Don't Throw Away that Hard Drive

"When you upgrade to a new mobile phone or computer, how you discard your device impacts your security. Most people think that when they reformat their hard drive or restore their mobile device to its factory default settings, everything gets erased -- but that's not usually the case." [emphasis mine]

This statement above is what got my full attention when I watched a short video over at Udemy on the safe disposal of hard drives.  This course is part of a very digestible video series on Mobile Cybersecurity Awareness that was created by Eric Schwartzman of the Center for Digital Innovation at Howard Industries. I highly recommend watching it (and the other 11 lectures in this series) as essential learning for every mobile device user.  It won't even take up too much of your time; as you can see in the screenshot below, it's less than 4.5 minutes.

In the video, Schwartzman shared that MIT had actually conducted a study using over 160 hard drives that were disposed or resold to determine if these were really cleaned out effectively. They were able to recover confidential information like credit card numbers, medical records, social security numbers. Yikes.

6 Productive Things to Do Away from Social Media

Do you feel that sometimes your social network's feed is so full of new information, opinions, and negativity? It can get quite overwhelming, especially when there are hot topics that get many people firing on all cylinders. A study has recently found scientific proof why we would feel inundated while traversing the digital landscape. One way people deal with this is by doing a digital detox.

In late 2010, I did a 7-day detox from my entire social network and, because of work, used only SMS and email for communications. If I needed to research online, I tried very hard not to stray towards any of my social media accounts. Ironically, getting sore eyes in the last 2 days made the detox even easier. Remembering how refreshed my mind truly became after that week, it made me want to do another digital detox soon. But then I got to wondering about why I urgently felt like this -- do I simply need to purge all the bad vibes or, worse, am I already addicted to my online habits?

Think about this part I highlighted from the article "Social Media Detox: Identifying Addiction and Disconnecting From Your Newsfeed":

“You know social media is taking over your life when you feel worse after being on it, when you spend more time on it than planned, and when you forgo regular activities to continue browsing..." [emphasis mine]

If this rings true for you, then you're in luck, that article provides four very simple, very doable steps to deal with that stuff.  And to help you further, below are six other things you can do while you're weaning from your social media:

The Awesomely Honest 30s

image source

I love being in my 30s.

I feel that I'm nowadays less pretentious and more honest with myself about what I like and don't like. I know what I'm good at and I've accepted what I can't do. I'm more open-minded about not getting the weird stuff the kids are into these days (pretty sure my parents thought I was into weird stuff, too, when they were my age), but I'm also in a sweet spot now where I can understand my parents better (Pa and Ma - I'm sorry for being so weird).

Another reason for my loving the 30s is having a less harried perspective about priorities. You get better at choosing your battles and not sweating the small stuff. It's those kinds of life lessons that make you a lot more grounded and optimistic about the future.

Here are 10 very practical lessons from author Mark Manson to take with you through your 30s...

1. Start Saving for Retirement Now, Not Later
2. Start Taking Care of Your Health Now, Not Later
3. Don’t Spend Time with People Who Don’t Treat You Well
4. Be Good to the People You Care About
5. You can’t have everything; Focus On Doing a Few Things Really Well
6. Don’t Be Afraid of Taking Risks, You Can Still Change
7. You Must Continue to Grow and Develop Yourself
8. Nobody (Still) Knows What They’re Doing, Get Used to It
9. Invest in Your Family; It’s Worth It
10. Be kind to yourself, respect yourself

Read the full article here. Enjoy!

Art and Analytical Skills

Back when I taught arts and crafts to grade school kids, I noticed how those who really focused on the activities saw opportunities to do more than what was required, thereby ending up with unique and inspired artwork.

I've always believed that art appreciation and arts and crafts should be better leveraged as methods for developing critical thinking skills, instead of just inserting them into an "Art" curriculum to kill time.
This TED video tells us that studying art could improve analytical skills. Granted, I wish the discussion went deeper, but this is a good start. So watch, learn, and share :)

Image source here

posted from Bloggeroid

To Train or Not To Train

A big part of my job is to help design and develop training courseware in various formats. Lately, I've been wondering how much of the training is actually needed and how we'll know for certain that it was effective. I felt that we were creating too many training materials without being entirely sure about the objectives.

Those wonderings led me to finding a course called "Foundations of Instructional Design", which was facilitated by Learning and Performance Partners, Inc. (LPPI). The instructor & LPPI's prez, Armi Treñas, is an established Learning and Development (L&D) specialist who works with various major corporations and organizations in different countries. "Instructional Systems Design" (ISD) seems to be a fairly new concept in the Philippines and, as far as my recent googling has revealed, LPPI is the only ISD practitioner in the country.

In a nutshell, ISD focuses not only on what should be in a training course, but also on how to check that training really is needed; how much and what type of training is needed; and how to ascertain that its objectives have been achieved.

Here are some of my key takeaways from the ISD course:

Is Your Birthday a Holiday?

My youngest bro was born on August 19. That means he gets a day-off on his birthday as long as he lives in Quezon City, the same day being "Quezon City Day". Well, this worked for him only until the year 2000 because, by the following year, we had moved to the US. He's still based there now. His not being able to again enjoy the automatic birthday day-off kind of made me rub my hands in glee at first. I've always felt a bit envious of his little fortune in that regard -- it's silly, I know.

I began to feel less petty about it when I learned that my birthday is World Poetry Day :-D Sure, it's not a real holiday. Still, I found it interesting to learn that something else that's special is being observed on my birthdate :-) (UPDATE Oct. 11, 2016: according to Wikipedia, October 15 is also when these special things in the world are observed. "Global Handwashing Day" FTW, haha!) Recently, I also learned that Bacolod's Masskara Festival usually peaks during my birthday week.

Thanks to the interwebz, we are now learning that every day -- somewhere in the world -- there are recognized holidays and then there are also "special" days. Like Teacher's Day, Japan Dolphin Day, Ice Cream Sundae Day, International Beer Day, Social Media Day, etc.

Have you found out what else is being celebrated on your birthdate? :-)

Image source: PlusQuotes