A guest post by David. If you wish to write one, check out the guest-posting guidelines and details.

Everyone has a certain idea of “Living Simple” or “Being Productive”. And just like the words God, Zen or Soul, every definition of “Living Simple” or “Being Productive” can be the right one.

Every society forges a matrix in which we find a special place. In the Matrix (that is not the movie by the way!) everyone’s level of simplicity and productivity are measured on a scale that is built on preconceived, static, cultural schemes.
Although it is important to preserve our cultural roots, costumes and traditions, this willingness to preserve the way we have always lived leads us to the preservation of bad and unproductive mental schemes too.

Our mental schemes have a deep impact on the way we perceive the world around us, the way we talk, the way we live our life and ultimately, the way we are productive or the way we look for simplifying things in our lives. As you probably know yet, in western society we perceive someone’s status basing our jugde on the person’s material possessions.
In eastern society the spiritual aspect of life has always had a greater impact on the way social status is recognized.
Even if during the last decades, eastern society has been introduced to the western cultural influx. It is now easy to realize that the matrix of every society owns a set of rules and behavioural patterns in whose basis we can adapt and interact with other humans and society in general.

On the basis of these assumptions, how can we make the most out of our life, becoming productive by living simply?

Simple living has an effect on our day-to-day life: we have more time to think, to enjoy life, to spend our day with people we really care about, to live the best we can, to start living that lifestyle we crave for.
Long story short, you become the Designer of your Own Life.

There are several ways to start designing and living the life you truly want. And what is amazing with it, is that changing our condition is not day-dreaming. Changing our condition is reality, plain and simple. We can do that, everyone can do that and, if we look closely, we can always find some inspiration in the world around us.

Finding inspiration is the key to the succeed in life. You can be inspired by the words of someone, by the words of a books, by the thoughts of someone. The possibilities are endless. Start doing unusual things, experience new activities and sports, know someone special, join a new community, make friends with new people, strenghten your relationships, think big, live the way you want, when you want, how you want. That is the key my friend.

Make remarkable choices, start a small business, face your fears, cope with your weaknesses, experiment a new style of dressing, try a different haircut, get to know people who share your same passions, try reading a new book. At first, experimenting can be kind of strange for you. But soon, you will be accustomed to it, you will get up smiling to a new day, you will fall asleep at night with a sense of happiness to be living. By choosing what works for you and trashing out the rest you will reach a colourful life, a life in which there is no limit to your potential. You will realize that what blocks you is just your mind, your fears of succeeding in life.

Probably, you have to condition yourself to your (new) lifestyle. Changes never happen overnight. They only come with dedication, passion, effort and hard work, repeating things and experimenting over and over.
Nevertheless, what everyone is looking for is just a life that works, a life that is enjoyable, a life in which you do things that are meaningful to you, a life in which there are no limits to the success you can reach, a life in which dreams always come true.

Life is now, don’t let it pass by.

The Author, David has been interested in personal excellence since 2006. He has recently developed a strong interest in Personal Productivity and Time Management. He blogs at UbuntuLook which helps every user to improve his/her own Life Management Skills.

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What do I call it? a face life or a strip down? Lets say, I just changed the theme here on Million Clues.

I have always loved the minimal themes that project the content. After hours of Googling and numerous twitter help requests, I ended up with the Perfect Theme Framework – Thematic.

Prime considerations while choosing the Theme were: Large legible font size, White and Minimal Look and Fast Loading pages. I got it all here. It was my first experience with a Theme Framework, learning new stuffs is always great.

There are just 3 images, the header images as part of the theme, the “Advertise Here” image on sidebar and the Connect Image in the Footer. That’s just 10.85 kb!

The cool social media icons used here are from WebTreats ETC. This set comes with 154 icons.

Retweets and Facebook shares are made easy with the BackType Tweetcount plugin and the Simple Facebook Share Button. The Archives page uses the SRG Clean Archives Plugin.

The contact forms are brought to you by the Contact Form 7 Plugin.

