Speed Reading

I've been trying to get into speed reading again. I remember Justice trying to get me onto this during the great telus period which was more than a year ago...come to think of it...maybe even 2 years ago. Actually at the time I didn't really catch on...until recently.

I have really been interested in things like real estate, stock markets, personal growth, hell even construction etc, etc, etc. Honestly there are so many things I want to get into...but I can't seem to find the time or have the patience to increase my understanding of these subject areas. In order to substantially increase my efficiency and understanding of these and others matters...I finally figured out I need to read! But to get better at filtering through all that knowledge out there I needed a faster way to do it.

I have noticed that alot of interesting people out there read several books at once...going through 4 or 5 books per month. Minimum! They also lead very busy lives. The best way to get through all of this information is to speed read. Regular reading just doesn't cut it. We always focus on numbers for various things. For example how many points we made during a video game. What our weight was last week. How fast we type! But I never really focused on how many words I could read in a minute. It is a foreign concept but an excellent goal to focus on when speed reading.

A good site I found that has really helped me to increase my speed and focus in on a target wpm is spreeder. It is a well designed site with various settings you can adjust to your liking. For example you can change the size of your font, adjust the wpm, adjust the color etc. I tend to use this application just to help me get into the groove and then branch into paper copies etc. Another site I have frequented for suggestions to help in reading is here. It gives alot of good suggestions on ways to improve your speed.

If you have any suggestions on ways that have helped you to increase the speed...please share.

Good Times

Given the recent purchase of YouTube by Google, I was inclined to have a look at their site. Personally I was never really interested in youtube since I didn'thave any desire to watch weirdo's do wheely's on their bikes...then fall off. Beyond the fact that you could watch that kind of thing over and over again and still laugh, I really I didn't see the allure of it. ;-)

But I could see the potential. Wouldn't you rather watch your reality television over youtube...over the net. I would. Television nowadays really sucks! There isn't anything on! Remember the good'ol days when there wasn't reality television? You could watch a mindless show for half an hour have all the problems of the world solved in a jiff and then wait till next week to see what else could possibly happen. These were the glory days of boob tube...the original YouTube.

Anywho...I was doing some searches and compiled a listing of some interesting old shows I used to watch. It's my top ten 80's shows. The kinds of shows you just couldn't go wrong with. I agree that this list will probably date me...and there are some of you out there that probably never heard of these shows. That would probably be you Jwerx (You poor lost soul.)

But if your over 27 you probably know or have seen these. Enjoy.

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIcXDo82S_Y
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUplnn462uE
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9PqZkVCUAs
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF8A26-Kh6c
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdcD5eJz3M
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TmbmTdm3pU
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbnLYROCj8
8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02-OfWYcUPE
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cobvYazgfeM
10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x502EBV3gc
Ok this is really retro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyQV1nMWFu0

New RSS Aggregator

You should check out the rss reader for google called 'google reader'. Just go to their labs page to find it. If you have used it in the past like I have - it wasn't that great...but they just released a new and improved version that really fits the bill. I can now finally get rid of that sharpreader on my desktop! [I can't believe I was still using that.]

Thoughworks

http://feeds.feedburner.com/PlanetTw

The following link gives some feeds into thoughtworkers around the world. There are excellent discussions on TDD, Agile/xp, Ruby and thoughtworks university.