I have always found the hosting at BlueHost satisfactory and I have recommended them to people who have sought my advice. But their customer service as well as their technical services are starting to get worse as demonstrated by the unfortunate incident I experienced this morning.

Here’s what happened.

1. I host all projects under the subdomain http://projects.kuzzuk.net which is tied to a sub-folder call “projects_kuzzuk”. So the URLs for my clients look like http://projects.kuzzuk.net/projectname.




2. This morning I was using Fantastico to install WordPress for a new project for a client.




3. It was my mistake that I entered ” projectname” instead of “projectname” (there was a leading space).




4. It returned an error so I tried to uninstall the erroneous installation. But instead of just removing the erroneous folder, it removed my entire sub-folder with all my client projects.




5. I contacted BlueHost customer service chat and the guy in the other side asked for my domain thrice even though I had given it to him to begin with. Never mind that, he made another suggestion to use SimpleScripts (an alternative to Fantastico) and I followed instructions. This lead to the correct installation of the new project but all the other projects were still missing. I told him that but he simply didn’t get it (spent half an hour with him). As it didn’t solve the problem, I uninstalled the new installation via simpleScripts (which did not uninstall cleanly) and asked for a full site restore.




6. Horror of horrors. He calmly tells me he cannot find any backups and sorry the restore cannot be done. BlueHost brags on its site under “World Class Technology” that it provides “Courtesy Site Backups” (highlighted in red below). In all fairness, they have done a restore for me in the past but my post is how their service is going from bad to worse.




7. Now, I’m having so much fun restoring the site manually and hoping it will work.

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See how your website stacks up. Get graded at http://www.websitegrader.com/

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I’ll be joining hordes of people in boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games 2008. I will neither be watching it on TV nor reading reports in newspapers. If you feel the same way, join the Free Tibet! Boycott Beijing 2008 Olympics on FaceBook.

This cartoon (thanks Sonam didi for forwarding the email to me) shows exactly why I am boycotting the Olympic Games.

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Well the Indian cricket team have done it! They have beaten the loud mouth Aussies in their own backyard. I’m so happy. Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, in his cocky way stated that there wouldn’t be a need for a third final indicating that they would squash India. But irony of ironies, the 3rd final will not be needed and its India who have trashed the Aussies. I feel good.

As if that wasn’t enough, now India’s Sachin Tendulkar is the world’s top batsman in One Day cricket displacing, who else, but the arrogant Ponting.

The ultimate icing came when the Indian under-19s lifted the Under-19 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur. No wonder I feel great!

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It must be my lucky day, I got free membership to JoomlaPraise, a Joomla template club where I was one of the first 50 to sign-up. That’s like US$75 for free.

What you get for joining JoomlaPraise template club are as follows:

1. Access to tutorials and videos.
2. Consultation and Joomla advice.
3. Unlimited access and usage of JoomlaPraise Club and Free Templates.
4. Unlimited access and usage of JoomlaPraise Club and Free Extensions.

Well hurry and go to JoomlaPraise and sign up. If you manage to get the free subscription or buy one then I’ll see you in the club. My username is dipankar (unimaginative, huh?).

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Coming from a mixed religious parental background, I do not belong to any religion but I’ve always been fascinated by Buddhist philosophy and teachings. This fascination grew more when I read Ajahn Brahm’s book Opening The Door Of Your Heart / Who Ordered This Truckload Of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life’s Difficulties and attended his talk early this year in Singapore.

Today I attended another Dhamma talk by Ajahn Brahm titled “Solving Problems” at the Buddhist Fellowship Centre in Singapore. The talk was eye-opening for many reasons as it gave new perspectives and wisdom to look at problems and find wise solutions.

Here’s my attempt at summarizing the wisdom.

1. Define Problems Anew: A problem is only a problem when there is a solution. Do not waste precious time, energy and emotions on problems that do not have a solution.




2. Drink a Cup of Tea: Relax and let all information about a problem sink into you without being fearful or apprehensive. When the mind is still and free of stress, innovative solutions come from within.




