SomeNotes2

Note on How To Write Irresistible Query Letters by Lisa Collier Cool

Leads

  • 5 Ws (Who. . . What. . . When. . . Where. . . Why. . . How)
  • Inverted Pyramid (arouse interest, provide specifics, close with key points)
  • (???) Anecdote
  • Question
  • Facts
  • Quotes and Dialogue
  • Comparisons and Contrasts
  • Witty Definitions (considered cliche by another article I read)
  • Commands to the Reader
  • Surprising Twists
  • Shockers

Query Body

  1. lead (see above)
  2. statement of purpose
  3. outline
  4. facts & figures
  5. sources
  6. case histories
  7. quotes
  8. nuts & bolts
  9. theme
  10. background/future
  11. relevance to reader
  12. timing tie-ins
  13. news pages (???)
  14. illustrations
  15. extras

Slants that Sell

  1. new!
  2. sexy slants
  3. $ talks
  4. call of the wild (adventure)
  5. confidential
  6. promises, promises
  7. selling through intimidation
  8. unexpected reversals
  9. betting on the numbers
  10. maapping out a slant (geography)
  11. travel
  12. humor
  13. gee whiz!
  14. the best (superlatives to position???)

Notes on On Writing Well (4th Edition) by William Zinsser notes

Ch. 1 - The Transaction

  • "Any method that helps people say what they want to say is the right method for them." - p. 5

Ch. 2 - Simplicity

  • "strip every sentence to its cleanest components." - p. 7
  • "Writers must therefore constantly ask: What am I trying to say?" - p. 12

Ch. 3 - Clutter

  • "Clutter is the laborious phrase that has pushed out the short word that means the same thing." - p. 15
  • "Look for clutter in your writing and pune it ruthlessly." - p. 19

Ch. 4 - Style

  • "The point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up." - p. 20
  • "A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person." - p. 23
  • "Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal." - p. 26

Ch. 5 - The Audience

  • "You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience." - p. 27
  • "Simplify, prune, and strive for order." - p. 28

Ch. 6 - Words

  • "Notice the decisions that other writers make in their choice of words and be finicky about the ones that you select from the vast supply." - p. 37
  • "Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation." - p. 37
  • "Get in the habit of using dictionaries. My favorite for handy use is Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, . . ." - p. 37
  • "An excellent guide to these nuances is Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms." - p. 37-38
  • "If all your sentences move at the same plodding gait, which even you recognize as deadly but don't know how to cure, read them aloud." - p. 38

Ch. 7 - Usage

  • "All of this merely confirms what lexicographers have always known: that the laws of usage are relative, bending with the taste of the lawmakers." - p. 44

Ch. 8 - Nonfiction as Literature

  • "What I am saying is that I have no patience with the snobbery that accompanies "literature" -- The snobbery which says that nonfiction is only journalism by another name, and that journalism by and name is a dirty word." - p. 57

Ch. 9 - Unity

  • "All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem." - p. 59
  • "Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: "In What capacity am I going to address the reader?" (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) "What pronoun and tense am I going to use" "What style?" (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) "What attitude am I going to take toward the material?" (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?) "How much do I want to cover?" "What one point do I want to make?"" - p. 62
  • "Decide what corner of your subject you're going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop." - p. 63
  • "As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five -- just one." - p. 63

Ch. 10 - The Lead

  • "The most important sentence in any article is the first one." - p. 65
  • ". . . salvation often lies not in the writer's style but in some odd fact he was able to discover." - p. 68
  • ". . . you should always collect more material than you will use." - 69
  • ". . . look for your material everywhere, not just by reading the obvious sources and interviewing the obvious people." - p. 69
  • "But narrative is the oldest and most compelling method of holding somone's attention; every body wants to be told a story. Keep looking for ways to couch your information in narrative form." - p. 72

Ch. 11 - The Ending

  • "The perfect ending should take the reader slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right to him." - p. 76
  • "When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit." - p. 77
  • "Something that I often do in my own work is to bring my story full circle--to strike at the end an echo of a note that was sounded at the beginning." - p. 79

Ch. 12 - The interview

  • "Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid. . . " p. 81
  • "Never go into an interview without doing whatever homework you can." - p. 86
  • "Make a list of likely questions--it wil save you the vast embarrassment of going dry in mid-interview." - p. 86
  • "Your ethical duty to the person being inteviewed is to present his position accurately." - p. 89
  • "But after that your duty is to the reader. He or she deserves the smallest package." - p. 89
  • "But becareful where you break the quotation. Do it as soon as you naturally can, so that the reader knows who is talking, but not where it destroys the rhythm or the sense." - p. 91

