The Random Blogger

(See my previous post, My Internal Jukebox for what this category is all about.)

I can’t remember how I stumbled across this website, but I’m glad I did.

Allen Jesson bills himself as a poet and philosopher, and he publishes what he calls The 77 Secrets, which is a series of daily emails with various secrets on how to be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.

So far, I’m 28 secrets into the series, and they do cover a variety of subjects.

The emails are relatively short, well-written, and as he says on his website, even if you only implement one or two of the secrets, your life will be better for it.

The 77 Secrets are 100% free, he doesn’t bug you to buy tons of other stuff (unlike some people), and you’ll learn something new and useful every day (for 77 days, anyway).

So, subscribe to The 77 Secrets now - you definitely won’t regret it.

Many of you will recognise the words in the title of this, my latest, post, as being a song by the late, great Edith Piaf, aka the Little Sparrow.

And for those of you who don’t, or who don’t speak French, then it means, simply, “No, I don’t regret anything.”

Hard as it may be sometimes, that has always been a motto close to my heart, and, like many people of my age, I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes in my life - far from it, I made some pretty massive ones (including what turned out to be a disastrous first marriage, which I didn’t get out of for 24 years or so).

But the way I see it is this - you cannot change what has happened in the past.

What you can do, of course, is change how you feel about it, and you can also learn from it too.

You might think you wish you’d done something different, to avoid whatever it is that you now regret, but here’s the big question: how do you know that if you’d fixed that particular issue, maybe many years ago, something even worse might not have occurred as a result of your so-called fix?

This is, of course, a recurring theme in many movies and TV shows to do with time travel, and many do, indeed, warn of altering the “time line”.

One of my favourites, in this genre, is the movie The Butterfly Effect, starring Ashton Kutcher.

For those of you who haven’t seen this great example of a time-travel movie, the hero keeps going back to fix something from his childhood, but each time, something else happens that completely changes his current life, sometimes with dire consequences.

So, what’s done is done, and there’s precious little you can do about it, except, maybe, learn to live with it, make sure you don’t make the same mistake again, and try to use that experience to help you grow.

I was watching a subliminal video this morning, which is part of my regular daily routine, and one of the images that flashed past was of a shark, and it got me to thinking (as so many things do, of course).

Now, people generally know that sharks are killers (or, to be precise, some species of shark are), so why do I have no fear of sharks?

Is it because I can wrestle them with my bare hands?

Is it because I don’t go anywhere without a super-sized harpoon gun?

Is it because my body emits some chemicals that repel sharks?

No, it’s none of these, because the answer is much simpler …

… I simply don’t ever plan on being in the same place as a shark!

If there are no sharks around (and last time I looked, there aren’t that many in the mountains where we live), then my chances of being attacked or killed by one is, to all intents and purposes, zero.

This may seem obvious, or even silly, but there is a point (or two) to this.

Firstly, there are plenty of things in life to worry about - you know, minor things like how to pay the bills, how to stay healthy.

So what you don’t need to do is to worry about stuff that you can’t easily control and manage.

If you start to worry about things that you can’t directly influence, then you will get stressed out, and may even develop phobias, anxiety, panic attacks, etc.

By focusing on the aspects of your life that you can influence, you will reduce your stress levels, and over time, your sphere of influence, as it’s called, will even expand.

Secondly, you have to work out what is really important to you, and weigh the pros and cons of everything you do.

Everything in life has a cost - it may not be obvious, but it’s there nonetheless. There is, as they say, no such thing as a free lunch.

The key to a successful life, however you define success, is getting your priorities right.

So, if you like to go swimming, fine - just don’t swim in the ocean where sharks may be. Find a pool instead - it may not be “as much fun”, but I guarantee it’s a lot more fun than being eaten alive.

In essence, it boils down to this simple question: which is more important to you? In this example, would you rather swim in the ocean, with the waves rolling in and the fresh sea air, and risk being attacked, maimed or even killed by a shark, or would you rather still get your waterbound exercise in a safer environment, by swimming in a pool where the biggest risk is usually the pool cleaning chemicals they use?

As always, I welcome your own thoughts, so please post a comment below.

(See my previous post, My Internal Jukebox for what this category is all about.)

My laptop, which is between one and two years old, is starting to behave in some very strange and undesirable ways.

For example, things lock up (applications or all of Windows), I get the occasional BSOD, CHKDSK starts but will never finish, etc.

And relatively recently, I’ve been having problesm with Windows Explorer, which I use a lot - usually two instances are running at any one time.

One main problem is that the first time I try to run it after a reboot, it locks up most of Windows, and my only solution is to use the Task Manager to kill the explorer.exe process, which I know is risky, and then to use the Run command to open the application again.

