Are you trying to decide between a matte and glossy screen on a new laptop? I think this picture below speaks for itself. The laptop on the bottom is glossy (our new "backup" laptop at BloomSpot), the monitor on top is matte. Both are displaying a fully black terminal.
Conclusion: You could already have guessed this, but Glossy Sucks, especially for developers and really in general people who spend time in bright offices working directly on their laptop.
Somewhere many moons past, I came across a quote that piqued my interest: "The secret to greatness is to be the person you pretend to be."
We spend hundreds of dollars and hours on personal development programs in an attempt to learn how to better ourselves, or achieve our goals. It is wonderful no? The act of self-betterment is a staple to happiness and essential in the larger context to the advancement of our society. Books and articles can guide us, however, the truth is that most of us already know exactly how to achieve the things we want in our life. The problem is hardly ever the know-how of how to get where we want to be. It is usually in the vast gap between what we know we should be doing and what we actually do. For example, do you want to lose weight and be healthy? Why not? Most of us do. Think about that honestly now, without kidding yourself. You already know how to do that, don't you? If you really did what you already know you need to do, you could probably accomplish your fitness goal within a few months. Similarly, do you want to get promoted at work? You already know what that takes too right? Want to learn piano? Want to become a better tennis player?... You get the idea.So, while I'm not preaching entirely against reading books and articles, as they can provide inspiration and new ideas, I would suggest that in achieving your dreams, spend twice the time on action and half the time on research. Too many times we get lost in research and subconsciously delay what we know is necessary. The pretense of planning, after a certain point, just becomes laziness to act. But you already knew that right?A couple pics with Akshay, a friend from Mumbai who is visiting the Bay Area and staying with me in Sunnyvale. I'm pretty sure Akshay was trying to roar in the first pic...
I grew up on Windows. Starting with Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and so on. In my family I was (and still am) known for my knowledge of how to fix broken computers. A few days ago, however, one of my friends called me with some weird problem with his Mac. Even though I've been on Mac for about 1.5 years now, I felt totally lost in helping him. I could tell him everything about how to use his Mac to the max, taking advantage of all the cool features, but when it came to figuring out why his computer wouldn't turn on or why he was seeing some crazy error while booting up -- I found myself lost. How is it that I knew so much about fixing Windows but have been so clueless about Macs?
I came to a basic realization: I don't know how to fix Mac's because I've never really had to "fix" major issues with my own Mac! (actually I did once when I had permissions issues with my drive, but that was caused by my mistake). In Windows, every week I remember troubleshooting some issue or another. I had fought countless viruses, created and resolved major havoc on my machines. In this process, I learned a lot. So does the fact that I don't know how to fix a Mac really speak for their top quality or am I just over-thinking my laziness in educating myself about my Mac's internals?
