "<?php\n\tphpinfo();\n?>" > /var/www/html/info.php

Once you created info.php file, you need to reload Apache, so installed PHP module can take effect:

# service httpd restart

Now you need to open this file with your browser. Go to http://yourdomain.tld/info.php and you should see a page with some PHP info.

Now you need to install MySQL support. This mean that you have to install PHP module for MySQL. Beside this, it’s good to install and module for PHP console and PHP common files:

# yum install php-cli php-common php-gd php-mysql -y

Again, restart Apache:

# service httpd restart

After all this, now you need to install the last main component of LAMP stack – MySQL server. Do it like this:

# yum install mysql mysql-server -y

and then add to system startup, and run the service:

# chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
# service mysqld start

Once it is started, it’s good that you set MySQL root password. Also, it’s recommended to disable remote root login if you don’t really need it. It’s good that you remove anonymous users and remote ‘test’ database right away as well. All this you can do with:

# mysql_secure_installation

After this, your installation of LAMP is finished. Of course, there is more stuff you should install, but this is the basic.

In next article, to this installation, we will add PhpMyAdmin, some cashe engine, and some more cool stuff.

 


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The “Just look at it” hack to problem solving

This past week I was faced with a difficult problem.  A really difficult problem.

In fact, it was painfully difficult.  And I was struck with a flood of emotions: fear, anxiety, despair, etc.

I just wanted to sleep and not deal with it.

But instead, I did the “Just look at it” hack.

The “Just look at it” hack is something I’ve been thinking about the past few weeks.  The essence is that if you just face a challenging problem by looking at it, then your brain will naturally respond with creativity and ideas to overcome and solve the problem.  In other words, you don’t need to try to solve the problem with your raw effort.  Rather, just stare at the problem and let you brain do the work for you.

I printed out all my notes regarding my difficult problem onto two 8.5 x11 pieces of paper.  And then I went to the couch in my living room, and just stared at it.  I told myself, “you don’t need to solve it or fix it right away.  You don’t need to do anything but just look at it and let your brain think about it.”  So that’s what I did.

I sat for about an hour, just staring at the two pieces of paper and letting my brain do it’s work.  Then, it started to happen.  One by one ideas started to form and I began jotting them down.  No magic moment of epiphany, yet.

I kept going and in another hour or two, I was getting epiphany.  I had the solution to my really difficult problem.  And my fear and despair turned to ecstatic relief and confidence.

So the next time you’re faced with a really difficult problem and you want to run away and not face it, try the “Just look at it” hack.

1.  Jot down all the notes regarding your problem/challenge and print it out.

2.  Just look at the printed notes and let your brain mull it over.

3.  Keep at it.  It’s ok if you start dozing.  Just wake up and keep looking at the printed notes.

4.  When inspiration comes, start taking notes.  But keep going until you get the creative solution you need.

 

Great mind hack, isn’t it?

Original article source. Picture source.


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