Ch. 13 - Writing About a Place

  • "We don't want him to describe every ride at Disneyland, or tell us that the Grand Canyon is awesome, or that Venice has canals. If one of the rides at Disneyland got stuck, if somebody fell into the awesome Grand Canyon, that would be worth hearing about." - p. 95
  • "As a writer you must keep a tight rein on your subjective self--the traveler touched by new sights and sounds and smells--and keep an objective eye on the reader." - p. 95
  • "If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion--it's probably one of the innumerable cliches that have woven their way so tightly into the fabric of travel writing that it takes a special effort not to use them." - p. 96
  • "Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute. . . Find details that are significant. They may be important to your narrative; they may be unusual, or colorful, or comic, or entertaining. But make sure they are details that do useful work." - p. 96

Ch. 14 - Bits & Pieces

  • "Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb." - p. 108
  • "Most adverbs are unneccessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a precise meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning." - p. 109
  • "Most adjectives are also unnecessary. Like adverbs, they are sprinkled into sentences by writers who don't stop to think that the concept is already in the noun." - p. 110
  • "Pune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: 'a bit,' 'a little,' 'sort of,' 'kind of,' 'rather,' 'quite,' 'very,' 'too,' 'pretty much,' 'in a sense,' and dozens more. They dilute both your style and your persuasiveness." p . 111
  • "The exclamation point. Don't use it unless you must to achieve a certain effect." - p. 112
  • "The dash is used in two different ways. One is to amplify or justify in the second part of the sentence a thought you have stated in the first part. 'We decided to keep going--it was only 100 miles more and we could get there in time for dinner.' . . . The other use involves two dashes, which set apart a parenthetical thought within a longer sentence. 'She told me to get in the car--she had been after me all summer to have a haircut--and we drove silently into town.'" - p. 113
  • "Learn to alert the reader as early as possible in a setence to any change in mood from the pervious sentence." - p. 113
  • "Your style will obviously be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like "I'll" and "won't" when they fit comfortably into what you're writing." - p. 115
  • "Don't overstate." - p. 115
  • "If the reader catches you in just one bogus statement that you are trying to pass off as true, everything you write thereafter will be suspect." - p. 116
  • "The best solutions simply eliminate "he" and its connotations of male ownership by using other pronouns or by alternating some other component of the sentence. "We is a handy replacement for "He"; "our" and "the" can often replace "his." - p. 119
  • "Instead of talking about what "the writer" does and the trouble he gets into, I found more places where I could address the writer directly ("You'll often find . . . ")." - p. 120
  • "Keep your paragraphis short, especially if you're writing for a newspaper or a magazine that sets its type in a narrow width." - p. 120
  • "Dictated sentences tend to be pompous, sloppy, and redundant." - p. 121
  • "Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it." - p. 122
  • ". . . the effortless style is achieved by strenuous effort and rewriting. The nails of grammar and syntax are all in place; the english is as good as the writer can make it, and the total piece has a design that pulls the reader along from start to finish." - p. 123
  • "Taste is the instinct to know what works and to avoid what doesn't." - p. 125
  • "The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women whoare doing the kind of writing you want to do." - p. 127
  • "Writing that will endure tends to consist of words that are short and strong; words that anesthetize are words of three, four and fivfe syllables, mostly of Latin origin, many of them ending in "ion" and embodying a vague concept." - p. 129

Ch. 15 - Science, Technology and Nature

  • "You just can't assume that your readers know what you assume any boob knows, or that they still remember what was once explained to them." - p. 133
  • "Describing how a process works is valuable for two reasons. First, it forces you to make sure you know how it works. Then it forces you to take the reader through the same sequence of ideas and deductions that made the process clear to you." - p. 133
  • ". . . imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact that a reader must know before he can learn any more. The second sentence broadens what was stated first, making the pyramid wider, and the third sentence broadens the second, so that gradually you can move beyond mere fact into significance and speculation. . . " - p.134

Ch. 16 - Business Writing

  • "Remember that what yhou write is often the only chance you'll get to present yourself to someone whose business you want. If what you write is ornate or pompous or fuzzy, that's how you'll be perceived." - p. 156
  • ". . . be yourself when you write. You will stand out as a real person among the robots. . ." - p. 158

