“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Nelson Mandela
When you can't find it on Google
howto
A review of Lulu’s book-publishing service
Over the past eight or nine months, I’ve gotten a taste of what I imagine a book editor goes through. My grandpa and I have been secretly working on his memoirs since earlier this year and we’ve finally printed copies of it using Lulu.com. We rushed to get it done so he could purchase 24 copies to give to friends and family for Christmas. When I was researching which self-publishers to use, I couldn’t find many good overviews or photos of Lulu, so hopefully this will be helpful to others doing the same.
Three uncommon websites to visit daily
Ugg, I don’t remember these short winter days ever bothering me much in the past, but this year it seems like the darkness makes my eyelids heavy every evening. I have a feeling that I won’t have another good in-depth post until December 21st when the days start getting longer. Fortunately, though, the past few days in Louisville have been warm. Add to that the beautiful full moon and I’m refreshed for another Tuesday Zep.
This week, I thought I’d share a few websites off the beaten path that I visit almost every day. Plenty of people recommend popular websites to visit daily, but I’ve found some indie alternatives that are even more useful—namely PopUrls, HuffPost, and Friendbinder.
5 money-saving ways to be an environmentalist
I’ve used the impassioned scare tactic in my climate crisis epiphany post, but most people just want to know if environmentalism will save them money. Conservation isn’t a new idea and it’s getting harder and harder to be a skeptic about the damage we’re doing to Earth these days. If you’re not convinced, there are still hundreds of ways to save money (and save the environment at the same time). Here are five (after the jump).
Spring cleaning a website
I’ve spent some time studying Zepfanman.com reports from Google Analytics, a tool I’ve been using for the past year. Without redesigning the site, I’ve taken cues from the reports to update some old posts and make the site load a little faster. You might call it spring cleaning. With less than 900 views a month, I don’t really need to fine tune the site, but hopefully some of you with your own websites will find a helpful nugget or two here.
Your hard drive will die… Back it up
Do you have precious pictures, music, and documents on your computer? I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me to help recover data from their failed hard drive. Consider this advice your data insurance plan. I think most of us would prefer to have a $300 fail-proof plan (on 1 terabyte of data, or as little as $50 if you only have a few gigabytes) compared to the $1000 to $3000 data recovery cost – with no guarantee – if your drive dies. I will use my own experience in buying a new drive, enclosure, and testing software to illuminate some of the things you should consider when it comes to backing up your data. I’m almost as wet behind the ears as the next guy when it comes to home-user backup strategies, so don’t take this as gospel advice. Please chime in with your own backup strategy.
