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Spending Less Time in the Gym Helps to Build More Muscle

Posted by admin on October 31, 2008 in Uncategorized

The best results from your training can, and should be achieved by exercising no more than three times a week. In most cases, maximum muscle gains will be achieved from only two workouts weekly. Training time should be no more then a total of sixty minutes per week, or twenty minutes for each workout. More often than not the greatest results will be obtained by reducing your total workout time per week to thirty minutes or less.

When focusing on reducing you workout times, training must be intense and fast paced. The rest period between sets should be reduced as quickly as possible to no more than sixty seconds. Eliminating rest periods almost entirely should be your ultimate goal. Although spending less time in the gym should be considered worthy, saving time is not the motivation for this method of training. Maximizing your overall muscle gains is.

Training at a rapid pace will dramatically improve the condition of your heart, breathing, circulation, and muscle endurance. In order to build muscle fast, speed of training is a critical requirement. Performing the same routine in twice the time will greatly reduce your muscle gains.

The ultimate goal is to perform your routines in the shortest time possible. A consistently fast rate promotes enormous improvement in muscular size. Reducing or eliminating rest periods is the easiest way to minimize training time. The performance of your sets however, must remain slow and deliberate. Momentum should not be used to “cheat”, as this will risk injury. When the set is completed, the rest period before the next should be really brief. Speed between sets, not during them, is the key.


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Tech-writers – a necessary evil

Posted by admin on in Uncategorized

New to tech-writing, or thinking about starting? The key to success is recognising that tech-writers are a necessary evil.

Tech-writers are necessary because someone has to write the user doco. The programmers and managers sure as hell don’t want to. This is actually part of the reason that you’re evil, too. In my experience, most programmers and managers think that they could write the manuals if they wanted to… they just don’t want to. They might not write all “flowery” like the tech-writers, but what they write is correct.

Unfortunately, that’s quite often all that’s important to programmers and managers. There is a feeling within the software environment that accuracy = quality. Audience analysis, doco readability, consistency, usability, active and passive voice, commas in a list of three or more items… All of these things are relatively unimportant to everyone but the tech-writer. Oh… and the user.

In a world where accuracy is all important, a lot goes over the head of the dummy. I don’t know if it’s intellectual snobbery, but programmers and managers seem to think that if they understand it, so should the user. It doesn’t matter whether or not they do… they SHOULD! Stupid users! Maybe it’s the geek’s ultimate revenge…

Your document can be 100% accurate, but if the audience can’t read it, you’ve wasted your time.

So why doesn’t anyone acknowledge this? They do! That’s the weird part. In theory, everyone agrees with you, it’s just in practice that you find yourself out in the cold. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe it’s because most of these guys have never done tech-writing.

So tech-writers spend too long worrying about unimportant things. And they bother programmers and managers with unimportant things. But they’re necessary things. Otherwise why would you be employed. Maybe the absence of simple logic short circuits their brains. Who knows?

What we can get out of this is that there’s a feeling that tech-writers waste time, and as a result, they’re pretty much at the bottom of the heap in the software world. I think a good analogy is the way some rich see the poor. Dirty little creatures… if only we could do without them…

But there is an up-side. I don’t want you thinking it’s all bad.

Being at the bottom of the heap has its advantages. You can go unnoticed for years if you want. If you haven’t seen the movie, Office Space, you should hire it. There’s a little ferrety bloke in that who was “let go” years ago. Problem is, no one ever told him, and because of a glitch in payroll he still got paid. No one ever noticed.

Being a tech-writer’s a bit like that.

When I was managing doco teams, my favourite saying was “All we have to do is manage their expectations and our commitments”. Because programmers and managers resign themselves to the fact that they don’t know what’s going on in the doco team, there’s sometimes a temptation to slacken off. Don’t give in to this temptation!!! If you ever get caught, doing it, it’ll be like the boy who cried wolf – they’ll never believe your estimates again!

The other risk is that you’ll lose your sense of urgency. And that’s a big part of what makes a good worker. You should be very strict about managing your commitments. This requires discipline, because sometimes it seems you’re the only one that cares, but you have to do it.