Ch. 17 - Sports

  • "[The best sportswriters] avoid the exhausted sysnonyms and strive for freshness elsewhere in constructing a sentence." - p. 160

Ch. 18 - Criticism

  • "A distinction should therefore be made between a 'critic' and a 'reviewer.'" - p. 173
  • "As a reviwer your job is more to report than to make an aesthetic judgment." - p. 173
  • ". . . a critic should like--or, better still, love--the medium he is reviewing. The reader deserves a lifelong movie buff who will bring along a reservoir of knowledge, passion and prejudice." - p. 174
  • ". . . Don't give away too mujch of the plot. Tell readers just enough to let them decide whether it's the kind of story they tend to enjoy, but not so much that you will kill their eventual enjoyment." - p. 174
  • ". . . use as much specific detail as possible. This avoid dealing in generalities, which, being generalities, mean nothing." - p. 174
  • "A final caution is to avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver--words like 'enthralling' and 'luminous.'" - p. 175

Ch. 19 - Humor

  • ". . . if you're trying to write humor, almost everything you do is serious." - p. 187
  • "The writer must find some comic device--satire, parody, irony, lampoon, nonsense--that he can use to disguise his serious point." - p. 189

Ch. 20 - Writing About Yourself

  • "If you're a writer, give yourself permission to tell us who you are." - p. 209
  • ". . . nobody should use it without posting in full view a surgeon general's warning: EXCESSIVE WIRING ABOUT YOURSELF CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO THE HEALTH OF THE WRITER AND THE READER." - p. 210-211
  • "To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth." - p. 212
  • "But the most interesting character in a memoir, we home, will turn out to be the person who wrote it." - p. 217

Ch. 21 - Writing with a Word Processor

  • "In short, the word processor can concentrate your mind on the craft of writing, revising and editing--much more powerfully than this has ever been possible, because your words are right in front of you in all their infiinite possibility, waiting to be infinitely reshaped." - p. 228
  • "I commend one thought to you as you dip your toe in the computer culture: You are more competent than you think you are." - p. 232
  • "Like many writers, I don't like to write; I like to have written." - p. 233
  • "Remember that the two main virtues of writing are clarity and simplicity. Look for clutter and pune it out. Read your sentences aloud. Do they sound like you? If they don't, fiddle with them until they do." - p. 234

Ch. 22 - Trust Your Material

  • ". . . one question you should ask at the start of every article or book is: How strong a presence should you be in your presentation of the facts?" - p. 236
  • "Trust your material. And when you go forth to gathher that material, trust yourself." - p. 243

Ch. 23 - A Writer's Decisions

  • "Readers can process only one idea at a time, and theey do it in linear sequence. Much of the trouble that writers get into comes from trying to make one sentence do too much work. Never be afraid to break a long sentence into two short ones, or even three." - p. 246
  • "Don't give readers of a magazine piece more inormation than they require; if you want to tell more, write a book or write for a scholarly journal.' - p. 247
  • "Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you've put into writing." - p. 253

Ch. 24 - Write as Well as You Can

  • "You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of methods will do the job; humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words. These seeming amusements in fact become your 'style.'" - p. 267
  • "You will only write as well as you make yourself write." - . 273

Notes on The Renegade Writer by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell

Diana's Query Checklist

  • [ ] Double check editor's name
  • [ ] Double check address
  • [ ] Make sure name in address matches name in salutation
  • [ ] References to magazines correct?
  • [ ] Read aloud twice
  • [ ] Clips enclosed?
  • [ ] Let sit overnight
  • [ ] 2nd set of eyes proofread
  • [ ] Read once more before sending

articles as email attachments

". . . start off with the article title, your name, and the word count up top, and the article pasted in below."

what you can include on a website

  • a list of published articles (divided into categories; each listing the title, name of magazine, publication date, and a snappy bit that describes the article topic [usually lifted from the lead paragraph])
  • information on reprints (mark articles with ~a red asterisk as they become available
  • clips (either link to online articles or upload the text of the articles yourself
  • testimonials (ask for testimonials from editors)
  • photo