3. All Decisions are Correct and All Outcomes can be Directed: Do not mull over the fact whether your decisions are correct or not. Eventually, all decisions are correct as we must trust ourselves that we can direct the outcome of the decision to our favor.




4. Buddhist Way of Solving Problems: If these 4 principles are at the heart of decision making then problems will be resolved.
   • If there’s no ill-will towards others then the decision is correct.
   • If there’s no selfishness and feelings of what’s in it for me then the decision will work out.
   • If there’s no doubt or delusion behind the decision making then the outcome will be as desired.
   • If there’s no fear in the background of decision making then the outcome will be as desired.

I urge you to read Ajahn Brahm’s book Opening The Door Of Your Heart / Who Ordered This Truckload Of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life’s Difficulties. You don’t have to be a Buddhist (I am not) to enjoy the humor, compassion and wisdom in the stories of the book.

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Any website can be spruced up with the use of appropriate icons and many folks on the Internet have been kind enough to provide free icons that can be used on any website. Below is a listing of 23 (in alphabetical order) that I like and don’t forget to thank them if you do use these icons.

1. ASP NET Icons: These 300 free icons are created by AW/Systems.




2. Beauticons: This set of photo-realistic icons are the creation of David Leonardelli.




3. Bitcons: This set of 121 icons is created by P.J. Onori.




4. Brand Spanking New: This set of 113 10X10 grayscale icons are created and released for free by Timothy Groves, a designer based in Munich, Germany.




5. BS-Markup: There’s nothing BS about this 9 sets of grayscale icons by Björn Seibert.




6. Drunky Love: The icons can be found here and there.




7. Exploding Boy: This nice set of icons are the creation of Christopher Ware, a web and graphic designer living and working in Birmingham, Alabama.




8. Fam Fam Fam: These icons are the creation of Mark James who is a part-time web developer and a part-time student currently living in Birmingham, UK. There are currently 3 sets of icons - Silk, Flags and Mini. Another set Bitsy is set to be released soon.




9. Fast Icons: This company provides many sets of icons and some sets are nicely hand drawn. Check out their iPhone set.




10. Greyscale: Greyscale is a set of 40 greyscale icons which each fit into a 34 x 34 pixel area created by Ian Main, an Australian web designer.




11. Icon Base: A nice set from Icon Base.




12. Icon Kits: This company provides points or one free download a month for being their member. It is worth signing up as the icons are gorgeous.




13. N Design: These icons are by Nick La who is based in Toronto. Apart from the free icons there are also ones available for purchase at a reasonable price.




14. Pinvoke: This set of icons is by a freelance designer in Tokyo, Japan. An impressive set that I like a lot.




15. Spheres Icons: This set of free colorful icons are created by a talented designer named Ken Saunders who despite having diabetes and poor eye condition contributes positively to the design community. Great job, Ken.




16. Studio Twenty Eight: A great set of icons from Javier Ocasio aka Franco aka KoL from Bayamón Puerto Rico.




17. Sweetie: There are two sets of icons - Sweetie Base Pack and Sweetie Communication created by Joseph North in Canada.




18. Two Tone Icons: As the name suggests, they have sets of two-toned icons with PSDs to change base colors easily.




19. Vista Icons: This is a collection of 2,500 Vista icons.




20. WebsiteIcons.Com: At last count, they have 11 sets of nicely categorized icons. These icons are created by a design company in Luxemburg.




21. WebsiteIcons.Net: Nice colorful icons which are of really good quality.




22. Yegor Gilyov: A great cartoony set of icons from Yegor Gilyov, the co-founder of TurboMilk.




23. Yellow Icons: These icons are from a small company of 10 odd (no pun intended) people and their creations are great to say the least.

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It is virtually impossible to test a website on different browsers as there are just too many Operating System platforms and browser versions. But not all is lost as you can test quite comprehensively by using one of the following services:

1. Multiple IEs: Since IE or Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser on the web (whether we like it or not), it makes sense to test on different versions of IE. Notably versions 6 and 7. A good option would be to install Multiple IEs and test your website locally. However, this program does not work on Windows Vista and you may not want to hack around to run Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Vista. Simply not worth the time, effort and risk.