Facebook Fan Page

If you are on Facebook, join in the Fan Page of MillionClues.

Also remember to add me, and checkout the MC Twitter Page.

Updates were made to the About and Advertise pages. And the Hire Me page is up. And now I have a footer too.

What do you think?

Have a look, play around and let me know what you think. In case the theme doesn’t render well in your browser, do let me know, thanks.

P.S: The footer doesn’t render well in IE, I couldn’t find a fix yet, any help gets free hugs

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Thank You God!

For guiding me in your path, for teaching me more of WordPress, keeping my server healthy and for blessing me with the best readers I could ever have. Be with me Lord! And help me fight the Hackers and Spam and all other forms of evil I might encounter on my way ahead.

Million Clues! is one year old.

On my last birthday, when I turned 20, I looked back and thought. What have I done with my 20 years? Though every moment was worth living for (school life, amazing friends and the celebrations), there was nothing I could point out as ‘something’. I turned 21 today, and here it is, my cute little space on the web, that I am a lot proud of!

Thank You all for being part of me, for all your support and words that kept me writing on and on.

A Little bit about Myself

To all the new readers: Hi, My name is Arun Basil Lal. I am a student in Engineering from India, who attend college with the sun and blog with the moon.

Am on Twitter and Facebook, add me up too. Thanks for reading this blog, I hope you are enjoying.

(About Page – FriendFeed – StumbeUpon – Digg)

Here I Stand

Some Statistics, I guess this is the right time to say:

• Total Published Posts: 125
• Comments: 1998 (I reply to all comments, so 999 comments from readers, about 8 comments per post)
• Visitors per month: 11k (for last 6 months)
• Top Traffic Soruces: Google > StumbeUpon > Yahoo > Twitter
• Google Page Rank: 4
• Best Alexa Average for 3 months: 83,365
• Twitter Followers: 245 (on @MillionClues profile)
• Total Guest Posts: 10

Suddenly Everyone wants a Blog…

“Total waste of time”, “You got nothing else to do?”, “No one is gonna read”. These are some of the comments I got when I was starting off with Blogging. Not many of my friends even cared to ask what I was doing. Oh! Reading and writing are not very popular subjects of discussion at college.

Now that I have started getting checks, everyone wants to know what I am doing, how I do it. Surprisingly, even some guys who never went online started asking. I like the treatment.

Was it worth the time? Hell, yea! Blogging looks like the best decision I ever made. Thank You all again!

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In January, 2009, I wrote a post which unintentionally turned out into a life changing post for me.

When StudioPress Themes (back then, it was called Revolution Themes), who had made their themes available for free download, decided to remove the free download links from their site, I uploaded all the themes I had in my collection and made it available for free download. I had the entire set with me and the post went popular in no time.

If I would judge myself as of today, that was something really crappy to do, but on that day, it felt perfectly OK. No, am not trying to repent over my mistake. Why should I?

• It brought me close to 400 visit’s a day for the next two months. It stood as a pillar post.
• It helped a lot in the SEO contest at Dollar Shower where I was the first runner-up.
• That one single post gave me the kind of revenue that made me believe for the first time, that I can actually make money online.
• It brought me in contact with people whom I still do work with.

The point is – The blunder I committed actually did Wonders.

Similar stuffs happen to me quite often. I guess am not alone.

Turn to what Steve Jobs said in his talk to the graduates at Stanford. Life is a Game of Dots, you never see the big picture until all dots are connected.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And Never brood over your blunders.

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My Father travels a lot. Every time he returns home he would have a lot of magazines with him. I would flip through them for the pictures and the designs.

One such magazine had a re-print of the speech Steve Jobs gave to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005.

In his address, he shares three stories.

One of the story is about connecting the dots. Sometimes I have wondered why some things happen in my life. I believe many of you will also have had experiences that you cannot explain.

Steve Jobs says:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

The speech is a lot inspiring and its perfect. Read it or watch the video.