Notes on Treasury of Tips for Writers edited by Marvin Weisbord

Interviewing

  1. interview for opinions, not facts
  2. catch your subject at leisure
  3. ask magazine to send a one-sentence note assigning you the story (to use to convince interviewees)
  4. when seeking anecdotes and color, interview a group of people at once
  5. edit while the subject talks
  6. for depth interviews, go back several times
  7. to see a celebrity, ask their friends
  8. close the notebook and then listen for the best material
  9. prepare questions, but let the subject talk
  10. for reluctant interviewees, let them know that they'll have a chance to tell their side of the story
  11. ask your subject to describe a typical day
  12. research the subject and be prepared to chit-chat to get the ball rolling
  13. when doing investigative reporting ask for exactly what you need and nothing that you don't
  14. write down controversial remarks once the subject has moved onto a new topic
  15. show sympathy, approval, and warmth
  16. to pry without offending, say "If you'll allow me to be the devil's advocate. . ."
  17. provocative questions
    1. What person influenced you most?
    2. What book, if any?
    3. What do you believe about people--can they be changed for better or worse?
    4. What do you do for relaxation?
    5. What was your greatest opportunity?

General

  • leave of mid-sentence when you know where you're headed, to be able to pick up easily the next day
  • show the piece to a "test audience" before submitting
  • generate sample headlines to spur writing
  • what gets cut out of an article may be salable elsewhere
  • imagine how you would start telling a friend about the story, in order to generate the lead
  • use "tk" (to come) to fill in gaps where you need to research or come back to
  • check all long direct quotes with the source
  • organize story ideas into
    • ideas to query
    • queries out
    • in research
    • in writing
    • manuscripts out
    • due

Notes from The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures by Frans Johansson

  1. The Intersection
    1. Creative Ideas and Innovation
      1. creative ideas are new
      2. creative ideas are valuable
      3. innovative ideas are realized
    2. Intersectional ideas share the following characteristics
      1. they are surprising and fascinating
      2. they take leaps in new directions
      3. they open up entirely new fields
      4. they provide a sspace for a person, team, or company to call its own
      5. they generate followers, which means the creators can become leaders
      6. they provide a source of directional innovation for years or decades to come
      7. they can affect the world in unprecedented ways
  2. The Rise of Intersections
    1. causes of the rise in interesections
      1. movement of poeple
      2. convergence of science
      3. leap of computation
  3. Breaking Down the Barriers Between Fields (ie, make more and varied associations)
  4. How to Make Barriers Fall
    1. expose yourself to range of cultures
    2. Learn differently (learn as many ways as possible without getting stuck in a particular way of thinking about those things)
    3. reverse assumptions
    4. try on different perspectives
  5. Randomly Combine Concepts
  6. How to Find the Combinations
    1. diversify occupations
    2. intereact with diverse groups of people
    3. go intersection hunting
  7. Ignite the Explosion of Ideas
    1. Relationship between quanitity and quality (the most successful innovators produce and realize an incredible number of ideas)
  8. How to Capture the Explosion
    1. strike a balance between depth and breadth
    2. actively generate many ideas (set a high numerical idea goal)
      1. traditional brainstorming rules:
        1. produce as many ideas as possible
        2. produce ideas as wild as possible
        3. build upon each other's ideas
        4. avoid passing judgment on ideas
      2. brainstorming downsides
        1. only one person can talk at once
        2. short term memory can't keep new ideas in storage while developing new ideas
        3. so, output suffers
      3. fixing brainstorming
        1. before meeting, schedule 15-20 minutes for members to brainstorm individually
        2. bring members together and start a group session on paper(w/o reading other's lists)
        3. combine ideas from all individuals and discuss most
      4. or implement brainwriting
        1. each person has a sheet of paper
        2. another sheet sits in the center
        3. people write ideas, put their paper in the center, and take another paper
        4. read the idea and add another one (related or not) and repeat from step 3 until time runs out
    3. allow time for evaluation
  9. Execute Past Your Failures (get ready for failure)
  10. How to Succeed in the Face of Failure
    1. try ideas that fail to find those that won't
      1. sutton's pointers:
        1. make people aware that failure to execute ideas is the greatest failure, and will be punished
        2. make sure everyone learns past failures; do not reward the same mistakes over and over again
        3. if people show low failure rates, be suspicious; they may be hiding mistakes or not taking risks rather than allowing others to learn from them
        4. hire people who have had inteligent failures and let others know that's one of the reasons they were hired
    2. reserve resources for trial and error
      1. be prepared to change plans, they may need to be adjusted
      2. spend carefully
      3. give yourself time for trial and error
      4. proceed with caution if achievement depends on a sussesful first try
    3. remain motivated
  11. Break Out of Your Network
  12. How to Leave the Network Behind
  13. Take Risks and Overcome Fear
    1. If you want to create something revolutionary, head toward the Intersection." The Intersection represents the best chance to innovate because of the explosion of unique concept combinations.
  14. How to Adopt a Balanced View of Risk
    1. Avoid Behavioral traps relating to risk
      1. Trap #1: If things are going well, we stay within a field.
      2. Trap #2: Time spent in a field becomes a reason to stay in the field
      3. Trap #3: We view risks at the intersection from a directional perspective
    2. Acknowledge risks and fears
  15. Step into the Intersection
    1. the future is in the Intersection: find your way there
    2. expect the unexpected because intersections are everwhere
    3. there is logic to the intersection, but the logic is not obvious
    4. take the leap
  • Good quote: "More important than keeping notebooks handy is actually using them. Getting used to recording ideas, thoughts and insights requires commitment. Once you develop this habit, though, you will wonder how you ever made it through the day without it." (pp. 113-114)