2. BrowserShots.Org: This is a web-based service so it doesn’t require any download and installation. It seems to work pretty well and you can download the results as a zipped file of screenshots. Check out http://browsershots.org to test your website. I tested a client’s site that I was working on and some of the screenshots in FireFox and IE 5.5 & 6 are below (click thumbnail to see full version).
   

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I agree that this post title is a little gimmicky but I wanted to share my experience within eLance (this is my profile and I haven’t completed the projects so haven’t earned anything yet).

eLance Rockstar? Not Yet!

I joined eLance last week so obviously I’m no rockstar there. I submitted about 10 bids and 3 were awarded to me (out of which I accepted 2) despite the fact that I had zero credentials on eLance. That’s 30% success rate which is not bad at all.

Here’s how I built trust on the bids I submitted.

1. Good Communication: I thoroughly read the requirements and re-stated the requirements so nothing was lost in translation. Here’s what one buyer had to say about my bid even though I did not get that particular job but there’s a good chance that he’ll consider me when he puts up a new job for bidding.
   
   

   Hi Dipankar,

   Normally, I would decline your bid automatically because you don’t have any buyer feedback and so you are an unknown quantity. However, I was impressed by your communication skills in reviewing the project description back to me to make sure we’re on the same page, with your offer for free SEO, and with your profile that says you do free work for charities. Although I NEVER do this for providers without any feedback, I have added you to my list of saved providers so that I may invite you to future projects.

   On this project, however, I am going with another provider because they offered the following list of extra services and plugins at no extra charge:

   Thanks for your bid, and I will keep you in mind on future projects.

   Best regards,
   Dan




2. Going The Extra Mile: I didn’t just stick to the requirements. If I felt that something was missing because the buyer had missed out or was not aware of it, I highlighted it and offered to do it as a bonus if the effort from my side was minimal. This helped differentiate me from the other providers.




3. Bonus Service: This point is related to the one above. Everyone appreciates valuable freebies and eLance buyers are no different. I intentionally looked for something extra that I could provide which wouldn’t require much effort from me and I bundled that in my bid.




4. Humbled Myself: I always started a bid by being truthful and humbling myself. I stated that I’m new to eLance but I do have extensive experience working on blogs, CMSes and SEO. I figured that starting a bid in this manner would prompt the buyer to read the entire bid instead of just tossing it out.




5. Highlighted My Strengths: Even though I humbled myself, I immediately highlighted my strengths and experience by showcasing the work I have done. And I only bid on jobs where I was certain that I would do a great job. I didn’t bid indiscriminately.




6. Follow-Up: I used eLance’s PMB (Personal Message Board) to follow-up and check with the buyers whether they had any questions on my bid. Whenever they had any queries, I replied promptly.

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Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4 Hour Work Week inspired me to take the plunge and work for myself so this will probably be the only book that I’ll summarize chapter by chapter. I’m doing this especially for myself but if you find it useful then do leave a comment.

The 4 Hour Work Week is divided into 4 sections - 1) D is for Definition, 2) E is for elimination, 3) A is for Automation and 4) L is for Liberation. This chapter falls under the first section.

Step 1: D is for Definition

1. The GOAL is not to be RICH and MISERABLE.




2. The goal of the New Rich (NR) are very different than the goals of the Deferrers (D) - people who save everything for the end only to find out they don’t have enough time.

   The difference between the New Rich and the Deferrers are subtle yet profound.

   Deferrers (D)	New Rich (NR)
   Work for themselves	Have others work for us
   To work when they want to	Not to work for work’s sake but to get maximum rewards for minimum necessary input
   To retire young ot early	To have mini-retirements spread throughout life
   To purchase all the things they want to have	To do all the things we want to do and be all the things we want to be
   To be the boss and not the employee	To neither be the boss nor the employee but the owner
   To make lots of moolah	To make lots of money but for very specific goals and desires
   To have more	To have more quality and less clutter
   To have a big pay-day in the form of IPO or acquisition	To ensure payday is everyday
   To be free not to do what they hate to do	To be free not to do what we hate to do and yet not work for work’s sake




3. Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the 4 Ws - WHAT you do, WHEN you do, WHERE you do and with WHOM you do it.