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Ever tried learning typing using a Typing Tutor Software? When I was getting my typing lessons, I was told that I shouldn’t look at my keyboard, even if I am doing it all worng.

Well, that doesn’t work easily, unless you have military level of discipline, you are gonna look over and over to find the o’s and the w’s.

The solution? The Ultimate Typing Tutor keyboard:

Learn Typing Faster than you think - You got no choice

(All keys are not photoshop-ped. Some keys were actually losing their imprints and hence the inspiration.)

Wish I could send all my twitter friends this keyboard, so that they can tweet faster

What do you think? Such a keyboard would defenitely help anyone learn typing; Necessity will become the mother of invention… right?

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Unlike most Web-Wares, Twitter has no lower limit on the characters in the username, though; each tweet is limited to 140 characters. Writing sensible stuffs in short words is the fun part of tweeting. The username precedes all the @replies to tweets, so the shorter the username, the longer can be the message part. A longer username leaves less room for the message part.

But if you are thinking of taking a single character username, just like I did today morning, you will find that all short names have been taken. Early Bird Catches The Worm! Let me honor the early birdies.

Glossary Search:
Twitter : Popular micro blogging platform, details here. (Now that’s what I call a base post!)
Tweepl : is a commonly used slang for people who use twitter a.k.a tweeps, a.k.a. twitterer a.k.a Tweeps

The Tweeps with the Shortest Names

I thought I should include the bio too so that you can decide whom to follow right from here! (Do you need a link to their profile? It’s not hard to find them, lol)

Listed in the order @username – Real Name – Bio (links from bio removed and bio truncated to meet the layout )

• @a – Andrei Zmievski – I’m Russian. ’nuff said.
• @b – Ben Bradley – I’m like a chimney sweep, but for the intarweb toobs
• @c – Coley Wopperer – I’m a very serious designer—a seriously joyous designer! Life is grand
• @d – Dave – Bio missing
• @e – Erin – Bio missing
• @f – Fred Oliveira – Bio Designer-developer hybrid. I like to make people smile. (…)
• @g – Greg Leding – Trouble is my business.
• @h – Helgi Þormar – Whacky
• @i – Sarah – Bio missing
• @j – Juliette – UX, SF, Lumos Labs
• @k – Kevin Cheng – See online
• @l – Ant – Bio missing
• @m – Mark Douglass – See online
• @n – Naoki Hiroshima – A guy who cares nothing but his family and his friends, and what they care.
• @o – Oliver Thylmann – Geek, Blogger since 2001, Entrepreneur, Performance Advertising
• @p – Paolo I – Things never happened in this order. maybe they never happened at all. (…)
• @q – This username cannot be used. Maybe its reserved for the search functionality
• @r – Rex Hammock – founder/ceo of Hammock Inc.
• @s – Sandy – I’m Sandy, your personal email assistant. I’ll remember the details so you can (…)
• @t – Tantek Çelik – barcamp bicycler buildingblocks climber cultural evolution hacker (…)
• @u – U – Bio missing
• @v – William Lawrence – vé, ℣, vittu, & versus all stand for veeliam. And, he stands for Accessibility.
• @w – Walter – exec producer of my life. Where’s my cast?
• @x – Gene x – photographer and friend of lemurs
• @y – ReYhan – essir my aura is orchestral but way fresher!
• @z – me – Bio missing
• @_ – Dave Bug – Likely subjects: Woot.com, St. Louis, iPhone, politics, css/html, design (…)
• @0 – 0 Zine – The most excellent home-made Zine in the world. No, the universe even.
• @1 – Numero Uno – Oldest digit. I put the “uni” in “universe”
• @2 – Mysteriously Unnamed – Bio missing
• @3 – NewsAlert – NewsAlerts For Pakistan Without tinyURL..BBCsa & DawnNews
• @4 – 4 – 4!
• @5 – 5 – Bio missing
• @6 – R. Adrián Lamo – I am not a number. I am a free man!! >:o” — or something like that.
• @7 – Peng – Bio missing
• @8 – 8 – Bio missing
• @9 – 9 – Bio missing
• @ArunBasilLal – Arun Basil Lal – (lol. That’s me )

Guess you all were the first people to join twitter. Kudos to all of you!