Notes on Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie

  1. revive the creative genius (kids stop being artists by the 6th grade)
  2. choose not to be mesmerized by the culture of the company
  3. when a colleague's job seems easy, they may be a champion at play
  4. creativity occurs before tangible evidence of productivity (quiet time is required for profound creativity)
  5. "We need much courage if we are to respond successsfully to the consequences of exploring beyond authorities; sometimes-beneficial, sometimes-detrimental boundaries. And, if we are to grow, explore we must." - p. 80
  6. even creative endeavors can become stale when repeated
  7. ". . . if you want to live more fully, start somewhere toward the safe end of the security/freedom continuum and move mindfully, ever so mindfully, toward the free end." - p. 104
  8. the left-brain works to quiet the creativity of the right-brain
  9. arrive at original though via: myth, art, imagination, magic, poetry, and play
  10. teasing is a disguised form of shaming
  11. use sensuousness to connect with the world and free stiffled creativity
  12. "help the bureaucrat discover a means harmonious with the system to meet your needs." - p. 139
  13. where there is the perception of power, there is power
  14. challenge the pyramid organization model with a new paradigm (the more holistic plum tree organizational model)
  15. if you want creativity to return, give up focusing on it
  16. release the built-up culture to gain creative insight
  17. "To be fully free to create, we must first find the courage and willingness to let go."
  18. "If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you." - p. 224

Notes from Secrets From An Inventor's Notebook by Maurice Kanbar

5 Steps to Inventing success

  1. solve a problem
    1. Observe the world around you and be curious about what you see.
    2. Study problems--think about why they exist, who they affect, and how they might be solved.
    3. Ask questions, of yourself and others.
    4. Look up words you don't understand and subjects that are unfamiliar to you.
    5. Recognize and embrace the advantages of being a nonexpert.
    6. Read as much as you can.
      • local and national newspapers
      • magazines
      • catalogs
      • trade journals and trade association publications
      • government studies
      • the Internet
    7. Pay attention to surprises, accidents, and make connections--think of ways to use them.
    8. Carry a notebook to record your questions, insights, and reflections.
    9. Talk with others. Seek out intelligent give and take in small group, with egos checked at the door, and with mutual criticism that requires each person to defend his or her positions.
    10. Go to places like San Francisco's Exploratorium museum of science, art and human perception--places where the imagination and ingenuity of others is on display and may spark your own.
  2. prove your invention/build a prototype
  3. protect your idea
  4. manufacture or license?
    • being able to retail for approximately four times your cost, including manufacturing, packaging, insurance, returns, waste, etc. is a standard goal ($1 to make, $3.98 retail)
  5. market with a twist
    1. hold a contest (among a diverse group) to name the product or service

Ask Yourself:

  • Is manufacturing my idea fesible? Do I have some nuts-and-bolts ideas about how to carry it out?
  • Is my idea worth implementing? Will it offer unique benefits over other products?
  • Is it a clear winner? Is the market big enough to create decent profit margins in the not-too-distant future?