4. Who are the NRs?
   • An employee who works remotely to generate 90% of results in 10% of time and follows his/her passion in his/her spare time.
   • An entrepreneur who fires the least productive PITA (Pain-In-the-Ass) customers and automates his/her business to pursue their passion.
   • A student who starts an automated online business.

   In short, options are limitless. All that is needed is replacement of assumptions and change of rules.

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I resisted reading The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma for a long time because I thought the title was gimmicky. I realized that I was being closed to new ideas by literally judging a book by its cover and its title so I picked up the book. I’m glad that I read the book as it gave me access to age-old wisdom in a easy-to-read fable.

The book is about Julian Mantle, a high-profile lawyer who collapses in the middle of a trial and decides to find the purpose of life by traveling to the Himalayas where he meets a group of sages who impart their wisdom to him via a fable.

The fable starts in a magnificent garden with a lighthouse in the middle of the grounds. Out of the lighthouse walks a 9 foot tall 900-pound Sumo wrestler who is naked except for a pink wire cable covering his privates. He slips and falls on a stopwatch that’s been lying on the floor and loses consciousness. However, the wrestler wakes up to the fresh fragrance of yellow roses coming from a distance. He looks over and then discovers that there is a diamond-studded pathway which he takes.

The Magnificent Garden Represents Our Mind

1. Nurture the mind daily.
2. Only let positive thoughts into your mind.
3. Mind can be mastered through concentration and a useful technique is to practice the “heart of the rose” every morning. This entails focusing on the heart of a fresh rose and improving concentration of mind everyday.
4. Spend time in the morning visualizing what you plan to become.

The Lighthouse Signifies Our Purpose of Life

1. Life is finite so it is important to concentrate on your life’s main purpose.
2. Find something you love and do it with focus and passion.
3. Goals and objectives can be achieved through a 5 step process.
1. Envision vividly what you desire.
2. Apply some positive pressure or stress. For example, a public declaration of your goal.
3. Put the goals on paper with appropriate timelines. Get a dreambook and divide into sections like health and wealth. Paste pictures and look at this book everyday.
4. Apply the magic “rule of 21″. That is to practice the new habit for 21 days to install it permanently into your system.
5. Laugh, love and live everyday passionately.

The Sumo Wrestler Represents KAIZEN

1. This entails - building strength of character, developing mental toughness and living with courage.
2. The mind, body and soul needs to be improved in unison.
3. The only limits of your life are the ones you set yourself daily.
4. Kaizen means the never ending and daily improvement of oneself. It signifies pushing the boundaries to develop mind, body and spirit in spite of fear, adversity and discomfort.

There are 10 rituals to practice Kaizen everyday.

1. Ritual of Solitude: This is a mandatory period of silence by yourself for self-renewal. It can span from 15 minutes to an hour and preferably in a place that’s close to nature.
2. Ritual of Physicality: This means exercising and breathing effectively.
3. Ritual of Live Nourishment: Eating live foods that are created by the interaction of sun, water and soil. Partaking of vegetables, grains and fruits.
4. Ritual of Abundant Knowledge: Reading (studying) regularly for 30 minutes a day. The reading material should develop you as a person. Examples of good reading include books like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Think and Grow Rich!, Gandhi An Autobiography, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic - Seneca and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
5. Ritual of Personal Reflection: Contemplate every night before bed to identify which experiences of your day has been positive or negative. Everyday strive to improve on the positive and eliminate the negative experiences.
6. Ritual of Early Morning Awakening: Rise with the morning sun everyday as we sleep too much in any case. 6 hours of restful sleep is better than 10 hours of disturbed sleep.
7. Ritual of Music: Never underestimate the power of music to uplift and motivate yourself everyday.
8. Ritual of the Spoken Word: The spoken word is powerful. For example, sages use mantras to create a positive frame of mind. Mantras can be used in any area like health, relationships, spiritual, wealth, etc…
9. Ritual of Congruent Character: This can be a daily actions to develop the character by developing the virtues of industry, compassion, humility, patience, honesty and courage.
10. Ritual of Simplicity: Live a simple uncluttered life by eliminating the unimportant and focusing on the IMPORTANT.

