Category: Lifestyle

#Colgate360GoldMornings: Turn your mornings into gold mornings

The first and the most challenging thing is to wake up early. Waking up early will give you ample time to do something for yourself. Morning is the best time of the when your mind is fresh and you can think peacefully without any stress. These are a few things you can do to make your morning gold mornings just like the #Colgate360GoldMornings.

Wake up to some good sounds

Try to avoid rude alarms. Better to wake up to your favourite music is always a good option.

Drink a Glass of Warm Lemon Water

Starting your day with drinking a glass of warm water with lemon is a way to get your body going.It will help in the rehydration process. The lemon is good for the digestive system. You can also add a twist of honey.

Meditate for a Few Minutes

A few minutes of mediation is the best way clear your mind.

Choose a position suitable for you and the way which is comfortable to you. You can also play some soothing music in the background. It isn’t necessary to do a hour long meditation routine, a few minutes are helpful too. You will start noticing uplifting mood even after a few minutes.

Do a routine exercise and stretching

A nice and simple 5 minute stretch can wake your muscles up and make them ready for the day ahead. Find the best exercises that will suit you and you can do them effortlessly.

You can also consider to do a yoga routine.

Make your bed

This is the simplest task you can do that is satisfying. It is quick and will make you feel good.

Have fun with your breakfast

Make your first meal of the day fun! Try out some creative plating, drinking your coffee in a royal way or having the juice in a wine glass. Open your creative mind and break some rules. You are the boss here!

Don’t make decisions

Avoid making stressful decisions in the morning and give yourself a break. Pick your dress a night before. What you are going to have for breakfast can be decided before going to bed. These things look simple but doing this will definitely going to help you.

Jan 15, 2016
Kalavati: The Mason With A Mission #SpreadTheVibe

“By constructing toilets I am not only ensuring a clean environment but also saving the dignity of women and girls”

Kalavati is a mason and she is on a mission – to build toilets across all slums and lower income neighbourhoods in her city.
Kalavati, a 50 year old passionate woman mason went house-to-house, collected funds and constructed toilets in her village all by herself. This is her story of how her efforts brought change and improved lives in the households of Uttar Pradesh.

At present, the crowded Rakhi Mandi shanty is her worksite. Till around two years ago, there was not even a single toilet in the vicinity – not in homes, not in the community. Drains overflowing with sewage and faeces created highly unsanitary living conditions. Open defecation was the norm and girls and women, in particular, were extremely vulnerable to ill-health, harassment and even violent assaults.

Taking into account the dismal situation prevailing in Rakhi Mandi, Shramik Bharti, a local non government organisation that works on sanitation issues, decided to get toilets constructed in the area with the support of WaterAid, a UK-based charity. That is how Kalavati landed up working in the neighbourhood.

However, Kalavati was not always the confident construction worker that she is today. Hailing from Sitapur, one of India’s most backward districts, she came to Kanpur around 40 years back, as the 14-year-old bride. Being a child bride she never had the opportunity to go to school and yet she managed to run her home efficiently and bring up her two children. Times were always hard but she always had her husband’s support.

“For 700 families living in the area there was not even one community toilet, which forced everyone to defecate in the open. Had someone tried to draw a picture of hell that slum would have fitted the description perfectly,” she recalls.

Kalavati wanted to do something for her locality and Shramik Bharti was looking for committed people like her who wanted to bring about change from within. she had made up her mind to find out how a public toilet could be constructed in Raja ka Purwa.

Next, she approached the Commissioner of the Kanpur Municipal Corporation, to inquire about the schemes they could avail of under the urban development programme. The highly impressed officer gave her a simple plan – collect Rs 1,00,000 from the people and the Corporation would add another Rs 2,00,000. It took Rs 3,00,000 to construct a ten-seat community toilet at that time.

Although she knew that gathering funds from the rickshaw pullers, domestic workers and daily wagers who stayed in Raja ka Purwa would be difficult, she took the tough task head on and even managed to get Rs 50,000 – everyone gave as much as they could from Rs 10 to a maximum of a few hundred rupees. Meanwhile, Shramik Bharti arranged for a Rs 700,000 assistance from the state government’s Non-conventional Energy Development Agency (NEDA).

However, what was her passion at one time has also become a necessity today. Since she lost her husband, Kalavati is single-handedly running her household from her construction earnings. At present, she is caring for her elder daughter, Lakshmi, and her two grandchildren who are living with her after her son-in-law’s untimely death.