In most cases, this works fine - but not always, which then leads to yet another reboot.

And these past few days, it’s been going unresponsive for no apparent reason at random times.

As I need this application to do a lot of what I do, I decided enough was enough and went on the hunt for a good replacement for Windows Explorer (and preferably one that was free).

A quick search on Google instantly turned up a couple of contenders, so I downloaded both and tried them out.

The first was Explorer++, created by David Erceg, and the second was Q-Dir, created by Nenad Hrg.

So, what were the relative pros and cons of each of them?

The good news is that both are free, and both can be run as portable apps.

Explorer++ supports multiples tabs, which is a nice feature, and I particularly liked the Bookmarks toolbar for fast access to folders used regularly. (One of my all-time favourite applications is Folder Guide, which integrates nicely with Windows XP Pro, so I wanted to replicate this funcationality if possible.)

However, my biggest issues with Explorer++ were the strange way it sorts and/or groups folder contents, and it also seems to be very slow.

Q-Dir, on the hand, is very fast indeed, and instead of supporting multiple tabs, it does offer multiple panes, anywhere from one to four of them, which makes drag and dropping of files really fast and easy.

The help information on both apps is somewhat sparse, and at first, the thing I didn’t like about Q-Dir was the fact I couldn’t work out how to use the Quick Links feature (which is this app’s Folder Guide type functionality), but once I tracked that down, it met all of my requirements, and this is the one I think I’ll be sticking with.

So, if you’re looking for a good, free Windows Explorer alternative, my vote goes for Q-Dir.

I’ve been involved in Internet marketing, in some shape or form, for about six years now, and I’ve bought any number of ebooks and courses that weren’t worth the virtual paper they were typed on.

Some were very good, but the majority, I’m sad to say, were no use at all. Many were returned for refunds, so at least I salvaged something from the deal, although not the time I spent reading the sales page, downloading the materials that simply fill up your hard drive and, of course reading them.

So, I wish I had found The Masked Guru’s website first, because he basically reveals and reviews the contents of many of the more popular ebooks - for free.

Yes, you’ll actually find out what many of these books are actually about, but it’s all legal, and it won’t cost you a penny.

So far, since I signed up a few days ago, I’ve received emails with the contents and reviews of The Rich Jerk, Day Job Killer and the Ultimate Wealth Package.

I won’t spoil it for you by revealing his verdict on these three very popular products, but I do highly recommend signing up for his newsletter so that you too can be educated and entertained - hopefully, before spending your hard-earned cash.

Oh, and one last thing - his style of writing is very funny (it made me laugh, at least).

So, do yourself a favour and sign up for The Masked Guru today - if you’re in any way involved in Internet Marketing, I know you won’t regret it (unless you’re the author of one of the ebooks he gives a bad review to, of course).

While many people may not be familiar with the term “eidetic memory” (unless they happen to enjoy watching the TV show, Criminal Minds), they probably have heard of “photographic memory”.

This conjures up all sorts of images, but what exactly is a photographic memory, and is it as useful as people think?

There are, of course, two aspects to memory - (more…)

Wimbledon is undoubtedly the international home of tennis, and has been witness to many classic matches.

Many people, myself included, thought that the Wimbledon 2009 final, between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick, was as good as it gets …

… until the Wimbledon 2010 match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.

This second round match broke so many records, it’s hard to put how I feel about it into words.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of this match was the sheer physical and mental stamina that allowed these two players to stay on court for over 11 hours, over the course of three days.

And with both players racking up over 100 aces each during this match, right up until the very end, you have to assume that their bodies were almost working on autopilot, as they have to have been exhausted.

That either player had to lose, after all those hours of play, was a real shame, but unlike test match cricket, where games can last for five days and still finish in a draw (yes, it’s incredibly boring!), one of these two athletes had to emerge the winner, and although it was John Isner, it could just as easily have been Nicolas Mahut.

The commentators went on about the sportsmanship between the two of them, but to me, this is the way any sport should be played, and I feel somewhat sad that good sportsmanship is even mentioned, as it should go without saying.

But there was a third hero on court during the entire match, and that was the umpire, Mohamed Lahyani (who is my favourite umpire - he clearly enjoys himself, has eagle eyes, never missing a thing, and does an all-round great job).

Keeping control of the match, sitting there hour after hour, without the excuses umpires get to climb down from their chair to check disputed calls like they do on clay courts, was an endurance feat in itself.

Whichever way you look at it, it is highly unlikely that anybody will ever play in or witness a match like this one ever again - it was a truly Herculean effort from all concerned, and while John Isner may have come out the winner, Nicolas Mahut was just as much a winner too.