What was in my mind in January?

Brain Challenge - Status

I’ve be practicing these days. I must confess that I love challenges. This game caught my attention and part of my free time. My results after 6 days has satisfied my ego and make me start to think about buy the sequel. I started with 47% and now I have 87%. My main area is memory, I reached 100% (supposedly all my potential) and the lowest one is visual. That’s something I can’t understand. I need my visual abilities to achieve the rest, but I don’t have a good score on that.

Does it works? Well, I don’t think I’m smarter but I feel faster to do some activities, specially calculating, which is one of my weak points. Can I achieve 100%? I think is totally possible, but hard to get. At this rhythm, maybe at the end of February I'll get it.

Google Docs vs. Microsoft Office Live Workspace

I used to share documents with my colleges and friends, using emails to send the files. This is inefficient because you can easily create a parallel version or lost track of the file. For this issue there is a solution: Google Docs. A versatile option to share documents for free, allowing you to edit them online.

Google Docs now has a competitor, Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Like SharePoint, you can share documents and manage versions. I made this chart to compare some of the features I already tested in both. I will continue comparing them.

Features	Google Docs	MS Office Live Workspace
Allow edit documents without installed software	Yes	No
Integration with MSOffice	No	Yes, installing a plug-in
Versioning	Yes	Yes
Collaborative work	Yes	Yes
Available mobile (Symbian)	Yes, read only	No (web browser no compatible)
Web Browsers	IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari (mobile)	IE, Firefox

Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Ox

Happy New Chinese Year!!! This year is Earth Ox year. Also it is my sister’s year; because following Chinese calendar every 12 years from your birthday is your year and a lot of good things will be happen to you.

This time I received the year in a casino, touching the dragon as a symbol of prosperity and good luck. My problem was there were a lot of people also wanting to touch it, I fought a little bit but I did it!

My sign is the Sheep, but some people say that I share more characteristics with the Monkey. I wish this year be really prosper and I achieve all my goals.

P.S.-  If you like the Ox, Silkysteps is a nice web with a lot of images for colouring, including the whole Chinese calendar.

Brain Challenge

Aging is hard. I slowly notice that every day is more difficult to me make simple calculus or remember facts. It’s part of leaving my brain being lazy. 

Train your brain is not difficult; however the lack of time makes it almost impossible. In my researching of a nice way to get fun and become smarter, I was very tempted of buy a Nintendo DS and Brain Age 2, but it’s not a good idea if you’re saving money. Luckily I found a game for N95: Brain Challenge of Gameloft.

This game focus on 4 abilities: logic, math, memory and visual. And each one has 3 activities with skill levels. You can practice every activity or measure your current level. My Achilles heel is logic, here is a sample of Balanced activity, in which you should choose the heaviest thing, but it’s tricky because you should follow the balances and not the shape or the object. This is the heaviest bird I seen in my life.

These are my last results. No bad I think. I’ll try to play every day and see if I can improve my skills.

 

There is also a sequel, Brain Challenge 2: Stress Management, which I’ll get after pass 80% on each ability.

Word cloud – Wordle

Surfing on Internet I found Wordle, a Java applet for create word clouds. You can create your own at www.wordle.net

What are word clouds for? Well, I took the text of my most active months in this blog and made some clouds. They really explain what I had my mind busy in each month.

Crosswords

My mom used to solve crosswords. I remember that we bought newspaper almost every day and she read them almost completely, but Wednesdays and Saturdays were special days for her. Those were the crossword days.

Time to time I solve, or tried to, a crossword who come with the Sunday newspaper, but it’s a mixture between easy and silly. Some weeks ago I found a huge crossword on Saturday which made me remember old times. I couldn’t resist the temptation and started to solve it. After finish I asked again my dad to put it the office because there is a contests with prizes and extra money is always welcome.

Nowadays I’m solving one divided in 3 pieces. Yesterday I got the second one and when I get the final piece next Saturday I’ll put them together, solve it and participate in a new contest.

A little bit change of plans

Yesterday I received good news that made me change some plans I had. In the middle of the darkness there is a light, a light I didn’t expected so soon. I’m checking my new priorities and my list of resolutions. At this moment there is no changes on the list, just I need to get hurry.

Also I chose my next certification: Oracle Database OCP 10g. I had discarded this one some months ago after get the OCA, but again a little unexpected light appeared. Get ready is now the problem. LOL

My 8GB MicroSD died (Part V)

I've been busy these days, so I had to ask my dad to put my envelope with my MicroSD in the post office. Now, I can only wait and see if I can get a new one or I should start to search for a 8GB class 6. I’m a bit reluctant to buy a new one. I know myself and if I didn’t think carefully maybe now I would be buying a new one and sending the old one. Luckily the reason was stronger than my whim.

My 8GB MicroSD died (Part IV)

Good news, provider answered and is asking me to send the card back! Well, I expected that without being optimistic. We’re finally agree that the card is broke down. I’ll send it by mail as soon as possible. 

My 8GB MicroSD died (Part III)

I received an answer from my seller. Now we are exchanging e-mails and performing test to the card in order to see if there is something else to do. I’m sure the card is dead but I hope my seller can give me some options. I want my card!

My 8GB MicroSD died (part II)

I could save my info, but not all. As I have another microSD card, I put my info there and now my N95 is working fine. My final touches are re-install some programs.

The previous one is officially dead, as I can’t format it. It’s a HW failure. I wrote an e-mail to the ebay's seller if there is some hope. Also I’m searching for a new one, maybe class 6.

My final status: 

• I lost my data from Wellness Diary. I had to use my previous backup from November and re-import the past entries from Sport Tracker and Step Counter.
  
• I could restore data from Sport Tracker, Step Counter and Mobipocket Reader, but I had to reinstall them.
  

My advise is: take a full backup of the MicroSD time to time. Don’t suffer.

Bad luck is chasing me! My 8GB MicroSD died!

First, my problem with N95 browser, now my little 8GB MicroSD broke down today. I’m trying patiently to rescue all as I can, but cyclic redundancy is failing over and over. Fortunately I performed sync yesterday, but some data (for example Sport Tracker) is not synchronized.

Everything started when I was testing Nokia Download! and installed “Money Manager”. As it was a trial, I proceeded to uninstall it and when I checked some applications disappeared. Also I tried to “update” Sport Tracker using Download!, I think there started the corruption, because I was using the last beta version.

I’m tired now. I’ll continue tomorrow with this rescue mission.