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Remember Nokia 3310? It was the most user friendly phone in India back in 1999. I had purchased one in 2000 (Rs 5500 then! About $115) and it’s still in service! It has never been repaired and I have replaced the battery just twice. What more can you expect from such a low end phone?

I was reading about China’s Electronic Waste Village from a Yahoo Group Ritemail when I realized that, by not throwing away the phone, I was helping the world stay Green. Here is a snap from the Waste Village.

Disassembling Old Mobiles @ China's Electronic Waste Village

The village is unclean and the living conditions are pathetic. The problem of e-waste is very relevant and mobile manufacturers have already started making fully degradable gadgets. But what do we do with those already existing phones? Before you think of throwing away that old phone of yours, here are some suggestions.

Putting Old Mobile Phones into Good Use

Mod the phone and give it a facelift!
This is what I did with my Nokia 3310. I managed to get a funky case for the phone (see image, it’s a real photo!). The best part is that, every time someone sees my phone, they want to know where I got the case. It gets more attention than the Nokia 7610 I have.

Low end Phones are Secure
No phishing, No Virus alert and nothing to worry about. If you don’t use your phone for on-the-move emails or tweeting, then get that low end model from your closet and stay away loss of data, and loss of peace-of-mind.

Who wish to steal my Nokia 3310?
The phone has no resale value, you can’t sell it to anyone, and then who will steal it? So if you are traveling in a fully packed train, you should consider that cheap phone instead of your BlackBerry.

Use it as a Standby Phone
Even an iPhone can stop working at some point of time. Think of missing that important Valentines Day call? You don’t have to throw away the old phone, keep it as a standby phone. Remember to charge the battery once in a while to keep it healthy. Do you have a second mobile connection? Then I bet your old phone is already in service.

Nokia 3310 is good in coverage
This has been successfully tested in comparison with my Nokia 7610. 3310 could catch network signals when 7610 showed nothing.

Old is Gold
I adore my 3310 because it was the first mobile in the family. Back in 2000, not everyone in my neighborhood had a mobile phone, so it was a star in those days. After 5 or 10 years, many people wouldn’t have seen a Nokia 3310. So preserve it for your kids. Let them play with it!

More Ideas?

Do you have an old phone? What have you done with it? Share it here and yes, if you have images, send them to me. I will post them here

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Recently, I looked up the dictionary to find out what being social really was, and it explained social as, being in company, meeting people and sharing the spirit of a community. It all started after reading Breaking the Twitter Etiquettes by the Daily Blonde. Then I started thinking of the way I socialize online and I re-discovered myself. Here are some thoughts that make you judge how social you are online.

Do you follow the people who follow you on twitter? It’s the people who follow you who are genuinely interested in you, then why not follow them back? I had always thought that having more number of followers than the number of people you follow is something great. Well its not, it just shows that you are all about yourself, and you don’t love the community. Small differences is ok, but see those guys who have 1000+ followers and follow only 2 or 3?

When is the last time you clicked an Adsense ad? My answer would be a week ago. If you had asked me this question in 2004, I would answer an hour ago. After realizing that every click I make was costing someone, I was always cautious. (Well that’s the soft explanation; the evil answer is that I realized every click I make was giving someone something, how evil was I?)

In November, I had a peak in my Google Analytics stats, when Mani Karthik added me up into his friends list in Stumble Upon. Recently, I get lots of visits from Digg and SU. But I get very few diggs or stumbles. I was wondering, why they don’t really digg up the articles they read or give me a thumb’s up. It costs nothing, and a digg or a stumble takes no more than 2 seconds. I am not talking of the readers who reach in here via search or feed, but about those who come here via the social networks itself. Are you one of them?

I asked myself similar questions and found the answers. Here they go…

Love the Community and Thou shall be loved…

Here are some ways to enhance your social life online and get loved by the community. The more love you get, the more you are successful online.