Pink Wire Cable Signifies Discipline

1. A wire cable consists of many tiny strings woven together. The strings by itself is weak but together when they form the cable it is strong.
2. Will-power and discipline are like the strings that need to be woven together to make it strong.
3. Discipline and self-control is the act of controlling the mind and this can be done by replacing weak and negative thoughts with strong and positive ones.
4. Control your thoughts, control your mind, control your life and become the master of your destiny.
5. A formula to develop discipline and self-control is to chant the mantra with visualization - “I am more than I appear to be. All the world’s strength and power rest inside me.”

The Stopwatch Represents TIME

Time is the most important commodity of our lives and we have to learn how to make the most of our time on earth.

1. Time is finite and live must be lived to its fullest potential.
2. Time mastery is the basis of life mastery.
3. Plan daily/weekly to manage time creatively and focus on the most important aspects.
4. Remember the 80/20 Principle - 80% of the results are generated by 20% of effort.
5. Do not let others steal time. Develop the ability to say no to little things so that you get the power to say YES to important things.
6. Simplify life to be able to focus on the important things of life.
7. Develop a death-bed mentality. What would you do today if it was the last day of your life? Even leaders like Steve Jobs practice the death-bed mentality.
8. Always do things as if failure is not an option and success will be assured.
9. Never be a prisoner of the past but be the architect of the future.

Fragrance of Fresh Yellow Roses Signifies Service

1. Serve people daily and show random acts of kindness because the hand that serves roses to others retains some of the fragrance.
2. Abundance of mental ability, boundless energy, unlimited creativity, a storehouse of discipline and a well-spring of peacefulness are gifts that you need to develop in yourself in order to share it with others.
3. Cultivate friends and nurture family. Develop an optimistic outlook of life.

Diamond Studded Pathway Represents Enlightened Living

1. Live an enlightened, joyous and rewarding life. Live in the NOW and live fully.
2. Live fully. Happiness is a journey not a destination.
3. Always remember that the path you are walking on right now is beautiful and studded with diamonds. Always live in the appreciation of the NOW.
4. Savor the NOW with family and friends. Enjoy every moment of the NOW. Living everyday in the NOW is the path to Nirvana
5. Practice the act of GRATITUDE everyday.
6. Follow the path of your dream and celebrate everyday as your dreams come true.
7. Be content in the NOW and do not hurry through life.
8. Everyone is unique and a wonder. A gift to the world. Build yourself little by little everyday.

Mindmap Summary

Click the image to see full-sized Mindmap Summary of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

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The best thing about working for myself has been the ability to manage my own time and do the things that I want to do. I have been quite intrigued by Sports Psychology so I picked up 2 DVDs from the Singapore National Library - Becoming a Champion: An Athlete’s Guide to Building Self-Confidence and Becoming a Champion Athlete: Mastering Pressure Situations! by Greg Dale, Assistant Professor and Sports Psychology Consultant at Duke University.

While watching the DVDs, I was constantly thinking how sports psychology techniques could be applied in business to become a champion entrepreneur. Here’s my take on it.
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StomperNet’s “How to Double Your Traffic and Triple Your Profits” is their first video in their Going Natural 2.0 Series. I watched it in YouTube as the video on their site wouldn’t work on both FireFox and IE. The YouTube video is at http://youtube.com/watch?v=EWStBRljjRg.

The main lesson here is to be able to achieve a Double Listing in Google search results page (or SERPs). An example of which is the search for ‘nun chaku’ that shows a double listing for Wikipedia in the SERPs.

StomperNet states that their eye-tracking tests (heatmap tests) indicate that a double listing results in 200% increase in clicks and that it is not hard to achieve a double listing if the steps below are followed.

1. Check the title tag density (i.e. how many times the keyword or key phrase appears on the title tag) of a current page which appears on the SERPs. This is the primary page.
2. Thereafter, check the keyword prominence (or position) in the title tag of the primary page.
3. Check the on-page density of that keyword for that pag