Her working hours are long as she has not fixed any time limit. “How long I work depends on how much time a particular project needs to get completed. Sometimes we work even at night or start very early in the mornings,” she says. Incidentally, she has developed her very own sewer design and construction technique, which she feels is a good move, “I have perfected my own way of laying the sewer line – nowhere does the water gets blocked.”

Always cheerful, Kalavati never tires because “I enjoy my work. It gives me immense happiness…This feeling does not let me feel tired”. And her duty doesn’t end with constructing toilets, motivating people to use them is part of her message.

“It is women like her who are the uncelebrated brand ambassadors of India’s sanitation movement.”

If a middle-age woman from a small village can do this kind of effort to bring positive change to society then why can’t our youth ? Youth is the power of nation !

Courtesy/source: BetterIndia

Jan 6, 2016
The diet to live a ‘life’
Balanced diet includes the right types of nutrients and proper amount of foods and drinks to supply adequate nutrition and energy. Balanced diet is essential to maintain body cells, tissues and organs that support normal development and growth. An unbalanced diet can cause problems with maintenance and growth of body tissues, brain and nervous system, bones and muscles.
There are certain food groups including dairy products, meat and beans group, fruit group, vegetable, grains and oil. It’s a must to include all of these food groups in your daily diet as per your fitness level and requirements. Focusing too much of any particular food group may also harm your health.

The proportion has to be decided based on your calorie level requirement. Always choose food with high nutrient density. You can include Honey Diet in your balanced diet routine. Honey is good for health. Talking about water, at least 8-10 glasses of water for women and 12-15 glasses of water for men. See USDA guidelines.
The USDA has also an online calculator to help you figure out how much of each type of food you should consume daily.

The two keys to a healthy balanced diet are:
- eating the right amount of food for how active you are, and
- eating a range of foods – this is what balanced means
The range of foods in your diet should include:
- plenty of fruit and vegetables
- plenty of bread, rice, potatoes,pasta and other starchy foods (choosing wholegrain varieties when possible)
- some milk and dairy foods
- some meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein
- just a small amount of foods high in fat and sugar
It is true that the variety in diet humans have now was not possible even 100 years ago, but those people were eating fresh food that they had most likely grown and/or butchered themselves. it didn’t contain hormones, antibiotics or pesticides. Their environment didn’t have pollutants, their clothes hadn’t been treated with (poisonous) flame retardants. The lack of variety in their diet was not a big deal. Their immune systems were able to handle it. Ours, on the other hand, are frankly overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of chemicals and other substances we’re exposed to daily. And, if you’re eating foods processed with modern methods, your diet is not as varied as you think it is. It’s important to remember that everything we put in our bodies, from medication to the food we eat, interacts with and therefore causes a reaction of some sort inside our bodies. Physicians say that the average person is exposed to 10,000 chemicals every day. This kind of daily exposure allows the immune system to mount a response (an attack on the foreign substance) and allows sensitivities to develop. Vague symptoms like fatigue, headache, diffuse muscle pain can result.

What crash diet does to you

Crash dieting causes a lot of weight gain. Your body reacts to starvation by going into famine mode – conserving and storing fat, drastically slowing down it’s metabolism, and becoming more efficient with how much energy it burns. Our bodies are designed to keep us alive – not only this, but your body will make sure that it has as many reserves as possible in case this ‘famine’ happens again – which is why many people end up gaining more weight by crash dieting than if they had not dieted at all.
Starvation causes bingeing, overeating, craving fatty and sugary foods, feeling out of control, blood sugar swings (when your blood sugar drops, you got to eat, and mostly it’s going to be the first thing with sugar and fat in it you can grab). It’s not just a matter of willpower – you are fighting biological survival mechanisms that have been in place for as long as we have been a species.
So crash dieting, apart from the obvious dangers medically and nutritionally (it’s totally possible to be malnourished and overweight, too) – not only makes your body store more energy as fat as fast as it can, and burn up less energy from what you eat – but it drives to eat MORE.

So eat right, exercise and live your ‘life’ !
Jul 9, 2015
What in life makes you happy

So, What is happiness ? Well, let’s say happiness is a trap.

An ingenious trap designed by billions of years of evolution to keep us in the loop of surviving.

Without the occasional spurt of ‘feel good’ chemicals within our bodies, there would be no motivation to survive and reproduce and continue this perpetually endless cycle of purposelessness. And that is why, evolution was kind enough to bless us with a twist of happiness to our otherwise dull lives.

Now, just think, do you feel happy when you eat good/tasty food? Yes? Well, it’s not your fault. It’s the evolutions way of ‘telling’ us to eat good food, so that we can keep our bodies healthy and reproduce.

Do you feel happy when you help others? It’s not your fault either. It’s just a useful trait for social animals like ourselves to keep on surviving and reproducing.

