How to build habit.

The five steps in building habit is
1. Visualize your goal. Form a clear mental picture of what are you going to achieve.
2. Tell the world what you are going to achieve. Also offer punishment for not doing it anytime. Create a little pressure behind it.
3. Set a time-line for it and commit it on paper.
4. The rule of 21- to make a habit, repeat it everyday same time, same place for at least 21 days.
5. Enjoy the process; if you don't enjoy, you are not going to make it a habit. Remain spirited, joyful and curious. Stay focused and the world will take care of the rest.

WIndows xp, lets play with it.

Here is the listing of things I do to my default windows xp installation to make it more comfortable to work with-

Making Start up and shutdown faster

• Goto start menu -> All prgs -> Startup, delete anything which you don't want.
  If you hold down shift key while windows boots, nothing in the startup folder would run.
• Goto start -> run and type msconfig. Disable anything you don't want.
• Goto start -> run and type services.msc, again disable anything you don't want.
• Goto start -> run and type regedit , now go to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" and you will see a list of programs which run at startup; simply delete things you don't require.
  

Also, have a look at following article

Turn Off Unnecessary Windows XP Services

Generate File listing:
Create a .bat file containing "dir /a /-p /o:gen >listing.txt", save it using Encoding : Ansi.
Go to Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types tab -> Folder -> Advanced -> New
In the Action box, type the name that you want to appear in the context menu. Browse to the location of the .bat file you created, and select it in the box labeled "Application used to perform action."




Open the command prompt from Right click menu:

To have an option of opening command prompt when right clicking on a folder, open registry editor and goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell. Create a new key called Command Prompt. For the default value, enter whatever text you want to appear when you right-click on a folder—for example, Open Command Prompt. Create a new key beneath the Command Prompt key called Command. Set the default value to Cmd.exe /k pushd %L. That value will launch cmd.exe, which is the XP command prompt. The /k switch puts the prompt into interactive mode. That is, it lets you issue commands from the command prompt; the command prompt isn't being used to issue only a single command and then exit. The pushd command stores the name of the current directory, and %L uses that name to start the command prompt at it.

Add "Copy to" and "Move to" to the right click options:

run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers. shellex . Create a new key called Copy To. Set the value to {C2FBB630-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}. Create another new key called Move To. Set the value to {C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}.

Add or Remove locations on the "Send to" option:

Goto C:\Documents and Settings\\SendTo, this is the folder where all shortcuts to the locations can be put where u want a send to entry. (To make a shortcut, right click and goto new->Shortcut and follow the instructions)

Create your own Windows XP icons in Paint:
Launch Paint from the All Programs | Accessories menu.

1. Pull down the Image menu and select the Attributes command.
2. In the Attributes dialog box, type 32 in both the Width and Height boxes and click OK.
3. To make the image easier to work with, click the Magnifier tool and select the level 8 magnification setting.
4. Press [Ctrl]G to add gridlines.
5. Use the tools and colors to create your icon.
6. Press [Ctrl]S and save the file with an ICO extension.

The tip was found here.

Speed up web access using Hosts file:

Goto C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and open the "hosts" file. Here u can add ip and host-names sothat no DNS resolving would be done.(Caution: if the host changes ip address, u have to update that in the file)

Force Outlook express to open all email attachments:

choose Tools -> Options -> Security and clear the box next to "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus".

Better Use of RAM:

• To remove dll which are no longer needed from the memory, go to Registry editor and go to - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. Create a new DWORD value named AlwaysUnloadDll, and give it a data value of 1. Exit the Registry and reboot for the new setting to take effect. If you use old programs(esp 16 bits) then this may cause problems, in that case delete the DWORD.
• Reduce icons on your desktop, they consume memory.
• Turn off the background services you don't need.

Disable Window's low disk space warning:
Open the command prompt and write -
regini HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" = REG_DWORD 1

If this doesn't work, then go to regedit and create entry on the above mentioned path.

7 blunders of the world

1. Wealth without work

2. Pleasure without conscience

3. Knowledge without character

4. Commerce without morality

5. Science without humanity

6. Worship without sacrifice

7. Politics without principle

—Mahatma Gandhi