Prototyping phases:

  • Basic Design: nonfunctional or crudely functional; probably not make from material you ultimately envision
  • Functional Model: tested until it works as you'd like
  • Model Modified Based on Testing: tested on end users and improved
  • Working Prototype: tested by actual consumers in real-world setting
  • Production Models: sold in a test market

Some Prototyping Resources

  • builders of model airplanes and other hobbyists
  • California manufacturing technology center
  • Fine Scale Modeler, Design News, and Machine Design magazines for articles and supplier ads
  • McCaster-Carr Supply Company for tools and hardware
  • Modelmaker's Handbook (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • Stock Model Parts sells an assortment of small parts and prototype kits
  • United States Plastic Corporation sells plastic materials, glues, and tools

Low-Cost Market Research

  • test your reasoning, not necessarily your idea, on people you know will be absolutely honest with you. ("Would you buy a gadget that does X?" no "How would you feel about X gadget?")
  • Approach people who work in the market you are trying to enter and offer to pay them for a few hours of consulting time. Again, you need not disclose your idea. Ask about existing products, consumer feeback, adn any unusual sales factors.
  • Talk to distributors, store owners, and salespeople.
  • Go to tradeshows.

Chapter titled "Protect Your Idea" has lots of good information.

Notes on Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healing by Andrew Weil

Qualities of Breathing to Develop

  1. Deeper
  2. Slower
  3. Quieter
  4. More Regular
  • the simplest exercise is to just observe your breathing
  • think of breath as beginning with exhaling
  • breath in so that your abdomen moves out

Notes from Design For Community by Derek M. Powazek

  • Please introduce yourself. Who are you and what's your background?
  • Please tell us about the community project. What is it about?
  • Let's talk audience. Who is the site community project for, exactly?
  • Let's talk about content. What is on this site for the community to talk about?
  • What kind of community features do you want to provide?

Notes on Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

  1. knowing ones emotions (self-awareness)
  2. managing emotions
  3. motivating oneself
  4. recognizing emotions in others
  5. handling relationships

Notes on Get Clark Smart: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Rich from America's Money-Saving Expert by Clark Howard

Cars

  • buying cars
    • look at cars when the dealership is closed to avoid pushy salespeople
    • rent a car for a day or two to test drive it thoroughly
    • discuss a trade-in only after negotiating the purchase of a car
    • by selling your vehicle yourself, you'll get a price about halfway between average trade-in and average retail
    • finance for 48 months or less or you can eventually end up owing more than the car is worth
    • pay $20 for a report on used cars from www.carfax.com
  • car repairs
    • don't authorize any other work besides oil-changing at oil-change shops
    • write "estimate only" or "I authorize repairs up to _____." on work tickets
    • check www.alldata.com to see if your car is prone to any problems
    • take car to a reputable mechanic once a year or every 15K miles
    • beware of specialty repair shops, particularly brake and muffler shops
    • don't rely on famous name repair shops, the parent company may not accept reponsiblity for the francishe's actions
    • don't allow a tow truck to dictate what shop you get towed to
  • auto accidnets
    • wait for a police report before driving off
    • exchange information & get witnesses' contact information
    • report it to your insurance company even if not filing a claim & if the other driver was at fault, contact their insurance company also
    • if fault is in dispute, file the claim with your company and let the two fight it out
    • ask for a comparable rental car during repairs
    • insist on a lifetime warranty if at the insurer's preferred shop
    • don't accept the company's first estimate if the car is totalled, check comparable value online

Money

  • investing
    • priority one should be funding retirement
    • consider several investment vehicles for retirement savings:
      • 401k plan
      • Roth IRA
      • IRA
      • Simplified Employee Pension (SEP)
      • Simple IRA

Investing Priorities

  1. put money into 401k to the maximum your employer matches
  2. put $3,000 each year into a Roth IRA