Do you feel happy when you are the reason for someone’s happiness? If so, you’ve just been ‘used’ by evolution to perpetuate happiness among us, to make us believe that being alive is worth it despite all the suffering.

Still not convinced? Well, the next time you feel happy, try figuring out the source of that happiness, and understand how it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Of course the ‘happiness trap’ is not perfect. Evolution is somewhat slow at adapting to change. For example, the occasional rush you get when you eat junk food – that should have been corrected a long time ago when shortage of food stopped being the bottleneck for survival. And, there are always anomalies… experiments gone wrong, like the psychopaths who take pleasure in harming others.

Basically, it’s all a giant game of trial and error. Whatever works to keep us surviving, will be used on us through the happiness trap.

Let’s list out some things that makes you happy.

Good Music: You woke up with good music in your ears. You feel refreshed and energetic. Work with your headphones on. One of the biggest joys can be discovering an obscure Indie band on Youtube, 8tracks or Soundcloud for that matter.

Reading: This is one thing everyone should agree. Reading is fun. Isn’t it ?

The people in your life: Life is much happier when you have good company. Surround yourself by amazing people with a zeal for life.

Travel: You should travel (a lot) and explore things. This is the best thing and makes you happy too. Find out new stuff. Discover places, enjoy with friends.

Meeting new People: Meet new people. Talk to them. Learn something new. Socialize. It makes everyone happy.

Win: Whether its a game or a moment in life. A win always give you happiness and fill your soul with positiveness.

Be Happy and keep smiling. It costs nothing !

Mar 22, 2015
The gem of true friendship is the key to a happy life

Do you have a lifelong friends? The ones we met in school or the ones we met in our college time. The life is best spent out when you are with friends. Remember the moments you feel relaxed and had fun with your closet friends. These are the moments of your life. You don’t come to realize them until they become memories. You take pictures with them, you eat, you talk and sometimes you fight. And these little fights make the bond even stronger !

We’ve been hanging around each other for a long time now. Few people make me laugh until my eyes water and my sides hurt. We make fun of each other and then everyone laughs. Nobody feels lonely.

You treasure your friends because no matter how deep a shit you dig for yourself, they’ll stand by your side even when you’re wrong just to bring you back on the right path afterwards. They can crack you up even when you’re crying your eyes out. You can lose your brains together and go full retard just to sit on the front porch some day reminiscing being a child again.

True friends say good things behind your back and bad things to your face.

You can discuss anything and everything with them no matter how lame the topics can be. And most important of all, they make planet earth inhabitable by you even when you go tired.

There are always something we can share only with friends but not with parents/siblings for they care too much about us. e.g. Indian parents would certainly say a big no for a para gliding trip. Every one acts like an ideal son/daughter in front of parents but with real friends we are all real,naked. Their honest opinion is real worthy.

Self-esteem boost: Friends bring out the best in us,boost our morale, help in the bad times and most importantly they value us.They make us feel important for them.

Sharing dreams: We want people with whom we can share our dreams and ambitions and we want someone loyal. So who can be a better start-up partner than the best buddy.

Connectors: Friendship create a virtual network. It is always better to deal with a friend of friend than a complete stranger.

Our parents may not be always there,but friends can be for life time.

We’re all imperfect creatures, we have no way of reaching the point where we have a complete understanding of ourselves, instead we drift in varying levels of ignorance and fear, tipped with our success.

This is where friends assist us toward our ultimate goal of total self awareness. Friends see things we don’t see, hear things not meant for our ears. So much of us they know and that knowledge is a vein of pure gold for all, guiding us toward a clearer path to the center we call self.

Real friends are like mirror , they show who really we are.

Mar 16, 2015
The “Sine” of the Life

Its not about what happened yesterday, its about what are you going to do today.

Optimism is way of thinking focused on endless opportunities and possibilities in the midst of an unfortunate circumstance that happened or is happening in one’s life.

If something negative happened to you in the past, it should not hinder with your present or even your future. Your future is still in your hands. You can do whatever with it if move in the right direction. Let’s take an example from mathematics (Yes, I know you hate it.) that always help me if I ever get depressed.

This is a sine wave. Although it has a lot of mathematical importance, it also conveys a very important life lesson.

“What goes up has to come down but what comes down inevitably goes up too”

This is what life is. It’s a mix of ups and downs. One day you can be on the top of the world and the next you don’t know where to run. Losing hope is bad. Losing all hope is the worst that can happen. But this lack of hope might, in a way, can be the best thing to have happened to you. Why? Well, for starters ‘hope’ has proven to be sole reason for many a success stories but often this very hope takes a negative turn and puts individuals under lot of undue pressure and leads to eventual breakdown.