• Submit pages you like to social networking sites that you are a part of. Don’t be lazy.
• Digg up every article that you read from Digg, a digg costs you nothing, not even a page load. Do the same with other social networks that you are active in.
• Before you complain that no one digg’s you or stumbles you, ask yourself, ‘How many people have I digged..?’
• Don’t copy, paste links from an Adsense ad. If you are interested in an ad, use it. Let the publisher get his part for showing off the ads. On the contrary, don’t click on ads that you have no interest in; someone is losing money with your clicks.
• On twitter, follow the people who follow you. Following someone else costs you nothing; you never know where you get an idea from. Remember that the people who follow you are the people who are interested in you. Also retweet those tweets which genuinely need attention. (Follow me here and let’s start socializing!)
• Leave comments on posts that you like or where you have a new point to make. You are not only inspiring the author, but you are serving the other readers too.
• Reply to every email that you read. You might be very busy, but it takes no more than 5 seconds to say a Thank you. And even a single word reply would make someone glad. (I remember how honored I was, when Amit Agarwal thanked me once, the mail just had the word ‘Thank You’)
• Never start off a conversation with a user on chat who has a red bulb ON (busy) without permission. And whenever someone asks permission for a chat when you are busy, it’s too offensive to stay silent, just ask, ‘What don’t we talk later..?’
• Always be creative enough to break the rules and etiquettes, but follow the ethics.
• Never lie. If you don’t like a post, say it is not good enough, if someone asks you about his site and you don’t like it, say you were not impressed. If you lie, you are not helping someone, you are just being nice. BTW, why do you have to lie? You have all the freedom in the digital world, make use of it.
• Talk to people, be what you really are, don’t wear a mask.
• Help someone everyday, teach someone something you know, they will love you for that.
• Promote others. By promoting them, you are promoting yourselves. Link to them wherever relevant, and don’t keep all your links nofollow.
• Respect others time, don’t keep them waiting for ever.

The bible says asks us to treat others the way you wish to be treated, that’s the key to be an ideal social netizen.

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A goal without a time limit is no goal, says John Chow. For the first time in my blogging career I am strategizing for a whole year. Here are the site goals of Million Clues! for 2009.

Things to Do in 2009

Increase the posting frequency to one post in 36 hours. This month, I had been doing one post in 48 hours. One in 36 hours means 20 posts a month and 240 posts in 2009

Reach to 1000 RSS readers. Presently the maximum recorded count is 105. That means about 900 new readers for the year 2009.

Improve Google Page Rank, Alexa and Technorati Rankings. Targets are Google PR 5, Alexa Rank below 100k (now around 500k) and Technorati rank below 100k (now around 400k).

Increase the monthly page views from 2500 to 15000. That’s 6 times more than the current hits; I will have to work harder

Host 15 Guest Posts. At present there are 2 guest posts from Jeen Hao. At the end of 2009 the targeted guest post count is 17. You can help me with this by writing a guest post.

Host 4 Contests. Besides contests like the one running now, I am thinking of giving out all the Entrecard credits to the readers every month.  4 contests means, one in every quarter, so stay tuned!

Publish my first theme, first plugin, first video and first eBook. I have started working on the eBook and the theme.

Get more active on Social Networking and Book marking sites like Stumble Upon, Digg and Delicious. Currently I am active in twitter alone.

Help a new Blogger setup his blog, find a affordable host and help him (or her!) find traffic.

Take a session at an offline social meet like a BarCamp or a BlogCamp.

Make more friends online. I don’t want to restrict this by any number, find maximum good and loyal friends. At present friends are the only returns I have from this blog.

Well, so there are lots of things to do. Now posting this online makes it a commitment and now I don’t have an excuse not to do any of this. So its good to make similar public posts, I think this is going to make me more responsible towards my goals.

Leave your site goals, (either links to your site goal post or the goals itself) here. Maybe we can think of a gift if you complete all your site goals for 2009.

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