Real Estate

  • buying real estate
    • make an offer on a home contingent on tis passing an inspection by an inspector of your choice and contingent on your ability to get financing at or below a set interest rate
    • get an owner's title insurance policy that covers you, not the lender, if your ownership is successfully challenged
    • hire a real estate attorney to review the closing papers and, if you're buying a hosue still under construction, to draft or review the purchase contract
    • before you buy a house, try your commute to work during rush hour
    • learn about the area surrounding a potential purchase, including the potential for new roads or development
    • look at a property while it's raining to see how water flows across it & look for signs of poor drainage and danger of flooding
    • buy a house that's fundamentally sound, in construction and materials, even if it doesn't have the latest, greatest design features
    • when buying a used home, it's important to put at least $50 a month into a repair fund
  • selling real estate
    • when selling yourself, always specify on the sign that brokers or agents are welcome to protect yourself from agents steering clients away from your home because you're not paying commission
    • interview a number of real estate agents and preferably deal with one who sells a lot in your neighborhood
    • ask an agent for a detailed, written sales plan for marketing your home
    • limit listing time with an agent to 3 months or negotiate a fee to get out of listing after three months
    • listen to every offer and always make a counteroffer
    • prepare to sell: house should be clean, bright, uncluttered, and uncrowded
  • refinancing
    • insist on a good-faith estimate of the costs up front, before you give the lender a penny
  • mortgages
    • avoid paying private mortgage insurance by taking an 80% first mortgage and a 10-15% second mortgage
  • being a landlord
    • manage it as if it were a business; set rent that's fair for the market, not based on mortgage payment
    • require prospective tenants to fill out an application, pay an application fee, and give you permission to pull a copy of their credit report
    • make the security deposit a little higher or lower than, but no the same as, a month's rent
    • include a repair clause that makes the tenant responsible for the first $50 cost of any repair; to do this, you may have to charge a little less in rent
    • provide a $25 to $50 discount for early rent payment
    • do a move-in inspection and move-out inspection of the property to protect yourself in case you have to keep part or all of the security deposit to cover damage

Miscellaneous

  • homeowners insurance
    • raise your deductible to $1,000 or $2,500. You'll pay less in premiums, but more important, you'll reduce therisk that your insurer will cancel your coverage because you made too many claims
    • ask your agent what documentation you need to substantiate a claim in case of theft or fire; consider videotape
  • long distance calling
    • consider calling cards from warehouse clubs
  • travel
    • be ready to buy tickets when there's a great deal available, then figure out a reason you want to go
    • for hotels, check the hotel web sites and the independent travel sites, but look in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal first for specials deals that require a special code number
    • try renting the smallest car available in hopes of being upgraded due to availability
  • inventions
    • nonprofit inventors' clubs, which can be found in many cities, also are excellent for sharing ideas and providing encouragement

Notes from Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz

  1. Choose when to choose
  2. Be a chooser, not a picker
  3. Satisfice more and maximize less
  4. Think about the opportunity cost of opportunity costs
  5. Make your decisions non-reversable
  6. Practice an "Attitude of Gradtitude"
  7. Regret less
  8. Anticipate adaptation
  9. Control expectations
  10. Control Social comparison
  11. Learn to love constraints

See Also:

Notes from Secrets of Learning a Foreign Language by Graham Furrer

Sounds:

  1. every language has its own way of making sounds
  2. imitate, imitate, imitate
  3. exaggerate the sounds
  4. practice with a tape recorder

Word Pronunciation:

  1. nothing natural about English spelling
  2. may look, but not sound the same
  3. be ready to pronounce familiar letters differently
  4. don't leap at a guess about how a word is pronounced

Associating Words:

  1. you can't understand the language until you learn to think in the language (start to think in the new lanaguage from the first day)
  2. learn to associate an intially meaningless new sound with the idea or image of what it means (practice to where the new sound takes on meaning for you)
  3. avoid translating (mentally putting into english what you read or hear)

Language Families And Mnemonics:

  1. all languages belong to language families, look for similarities
  2. lacking similarities, use creativity to make connections (later dropping the mnemonic)
  3. in unrelated languages, use imagination and memory tricks
  4. the more languages you learn, the better you get at spotting or inventing artificial connections
  5. anything that helps you remember a word is fair game

Word Building

  1. Every language creates complex words by combining basic root words
  2. After you learn several hundred words you will start noticing familiar roots creaping back in new forms
  3. The vast majority of new words will be based on roots you already know

Learning New Words

  1. Homemade word cards and tapes are an excellent way of learning vocabulary
  2. Use memory handles to fix the meaning of new vocabulary in your mind
  3. Learn words first from the foreign language to English, then the reverse
  4. Always say the foreign word outloud as you see it (Use your mouth, ears, and eyes)
  5. Don't be passive, make up sentences with the new word (do the maximum, not the minimum)

Learning Sentences & Dialogs

  1. You can start using a language right away by learning and using the dialogs in your book
  2. Use a tape recorder to listen to the dialogs or sentences and repeat them until you can do so comfortably (one of the most valuable things you can do to learn a foreign language)
  3. Memorizing whole sentences helps to teach you the patterns of a language and imprint them on your mind

Grammar

  1. Grammar is the skeletal structure that links words together and give them full meaning
  2. Correct grammar is to make clear what the relationship is among words
  3. Each language makes its own sharp distinctions (be ready to make or drop distinctions as appropriate)
  4. Just accept that different languages do things in different ways.