So, you just need to look up stories that make you optimistic from your past, analyze them and plan present. Just think of what you want to do and how you are going to achieve it and stay positive for that.

You cannot command hope. Telling it to come back is like shouting at the sky to stop raining or the night to turn into dawn. I believe in positive thinking, but sometimes, you just cannot positively think your way into hope. Not when things are really bleak. That’s just denial. Denial has helped no one

The best way to renew HOPE, is to plant it. Yes. Like a seed. Where is your soil? Other people. Other people are your soil.

Give hope to someone else. Listen to someone else. Nurture someone else. Reach out. That warm, fuzzy, feeling you get, that peace, that smile – that is the early stages of hope. Keep at it, and it will grow, spread, take root and blossom again. And then it will take shape and form as it relates to your life. It’s nebulous and hard to explain, but it works.

In the end the essence of all the story is that:
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Mar 10, 2015
How to improve the experience of loyal users

I am definitely a fan of the undisputed minimalist design. So, whenever the opportunity presents itself to reduce the information presented on the screen, I do it with great pleasure. But people

realized very quickly based on experience, that there are certain actions that users learned through repeated execution of tasks. That’s why very often we resort to the use of labels, tool tips, etc. From there, users know what to do and where to go. However, this can often lead to some confusion and visual clutter, especially when we spend time on our mobile device or on applications with a ton of logos and ugly design.

A study by Nielsen Norman Group, shows that the best approach to bypass this problem would be to go slowly: start with the original logo at baseline and implement changes step by step. In addition, it is recommended, and more efficient to test your changes through user testing, instead of just throwing what you consider to be a decent job and will be accepted by all. This way, you will avoid forcing your users to join your view of design, you can even lose them.

One of the most recommended implementation methods of NNG, is to use the method of: Progressive Reduction (PR), the idea is that users become familiar over time with changes in the application.

The secret of it all

To understand why the “Progressive Reduction” is a good idea, you must understand where it comes from. Basically, the culture of the reduction has its roots in Flat Design where we remov everything unnecessary and cumbersome for the user, in order to achieve a design that would be characterized as “honest”.

The problem is that designers spend a lot of time on the development of a global design, and over time they always end up reaching a pro user oriented design. Therefore, it always turns to UI design without much superfluous.

However, keep in mind that the trends of users change frequently. To remedy this problem, we can use PR to achieve the minimal UI we want, and keep the maximum convenience for our users. In addition, we can go further in terms of putting UX explanations to least used features and remove these explanations for the most used features.

How to improve the experience of loyal users

The best way is to start with a minimal interface, and build from there. However, if you are on a large complex project, you must first ensure you simplify complexity before attacking the PR component, otherwise, the contribution of PR is really minimal.

Regardless of where you begin your project, once you have your “base”, identify the key features of your application, the ones you want to cut, and assign levels to these characteristics.

Then, the most important is to control the use of your users about the new design, and compare your results with the previous design phase. From there, the best practice would be to develop a competency profile for each user. With this profile, you will be able to customize your application’s user interface to reduce aid to use.

One last thing to remember is the concept of loss of experience (Experience Decay). In other words, the jurisdiction of a user in the use of any product deteriorates over time in the absence of use. To account for this, steps should be taken to enable the interface to remain understandable, even after some time of inactivity. This can be easily achieved through the seen previously system level. If a user’s use frequency down, then the level of simplification of the interface will follow. The regression is necessary to balance the progression. Without it, you lose the ability to fully meet the dynamic changes in user behavior.

About the author –

Stephen Karsch is a technology geek, he loves everything about tech, high tech, computers and programming, more about him you can find on his social profiles on Pinterest and Vimeo.

Dec 11, 2014
Moto 360 : The new Smartwatch by Motorola

The new Moto 360 is what smart watches should be. It’s something beautiful, big & most importantly it matches the expectations of a wristwatch.
Moto 360 is come up with unique circular design . When you see it, you see something familiar with intriguing qualities, not some gadget that happens to fit on your wrist. The Moto 360 strikes a stunning pose on your wrist, particularly in its stainless steel (as opposed to black) garb. Fit and finish of the devices we saw was top notch. The chamfered edges of both the glass covering the screen and that metal housing lend it a luxurious look and feel, and the thick, split leather strap is premium, too.

The Moto 360 won’t go on sale until later this summer, and Motorola hasn’t announced a price. The unit I tried out at Google I/O was locked in retail mode, basically showing only sample cards but still interactive. I could swipe and tap on the notification cards, but they weren’t “real.”

