I have just begun reading a book by Bob Burg called "Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales".

It's fascinating how just a few sentences can sometimes cause you to suddenly have your thinking expanded.

He introduced the concept (not new) that everyone knows about 250 people. *Then* he went on to point out that each of those people knows 250 people, therefore you indirectly "know" all those people also.

Now a lot of people emphasise having very large email contact lists but I did a quick calculation for a list of 500 people and when you do the sum you come out with 125,000 people! Now not all of those people will ever come to know you or your services but doesn't it make you think differently?

I mean try this for a day. Each time you look at sometime, briefly reflect on the probability that they know 250 people. Word of mouth is very powerful advertising. So for every person that you interact with you are potentially interacting with 250 other people.

Take care with your interactions.

[Print]

I was sitting in a lecture theatre as an adult with around 250 other (much younger adult) students in a first year university (college)biololgy course.

The grading system for the courses at this university was:

7 - High Distinction
6 - Distinction
5 - Credit
4 - Pass
3 - Conceded Pass
2,1 - Failing grades

The lecturer said, "There is no one so deserving of a grade of 1 or 2 as someone who doesn't ask questions."

Now a teacher does appreciate that someone has made some effort to discover the answer for themselves. That shows the teacher that the student is serious and they are developing their own skills as an independent learner. But when you cannot get the answer or it is taking way too long (or maybe your question is "Point me in the right direction so that I know how and where to start.") - go to someone who can help and ask.



[Print]

In the last post I mentioned phpdev as an Apache MySQL PHP package.

Here is some info on what it is and where to get it.

NOTE THIS NOTE from Simon Wheeler
(Also on the download page.)

"Important!, please read the basic instructions that are presented on the download page, 30 seconds of reading can save you hours of abusing your computer." ;-)

Here is one thing I noticed when I couldn't connect to MySQL. I navigated within the c:\phpdev directory to here:
\mysql\bin\ Here you will find several mysqld exe files.

Double-click on the file that relates to your operating system and rerun the connection check to phpMyAdmin from the /phpdev/www/start_here.htm page. Access this page from http://localhost/start_here.htm and that will hopefully fix it.

[Print]

There is a saying (I think of Chinese origin) that says, "A conversation across a table with a wise man is worth a thousand books."

I had a short conversation with a web developer friend of mine about page layout and positioning of cells or tableless tables using CSS. He encouraged me to really get up to speed with DreamWeaver which I have been avoiding. I am doing mainly hand coding now with some text editors. So I mentioned the time taken to upload stuff to the web so that I could see the PHP pages with all the includes and he said that he used IIS first and just puts stuff in his local www folder.

Now I had previously had Apache, PHP, MySQL (AMP) set up on my PC but wasn't using it. Now I reinstalled an AMP set-up available as phpdev and installed the Nucleus weblog to that. Already (set up time aside) I am saving tons of time. Why? Well when I am using included files and I need to edit that I have to upload that file. If I tweak the layout on the PHP file I need to upload that and if I tweak the layout using CSS then I need to upload the external CSS file.

In some instances I am making changes to all three files because they are all interdependent and all affect the browser display.

Now let's consider the local AMP set up. I have my web files in the www folder of the phpdev installation and when I make a change to any of the dependent files (included files, web pages or style sheet) and *save* the file, it is as though I have already uploaded it - no World Wide Wait. To check the effect of the current changes I just refresh the web page...a matter of seconds.

Cool, don't you think?

This is excellent for checking minor adjustments to layout and formatting, where you may be needing to make many changes and check the effect.

From the programmer's point of view (and that is not me ~grin~ ) this set up will speed development time also.

[Print]