Grammar

  1. Grammar is essential because it tells us precisely what the relationship is among words
  2. Many languages express grammatical relationships among words by means of word endings (ie, something on the end of the word changes to indicate the subject or object of an action)
  3. Use of the wrong ending (bad grammar) is simply confusing because it makes the relationship among the words unclear or gives an unintended meaning

Gender

  1. Most European languages categorize ever noun into one of 2 (M or F) or 3 (M, F, or N) gender categories regardless of the meaning
  2. The gender of the word often effects the grammatical endings of other related words
  3. Always learn the gender of each word as you learn the word

Moving Ahead

  1. Go back to earlier lessons and tapes and see how easier it is to repeat them now. It will remind you how far you have come.
  2. Look at another text book on the same language. You will find some different beginner's material.
  3. Buy some kids books or comic books in the language. Comics contain idiomatic phrases that can be useful.
  4. Go to a language bookstore and buy a language dictionary and traveler's phrasebook.

Dipping Into Culture

  1. Listen to broadcasts in the foreign language.
  2. Visit a foreign grocery store. Don't expect to understand too much.
  3. Go to a movie or watch tv in the language you are studying.
  4. Try going to a foreign restaurant.
  5. Buy a foreign newspaper.
  6. Grab every opportunity to use your new language.

Solo Learning

  1. Find native speaker.
  2. Use graduated readers that build new vocabulary as they go (especially those from the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department). Read outloud a lot.
  3. You will need tapes.

See also: LearningNotes

Notes on Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold

  • "Resnick et al. concluded that reputation systems require three properties in order to function: First, the identities of buyers and sellers must be long-lived, whether or not they are pseudonymous, in order to create an expectation of future interaction. Second, feedback about interactions and translations must be available for future inspection by others. Third, people must pay enough attention to reputation ratings to base their decisions on them. In regard to the third requirement, part of the effectiveness of eBay's reputation system might derive from buyers' and sellers' belief that it works. Reputation, like surveillance, may induce people to police themselves." - p. 126

Notes on What Women Want Men To Know by Barbara Deangelis

  • women need to feel safe, connected, valued
  • men have a specific mental love room, for women every mental room is a love room
  • her happiness is a priority for you
  • know what's important and do those things
  • women need: attention, affection, appreciation

Notes on The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web by Bo Leuf, Ward Cunningham

  1. "General wiki convention favors the singular form for a page name, unless the plural makes the intended meaning clearer." - p. 104
  2. "It is distinctly helpful to always have the top page of the wiki only a click away. We therefore recommend that either the template page or the generated header/footer section contain an explicit link to the top page as a navigational aid. . ." - p. 106
  3. consider reinserting spaces when rendering page anchors
  4. "If you intend to be serious about using CSS, an excellent book as both tutorial and reference guide is Cascading Style Sheets, Designing for the Web, by Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos (Addison-Wesley, 2e, 1999). Comprehensive CSS resources are also available from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (www.w3c.org)." - p. 151
  5. "Even though it is easy to make the logo graphic a clickable link to the default page, we caution you to avoid this, at least as the only option; studies consistently show that users often ignore graphics on a Web page and prefer to navigate using text anchors." - p. 190
  6. "Use an inline "heading" to create a "last modified here" target or any other kind of special quick-find location marker. The generated link is always at the top of the page, easily seen and used." - p. 193
  7. "The access control file .htaccess can do more than simply define user access. You can place most server directives there, thus, for example, specifying the Files and SetHandler that a particular file is an executable perl script. That way you have more precise control than simply marking the directory as executable. At most a single once-only change in the server configuration is needed to implement this kind of flexibility." - p. 280

Recommended Books:

  • Perl
    • Perl in a Nutshell
    • Learning Perl
  • Apache
    • Apache: The Definitive Guide
  • CSS
    • Cascading Style Sheets, Designing for the Web
  • Python
    • Programming Python
    • Learning Python
  • Ruby
    • Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide
  • Groupware
    • Practical Internet Groupware
  • SGML
    • SGML: An Author's Guide to the Standard Generalized Markup Language
    • SGML and HTML Explained


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Page last modified on June 30, 2006, at 05:55 PM EST