The circular notifications worked just like the ones on the near-identical LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live except there, you know, circles. Danger’s part of the game is when you’re fashion-forward.

And its fashion that makes the Moto 360 such a sensation. While the Android Wear smart watches from Samsung and LG are cute gadgets, Motorola’s smart watch is a piece of technology you covet. In that way it reminding me of what I felt when I first touched an iPad: It may do some useful things, but the feeling of desire went beyond having a convenience. What I wanted was a trophy.

Like LG and Samsung, Motorola had the 360 running a demo mode of Android Wear, so we couldn’t get a feel for how the watch actually will work. That said, Motorola’s on its way to proving that sometimes, it’s not hip to be a square !

Jun 30, 2014
Awesome Firefox Tricks You Might Not Know
Yes, we know you love firefox. It’s the most customizable browser ever. You can add great extensions available out there. But we are going to give you some cool tricks that will make you love even more.

Use Firefox as Notepad

Open new tab, type the following (without quotes) in address bar :

"data:text/html, <html contenteditable>"

And the best thing is you can even customize it using html styles. Come, on where’s your geeky mind ! Here’s one example for you.
```
data:text/html, <title>I love Firefox!</title><style>html,body{margin: 0; padding: 0;}</style><textarea style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.5em; background: %23000; color: %233a3; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none; outline: none; margin: 0; padding: 90px;" autofocus placeholder="Say Hi..." />
```
Go on, copy and paste the above code in a new tab. (It works in other modern browsers as well)

Now, you can use the page as a quick notepad to carry your notes while browsing.

Add ‘Search Keywords’ For Your Favorite Websites In Just A Few Clicks

This a tip most of you might not be knowing, you can add any search box on any website to the Firefox URL address bar in a very handy way. Just go to the any Search Box and simply right-click on it, then click “add a keyword for this search”.

Then you’ll get a prompt, just name the bookmark, then type in a simple short keyword you can remember.

Now you can search your favorite site of choice anytime by typing the keyword, followed by what you want to search in the Navigation Bar.

It can save up lots of your time.

Switch tabs with Keyboard shortcuts

Instead of moving the mouse and select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. use these simple shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
- Ctrl+Shift+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
- Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
Quickly Delete Items from Address Bar History

When you start typing in the address bar, firefox automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited as drop-down list. But if you want to quickly delete them (You know why?), Go to the address bar, start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited. Use the down-arrow key to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.

Auto Complete URL

Most of you as geeks might know this one. Oh ! yeah. Go to the address bar (Ctrl+L) and type the name of the website without the “www” or the “.com”. Then hit Ctrl+Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com”. similarly for “.net” addresses, press Shift+Enter, and for “.org” addresses, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Mouse shortcuts

These are some simple but useful shortcuts
- Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
- Shift+scroll down (previous page)
- Shift+scroll up (next page)
- Ctrl+scroll up (decrease text size)
- Ctrl+scroll down (increase text size)
- Middle click on a tab (closes tab) [Really useful]
Open Previously Closed Tab

If you have closed a tab by mistake, don’t panic! Hit Ctrl+Shift+T. This will open up the last tab you closed. If you keep clicking the shortcut, all your recently closed tabs will open.

That’s it for now. We’ll keep adding more.
Jun 27, 2014
‘Namo’ Anti-virus Software To Protect PCs

NaMo is the name of a free anti-virus software dedicated to Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, which you can download on your PCs right now to ensure that your machines are safe from any security threats.

The Namo anti-virus software comes with featuresincluding real-time detection of infections, custom detection, intelligent scanning, and is light on hard disk according to the company. This anti-virus offers basic protection to PC users currently, but the they are also planning to launch this for Mac. It is also expected to get regular updates. Data recovery services reviews often explain the cause of data loss and computer crashes come from lack of antivirus software.

“India is the third largest country globally in terms of Internet users. However, statistics show that only 13 per cent are using valid license of antivirus software and 30 per cent tend to re-install trial versions of same or other antivirus software,” Innovazion CEO Abhishek Gagneja.

Although features don’t have anything to do with the Modi, nor is it endorsed by him, but still its makers have decided to name it NaMo. May be it will help them in easy marketing of the product.

“By building this software, we wanted to … congratulate the current government. We also want to pass a message to the government that the nation has high expectations from them,” he said.

There is already a NAMO online store for Narendra Modi inspired products. Known as The Namo Store which sells products in three categories Namo Tech, Namo Lekh and Namo Mantra. Plus, there are already Namo-branded smartphones and tablets in market.

Jun 23, 2014