Your Child Deserves a Running Start

I know, I know.  I just wrote a college article, however, this one could very possibly be more important than the one before.  It’s for your kids.

My daughter is a Junior in high school this year. Not only is she probably in the worst high school in the state, I’ve been unhappy with the school district since elementary school.  Part of the reason is communication, or lack thereof. It wasn’t until last year (last minute) that I even heard – through word-of-mouth and not by the school – about the Running Start Program.

What is it? Simply put, if your child has decent HS grades, Running Start allows Juniors and Seniors to enroll in college to: 1) complete the credits necessary for graduation and 2) use the same credits toward an Associate’s degree…simultaneously! [Read more]

The Tao Of Rodney Dangerfield

Fall is near and school is starting in a matter of weeks.  Some of you, like me, will be returning after a long hiatus; meaning the closest thing to a school you’ve seen lately is your child’s homeroom or the gymnasium at your 20 year reunion (which reminds me…uh, forget it.)

Right! You’re going back to school.  The economy’s been tough on all of us and for some it means time for re-education.  Well, if this will truly be your first day back in, say, 20 years, I have some insight that may make it easy for you. [Read more]

Streamlined Mind continues…

It’s been half a year since I wrote my previous post on this website, asking for writers. Some have come, some have gone, but no one ever got to the point of actually publishing an article here. Today I’m very happy to announce the continuation of Streamlined Mind by introducing a new writer, Scott Russell. Or rather, I’ll let him introduce himself! -Hugo

Thank you for allowing me to occasionally fill in for Hugo.  He does a splendid job and it is my hope to continue enlightening and entertaining you as he has so successfully done.

I live in the U.S., grew up as a country boy in the Midwest, then grew up again as a city-slicker in California.  Finally landing in the Great Northwest–Washington near Seattle–I have begun pursuing my passion as a writer. [Read more]

Streamlined Mind is Looking for Writers

In a few days Streamlined Mind will be one year old! It’s been an interesting year and an interesting experience. We’ve had some popular posts, we’ve made it to the front page of Digg, I learned a lot about blogging, the internet and how a website can slowly grow.

Now I would like to speed things up a little bit. I’ve been quite busy with other projects lately, and I don’t want this website to suffer from that. It never was my goal to write a post every day, the last year it was closer to a post a week most of the time, but it shouldn’t become much less than that!

So Now I’m Looking for Writers

To help me keep Streamlined Mind alive and active I would like to ask for your contribution. It would be nice to have more posts, shorter posts combined with a longer more in-depth post now and then. [Read more]

Get Feedback on Your Creative Work

While working on an assignment it’s very important to know if what you’re doing is going in the right direction. It’s easy to get stuck if you don’t get feedback at the right moment. Is there anything you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen?

Feedback Afterwards

You finished an important assignment. It took you a lot of time so now it’s time to find out if you did it right. You deserve it, and whoever gave you the assignment owes it to you, especially in a learning situation. It gives you the opinion of a professional with the intention to teach you something. For a student this is essential as it provides new ideas to improve his/her work. [Read more]

Move Your Stuff Up in the Cloud

You might have noticed it’s been more than two weeks since my last post here on Streamlined Mind. Time flies when there’s a lot to do. And when there’s a lot to do there are a lot of emails to be sent, there’s a lot of text to be written, notes to be made and shared with others, and to streamline this process I’ve been changing a few things in my work flow lately.

My recent switch to Gmail made me think about the way I’m used to work with my computer. Switching to Gmail doesn’t just mean switching to a new email system, it also means I don’t have my email on my own hard disk, so I have to trust Google to handle and backup my data well. I don’t know how they do this, and for a person who is used to organizing his stuff on his own hard disk this is quite a shift. [Read more]

Why I Switched to Gmail

Last week I switched from my trusty Mac OS X email client, Mail.app to Gmail. After ten days I can already say this has been a wonderful decision and I will not go back. In this post I will tell you why.

I have been using Gmail before, but just as an account on the side for subscriptions and mailing lists. I left it at its default setting and never really looked at it extensively. I heard people talk about using Gmail solely for all their email, and I didn’t understand why someone would use web mail, as web mail always seemed to me like a thing people use if they don’t know how to set up their mail clients properly. Now why do I like Gmail so much? [Read more]

17 Reasons to Avoid Technology (for a few days)

Can you live without the internet? Can you stay away from your daily intake of RSS feeds, email and Twitter? Are you addicted to your social networks? There are many reasons why I think it’s good to shut down your computer for a few days and live like people lived before the time we all had a broadband connection, or even before there was TV.

Holidays are a perfect time for this ‘experiment’. We have a few days off, how are we going to spend them? We’re so used to being entertained all the time. We can listen to the radio, watch TV, surf the internet, play a computer game, rent a DVD, and our vacation will be over before we know. We could also spend those days to find out what’s really important in our lives. Let’s leave that laptop alone for a few days and: [Read more]

And the Winner of a Poken is…

It’s 2009, time for a new year of productive learning! And time to give away two Pokens in the giveaway contest! I used a random number generator to pick the two winners.

And the winners are:
Cher and Palma

Congratulaions! Your Poken is on its way.

Have a Wonderful 2009!

Next Page »