One thing you should be aware of though, is that your average tech-writer in software spends only about 50% of his or her time writing. The rest of your time is spent planning, problem solving, fixing your computer, researching, interviewing the programmers, writing work pracs…

I always found it was a good balance, though.

It was when I started managing teams that the bottom really fell out. Then the percentage dropped to about 10-20%. There were times when I’d go months without writing any help at all. That can be very frustrating, especially if you don’t particularly like managing.

Now managing tech-writers in software is an interesting thing. As with most technology management positions, you kinda fall into it, because you’re the most senior/experienced person in the company. Unfortunately, that doesn’t qualify you to be a manager. Software companies are renowned for dumping people into management roles without any real training or support.

I don’t really have any advice for you here. If it’s gonna happen, it’ll happen. Just be aware of it, and know that if you fall into a management role, it’s gonna be difficult. (That’s not to say that it can’t be rewarding though…)

The ironic thing is that the most difficult aspect of it is that your staff are screaming at you to change the system. “The programmers don’t answer our questions!” “None of my work has been reviewed for the last 2 months!” “The project manager just told me to forget about quality!”

Unfortunately, the inexperienced tech-writer is often nave enough to think they can change the system. Once you become a manager, you know you can’t. Hold on a minute… Maybe apathy is what qualifies you to be a manager… Hmmmm.

In any case, my advice is not to push too hard. You’ll make life hard for your manager, and give yourself a bad reputation. Recognise you’re a necessary evil, and work within those constraints.

Tech-writing can be a lot of fun. And don’t let anyone tell you it’s not creative. Trying to think of a way to describe what goes in the Name field without just saying “Enter the name” is a real mind-boggler!


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KOYO & Datacraft Solutions e-Kanban Make Huge Impact

Posted by admin on October 30, 2008 in Uncategorized

Koyo is a very lean organization; they were solely internally relying on visual signals to trigger supplier replenishment of consumed inventory. Koyo originally signed up with Datacraft Solutions to help manage the flow of some 3000 faxes per day that were being sent to 30 of key suppliers on kanban. Management of this volume of cards was unwieldy and error prone. Although the visual system was maintaining the flow of inventory, it was only at great administrative expense. Koyo’s first phase was to bring in Signum, the e-kanban product of Datacraft Solutions, and migrate the manual faxbans onto an electronic kanban platform that included bar code scanning of inventory consumption and automatically conveying that kanban signal to suppliers. The immediate benefit of this transition was to relieve buyer planners of a significant workload while keeping the internal process improvements transparent to their suppliers so as not to require their involvement.

After several months in production, a new Materials Manager, Mark Mekanik, who had come from a more traditional manufacturing environment, was hired to oversee the raw material and purchased parts warehouse. Very early on he learned that it was impossible to get answers to the seemingly simple questions of:

* How much inventory of part number X do I have on hand? * How much is on order? * When will it arrive?

These were questions that were easily answered in his ERP experience but seemed quite elusive in this flow oriented kanban replenishment environment.

Mark immediately initiated a project that would integrate Signum, his electronic kanban system, with his ERP system, Syteline. The goal of this project was to develop a “perpetual inventory system” that would provide answers to the questions he was seeking, while not disrupting the value he was getting from his electronic kanban platform. Koyo went live with their integrated systems in early 2005.

Datacraft Solutions www.datacraftsolutions.com Matthew Marotta 800-819-5326

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Introducing SAPTags.com for SAP Customers around the world

Posted by admin on October 29, 2008 in Uncategorized

Introducing SAPTags.com for SAP Customers around the world By Roger Thompson, SAPTags.com

SAP is the most popular ERP package used by most of the customers around the world. Like any software, if you do a search on any of the SAP related keywords, it returns millions of records in most popular search engines.

For example typing keyword ABAP returned more than 2 million search results. Customers, who are looking for quality information about SAP related material, will spend several hours before getting the right information.

SAPTags.com is a web site containing all SAP related links categorized and tagged. It is a community based bookmark site maintained by seasoned SAP Consultants. This site allows the visitors to go through only quality links manually approved.

For example when a visitor clicks on the ABAP tag on the right in the saptags.com site, the visitors see only valuable and quality links related to SAP ABAP.

The most popular tag of course is jobs. Many job seekers use the site to look for employers who are specifically looking for SAP skills.

Please visit http://www.SAPTags.com or contact Roger Thompson support@saptags.com

SAP and other trademarks are trademarks of SAP AG and respective companies. SAPTags.com is not associated or affiliated with SAP AG.


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The future of the Human Species – Part 4: Will we create our future?

Posted by admin on October 28, 2008 in Uncategorized

Experiments have shown that human physiology becomes very weak in an unknown environment to the brain. Humans then start to panic. Problem is that humans do not necessarily want to show their uncertainty. So they hide it. When they actually hide this uncertainty, humans start to get stressed and this is the big problem.

When we get stressed, we become moody and cannot concentrate on what we are doing. Imagine an astronaut getting really frustrated in the middle of a mission on the International Space Station. This may be catastrophic! He seizes a hammer floating nearby in the zero-gravity of space and demolishes the ISS’s main computer. The whole crew will be in a most-probably-fatal danger. No doubt the guilty astronaut will realise the consequence of his action afterwards but it will be too late.

Trained astronauts themselves, have big difficulties adapting to a space mission of up to two months. Think of a manned mission to Mars. This journey takes a minimum of two years to accomplish plus there is the return journey too. Humans will have to live in shuttle conditions with no privacy for four years that is 1461 days (1 more day from a leap year included). You will agree with me that it is hard to make a journey of this many days properly. Bear in mind that a journey of only 60 days seems difficult. What should we do then?

We presently have the technology to go to Mars. The problem lies with the persons who are going to board on the shuttle. Many scientists have concluded that humans like us will have much difficulty in overcoming the stress and frustration. But humans unlike us may be able to do it! Imagine a human being with 4 arms instead of 2 (the 2 additional arms take the places of the 2 legs). He will be able to crawl everywhere on a shuttle like a spider. This spider human will specialise himself in this field. I am not joking! Scientists say that they can create a human with 4 arms and no legs.

It seems easy to do so too. Now that we are starting to unlock the secrets of the DNA and genes things, we are also starting to modify them. As you know DNA contains all information about a person and if it is modified, the person too is modified. So, if my DNA is modified then, I too will be modified: physically, mentally or emotionally. DNA modification seems to be the key for going elsewhere that is away from Earth.

Anyway, if ever we go on another planet, colonize it and live on it then the appearance of us, humans, will change. The physical appearance of a person depends on the physical environment surrounding that person. So if ever we go on Mars, our eyebrows will become more important and they will therefore expand in size. Why our eyebrows will evolve is because Mars is dustier than Earth in terms of sand and other small particles.

We know that Earth is not permanent and we know that we will have to go away one day if we want to live on. We also know that Mars, which till now has appeared to be the ideal place is going to go in smoke like Earth too. We are not much prepared to teraform Mars though but this is only a matter of time. With new technologies, new ideas will burst out till the best one is proposed. Then we can go to Mars. We may however have to transform ourselves to remain alive though. Will we be able to do all this? Well a real spider man would be a great thing to see.

If ever we succeed in doing all these things though then we may say this clearly and loudly, “Humans are one step above everybody else neither in this solar system nor in this galaxy and not even in this universe but in this world.”


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New Computer? Steps to Protect Your Computer Before Connecting to the Internet

Posted by admin on October 27, 2008 in Uncategorized

Getting a new computer should be an exciting and gratifying experience. After all, you’ll be able to do things faster, safer and without having to worry that your old hard drive is so full that one more file will “break the camel’s back.”

However, there are dangers out there that probably didn’t exist when you bought your last computer. And there’s the question of what will happen to your old hard drive, with all your personal data on it.

Let’s deal with your new computer first. This information applies specifically to Windows XP, although it has broader application as well.

Remember:

As a result of these hackers’ efforts, the average time-to-exploitation for an unprotected computer is measured in minutes.

Standard (wrong) advice to home users has been to download and install software patches as soon as possible after connecting a new computer to the Internet. However, since the background intruder scanning activity is pervasive, it may not be possible for you to complete the download and installation of software patches before the vulnerabilities they are trying to fix are exploited.

This Special Report offers advice on how to protect your computer before connecting it to the Internet so that you can complete the patching process without incident.

We strongly recommend following all the steps when upgrading to a new operating system from disc(s) as well as when connecting a new computer to the Internet for the first time.


  1. If possible, connect the new computer behind a network (hardware-based) firewall or firewall router.

    A network firewall or firewall router is a hardware device that is installed between the computers on their Local Area Network (LAN) and their broadband device (cable/DSL modem). By blocking inbound access to the computers on the LAN from the Internet a hardware-based firewall can often provide sufficient protection for you to complete the downloading and installation of necessary software patches. A hardware-based firewall provides a high degree of protection for new computers being brought online.

    If you connect to the Internet before you install a firewall, it may be possible for the computer to be exploited before the download and installation of such software is complete.

    XP has a built in firewall that may or may not be enabled. If Microsoft XP has not had Service Pack 2 installed, follow these instructions to turn on the Internet Connection Firewall. If XP is installed WITH Service Pack 2, then your firewall is enabled by default.

    Microsoft has provided both detailed and summarized instructions for enabling the built-in Internet Connection Firewall on Windows XP.

    We strongly recommend that you install a third-party firewall application and THEN turn off the Windows firewall.

    We recommend ZoneAlarm (www.ZoneLabs.com), which is FREE. Zone Alarm is the top rated firewall, and protects both incoming and outgoing data. XP’s firewall ONLY protects against incoming data. Zone Alarm’s setup file is approximately 7 megabytes, which will easily fit on a CD or USB drive.

  2. Disable File and Printsharing if enabled.
    1. Go to Start -> Control Panel.
    2. Open “Network and Internet Connections”.
    3. Open “Network Connections”.
    4. Right-click on the network connection you wish to change (e.g., “Local Area Connection”).
    5. Select “Properties”.
    6. Make sure “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networking” is unchecked.

  3. Connect to the Internet.

  4. Go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

    Follow the instructions there to install all Critical Updates. However, if you are going to install Service Pack 2, READ THIS FIRST! Pay particular attention to “Get the latest PC manufacturer updates for SP2, because you may need to update drivers for your PC to work properly.

    Only download software patches from known, trusted sites (i.e., the software vendors’ own sites), in order to minimize the possibility of an intruder gaining access through the use of Trojan horse software.

Staying Secure

Follow the principle of least privilege don’t enable it if you don’t need it.

Consider using an account with only ‘user’ privileges instead of an ‘administrator’ or ‘root’ level account for everyday tasks. You only need to use administrator level access when installing new software, changing system configurations, and the like. Many vulnerability exploits (e.g., viruses, Trojan horses) are executed with the privileges of the user that runs them making it far more risky to be logged in as an administrator all the time.

Moving Your Applications and Data

Unless you’ve never had a computer before, you’ll want to move your old data onto your new machine. There are several ways to do this quickly and easily (although there are often a few glitches). The best article on the subject is www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,115632,00.asp.

Protecting Your OLD Data

So, what do you do with your OLD computer? Perhaps someone else can use it, maybe a school or a retirement center?

One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that deleting files using Windows Explorer actually deletes the files! It DOESN’T!

When you delete files in Windows, all it does is delete the pointers that show where the files are. Any competent computer whiz can easily find a program on the Internet that will rebuild the file pointers, and then they have access to all your files- your emails, your business information and your financial information.

You can go to any flea market in the country, and chances are you can purchase a used hard drive with the old owner’s data still on it! Many professional identity thieves are doing just that!!!!

What CAN you do?

Personally, I remove the hard drive from the computer, and I keep it (not in a place that it would be found if a burglar came into my house).

Another alternative is to use a free disk wiping utility or purchase one.

To effectively remove data from a hard drive, it must be overwritten completely several times. All of the temporary files, all of the caches, all of the “swap files” that are created as you work may be lurking in some unknown corner of the hard drive.

Contrary to popular belief, even reformatting the drive does not necessarily make file recovery impossible!

Consider this – A recent search of hard drives that had been discarded revealed: