I've been a Drupal developer for a number of years now. I use it for everything from e-commerce stores to blogs to gaming sites to tiny 5-page brochure-ware websites. It has served my needs really well and will continue to into the future.

However, over the past 4 weeks, I've been working extensively with WordPress and I've realised that it has a place in my world, too. I wouldn't use it for anything too hectic but for blogging and basic websites for SMEs, it beats Drupal every time. You can go from zero-to-blogging in just as long as it takes you to upload WordPress to your host and install it. With Drupal, you need to put in a bit of work to make blogging easy and fun. (Image handling, rich-text editing, etc, all require a bit of configuring before they'll work seamlessly.)

But it's not all sunshine and roses.

The biggest problem I have with WordPress and, specifically, its plugins, is that they allow too much room for error. Drupal has strict standards on how to write modules and how they need to interact with the rest of the Drupal infrastructure whereas WordPress allows you to do pretty much whatever you want. That might sound nice but it means that anyone can throw up a piece of code in the middle of nowhere and it will work. That probably still sounds nice until the project begins to grow and all those bits of code thrown up start unsticking.

(Of course, if you know what you're doing, solid coding standards will go a long way into coding up a WordPress site that any professional PHP coder would be proud of.)

WordPress reminds me of early PHP. PHP forgave everything and allowed the newest of the newest newbies to get coding in minutes or hours instead of months. It was great but, as time went by, I realised that the ease with which I could program PHP also meant that my code was too buggy and prone to security problems.

Over time, the PHP people fixed things (like having global variables enabled by default) and PHP started looking more and more like a real programming language. That seems, to me, to be what's happening with WordPress. Bit by bit, with each new release it's encouraging good habits and good coding.

It's worth keeping in mind that I don't just "use" these CMSes, I program advanced functionality into them every day. For me, a good CMS has to be more of a PHP framework and less of a blogging tool. That's why I fell in love with Drupal. With Drupal, the same amount of effort can take you from "installed" to "blog" as what it would take to get you to "gallery" or "article site" or "basic mailing system" or "simplistic CRM" or "ad serving engine" or or or...

With powerful tools like Views, CCK, ImageCache and more, I can create for R20,000 what I normally would code from scratch for R90,000. That's the rub. With WordPress, I still have to charge that much because I'll have to do a LOT more coding to arrive at the same end-result.

So WordPress is great and I'll keep using it for blogs and simple projects but for the REALLY important, hardcore stuff, I'm sticking with Drupal.

I've always liked some of Pearl Jams' songs but it was mainly their more "mainstream" stuff:

• Wish List
• Last Kiss
• Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
• Better Man

I always thought their other stuff was too "weird" but now I'm an absolute Pearl Jam freak. My favourite album is "Backspacer" and, specifically, these songs just kick ass :)

• Gonna See My Friend
• Got Some
• The Fixer
• Johnny Guitar
• Just Breathe
• Amongst the Waves
• Unthought Known
• Force of Nature
• The End (Beautiful, deep song. Your girlfriend/wife will cry.)
• Push Me, Pull Me (Vitalogy Album)

Go check these out on YouTube or iTunes and enjoy :)

A good friend of mine asked for a quick run-down of how freelancing sites like vWorker.com work. Freelancing is a great way to earn extra money on the side. When work dries up, I go to vWorker.com and bid on projects and make some quick money. It's not going to make you rich but it'll keep you alive or give you some extra spending money :) And if you enjoy your work, like I do, then it's fun. So here it is, short & sweet:

• A person with a project posts it and requests bids
• Then you as a worker bid on the work saying u can do it for $xx.xx and how long it will take, etc
• Then they pick out of the pool of bidders
• If you win a bid request, 15% of your bid goes to vworker.com for facilitating the process
• The rest goes to you
• Money is paid into vworker (escrow / safe-keeping)
• And u get it once you're done
• Then person rates you
• Once you get some good ratings, you can charge more and win more and also start getting invited to bid on more projects
• Unfortunately, i don't know a way around being cheap at first
• And u can bid on 100 and get none, or get all 100
• In many cases, it's purely about price
• So bidding lowish but bidding on many projects seems the best strategy, at least to start out with
• Be warned, it can take a lot of time to bid on them all and then you wait

To get started with freelancers jobs, click here.

I enjoyed a lesson today from Laura, of the Silva Method ($99), who talked about how she cured herself of her cat allergy. Her allergy started in her adult years and she was confused why this suddenly happened. Eventually she had had enough and decided to do something about it. Being born into the Silva household and having continued her dad's legacy by continuing teaching the Silva Method to people around the world, she decided to use the "glass of water" method to find a solution to this problem.

The "glass of water" method is the only Silva Method that uses an object outside of yourself to help you find a solution to a problem. The technique is quite simple. First, you should know that most of the Silva Method is based on meditating and entering a deeper state of mind (known as alpha although you sometimes go deeper to theta) to re-program your mind to improve your life. It's also used to find root causes of problems so you can find solutions to those problems.

This particular method involves a glass of water. You take the glass of water to bed, drink half of it and close your eyes. Tilt your eyes slightly upwards. This helps you enter Alpha quicker. Especially if you've been practising deep relaxation meditation. Then you say to yourself, "This is all I need to do to find a solution to my problem." Keep your mind focused on whatever problem it is that you want to fix. Really believe and convince yourself that this is the only action you need and that, when you wake up in the morning, and drink the remaining water, you'll have a solution to this problem.

The way this works is that you let this thought "incubate" in your mind while you sleep. Your subconscious is far more powerful than your conscious mind and it hates unresolved questions so it will work hard to find a solution for you. Other explanations include, "putting out a problem to the universe to solve", and so on. You can do it for whatever reason you like, as long as you really feel that it will work and aren't just faffing around with the idea.

In the morning, you repeat to yourself that this is all you need to do to find a solution to your problem and you drink the water. She has found that, in some cases, you will wake up with the answer. In those cases, she says that you should drink the water and say a word of thanks (in your mind, or you'll choke! ;)) for the solution.

It's also suggested that you hold the glass with both hands. She says this is because you're putting your energy into it so, both times, use both hands.

If you don't immediately get a solution, keep aware during the day. You might overhear the solution in someone else's conversation or open a book to just the right page with your solution staring right back at you. Or you might have a fleeting thought or hear something in a song that answers your question. The important thing is to be aware of what's going on during the day and keep that question in mind. The answer will arrive if you do this right.

This works similarly to what happens when you get a new car. Before you got that car, you didn't notice it on the road much. But once you've bought it (or decided to buy it), your mind is more aware of those cars and starts noticing them EVERYWHERE. It's not that these cars have appeared out of the blue but, rather, that your mind is more focused on them so pays more attention to them when it notices them.

So, what she found is that, as she awoke the next morning, she immediately and very vividly remembered a time in her childhood when she was putting clothes to hang up outside and heard a commotion inside her house. She came to see what was going on and saw that her sister had a kitten that everyone was doting over. She wanted to hold the kitten but every time she came close, her sister moved to face her back towards her again. Basically purposely making sure she could not hold the kitten.

Out of anger, Laura pegged a clothes peg on the poor kitty's tail and, of course, the kitten freaked out and scratched her sister and generally caused a scene. Laura was punished for this and, obviously, never let this incident go. She never got closure.

Now it's things like this that may seem silly to you but they affect you into your adult hood because the EMOTIONS are the same. The feelings of rejection, loss of control, fear, etc affect you, whether your childhood event was something silly or not. (As a child, it wasn't silly, it was very very serious to you!) And unless you deal with all that stuff from your childhood, you could find all sorts of things still bugging you today, but in the form of fears, allergies, headaches, knots in your tummy and other things. (Keeping in mind that your emotions affect your physiology. It's been scientifically proven that negative emotions prevent good chemicals being released into your body, which begins to affect your organs and so on. For more info on that, check out the movie, "What the Bleep do we Know?". Check out the sources for the info and do the research if you like. I'm not asking you to believe anything on blind faith.)

After doing this exercise, and discovering the cause, Laura found her allergy was gone and that was the end of that episode.

If you're struggling to figure something out, give this a shot and post about your experiences in the comments. Even if you don't use the Silva Method but use some other form of meditation or some other method of allowing your subconscious to help you find a solution or reason to a present-day problem, please post a comment! I look forward to hearing your story! (And it can help others reading to see how you used your subconscious to help with a problem in your life.)

The most productive people still have to motivate themselves every day. They spend a lot of time working out what motivates them to keep going and that's how they achieve many of the amazing things they achieve. It's been that way for hundreds of years and will be that way for hundreds more. It's human nature.

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race" -Calvin Coolidge

Persistence is linked to motivation. If you're persistent, you'll find ways to keep yourself motivated even if you're not completely enchanted by your current work. You'll push through and find ways to keep at it at least, that is, until it guides you to something you are enchanted by - at which point motivation will come more naturally.

My point? The same as Zig Ziglar's:

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily." -Zig Ziglar

Here are some things I do that help keep me motivated, even when I'm bored with my work or feeling sickly and would much rather stay in bed.

Light Therapy
One of the more recent additions to my daily motivation routine is to use a tiny 11W energy saver light bulb as a desk lamp during the day. I also use it at night but using it during the day, I find, helps keep my spirits up and my brain awake. I discovered this little gem after reading "6 Surprisingly Effective Treatments for Depression." I wasn't depressed at the time but I was looking for some form of motivation and this did the trick. Total cost? Probably around R10 as I borrowed the desk lamp from my brother-in-law and just stuck in my own light bulb. What's important to note here is that the lamp is about half a meter away from me and to my side, not in front of or behind me. Having this light source in your peripheral vision is the key. Read that article or Google "light therapy" for more info.

Music
From heavy metal to Enya, I make sure I always have music playing while I work. If I don't, I get caught up in the feelings that what I'm doing is "too hard" or "too much" or "I don't like doing this" and so on. It can get so bad that I can get lost in thought for two hours or more, just thinking about how much I don't want to do this work. That doesn't help me get bills paid and it doesn't help me find an alternative work to do - it just keeps me paralysed, which is never good.

With some music going on, I tend to focus my emotions more on the music and less on what I'm doing. This helps me get through my work without attaching any unnecessary emotions to it. Most of us do work out of necessity, not passion, so if that's the case, I highly recommend some music to keep you going. Just be careful what you play. Sometimes Enya is great for coming up with ideas and calming down from a bad mood but sometimes you need some heavy metal to code at the speed of light. Figure out your own mojo and then adjust your listening habits accordingly.

A balanced diet, some exercise and sleep
You can try and avoid this one all you like but the truth is that a balanced diet, some exercise and enough sleep will keep you motivated, happy, energetic and sexy ;)

Food, I find, helps me stay positive but I have to be careful what I'm eating. When I stick with a balanced eating plan (note: I didn't say diet!), then I feel balanced, positive & energetic. If I eat junk food or skip my veggies, after a couple of meals I'm downright horrible to be around and my work suffers as well. This is what has worked for me lately:

Breakfast: Cooked oats plus a scoop of USN diet fuel.
A bit later: Meal replacement shake: 2 scoops of USN diet fuel + 300ml of water
Lunch: 2 chicken breasts or portions of fish, or chicken pieces, a cup of veggies or an apple and a small microwaved potato or half a cup of rice or half a cup of pasta. (Or similar)
A bit later: Another shake.
Supper: Similar to lunch.

I'm not saying you should do the same. Maybe you hate the idea of having a meal replacement shake - that's fine but find something that works for you and make sure it's balanced.

As for exercise - that's also a tricky one. Find something you'll enjoy doing. A daily walk around the block will do you more good than you think. Try A swim, a game of soccer, shooting hoops, martial arts or even de-weeding your garden. As long as you enjoy it enough to do it frequently, you'll find that your energy levels will rocket, you'll have great ideas during the exercise and you'll also find it easier to go to sleep at night and easier to wake up in the mornings. It's definitely worth it!

Try sleeping between 7-9 hours a day. Some people need a bit less while others need a bit more. You'll find that if you oversleep or undersleep by 2 hours or more, you'll be miserable the next day - so be careful of that. Even on weekends, I stick to about 8-9 hours of sleep.

I used to go to bed at about 10PM each night but found that I would only wake up at around 8 or 9 so, instead of trying to wake up earlier (which is nearly impossible in winter), I started going to bed at midnight or 1AM. Now I feel much better.

The key to food, exercise and sleep (and everything else, really) is to find the balance that works for you. It's not likely to be the same for everyone but you can start with something that works for someone else and then tailor it to suit your own needs.

Look at the cash figures
For work-related motivation, I find that this one helps a lot. It might not help people in jobs but, for us self-employed folk, it's a very helpful motivator.

I look at both the figures going out and the figures coming in.

My income motivates me to work harder and faster so that I can get paid and spend that money on something fun.

The expenses motivate me to work "or else". If I know I have to pay my medical aid and I'm short some cash this month, a quick reminder of that fact will often help kick my butt into gear and get some work done.

If you're not keeping track of your income and expenses, start now. It will make a difference to your motivation levels AND to your eventual financial independence because you'll be able to see what you're overspending on, what to do more of to make more money and so on.

Know what you're going to do before you begin
Having a list of what needs to get done for the day helps you prevent distractions from getting in the way of the important stuff. I find that, on the days that I work from such a list, I get LOADS of work done while, on the days that I don't, I sit wondering where the day went to.

It's important to have a list that you made and don't let others influence that list. It's often easier said than done and you won't always get it right, especially not in the beginning, but you'll find that you achieve amazing things when you do.

Ignore email, Facebook, Skype, your cellphone, Google Talk and all the rest of them
It's fine to check these things once or twice a day but if you spend your whole day chatting and checking email and reading statuses, you'll never get anything done and you'll never improve your life. What I do is I only check on these after I've achieved something significant and, even then, only briefly. You need to be aware that these distractions will rob you of really important experiences and achievements if you allow them to.

By all means, socialise, have fun, chat to friends, share funny emails but don't let them rule your life. When it's time to work, work. Don't work and chat or work and check emails and... and... and... I'm sure you get my drift :)

Find ways to make your work go faster
This may sound simple but if you find real, predictable ways of making your work go faster, you'll get more done in less time and have more time left to yourself. Again, this is a bit trickier for people in jobs as working faster could mean just getting more work to do. It's different from company to company.

What works for me is to copy my work down to my local computer and work from there. I find that I code faster and, because of that, I actually enjoy my work instead of dreading it. It allows me to do my best and I believe it's human nature to want to do your best. So, take control over what you can to ensure you can do your best work as quickly and efficiently as you can.

Another way I make my work go faster is by swallowing my pride and NOT re-inventing the wheel. As a programmer, I'm often tempted to rewrite code in order to make it "better". The trouble with that is that I end up working slower and taking longer to solve a problem that's been solved before. And I don't get paid extra for that time, either. So I've stopped doing that. I now copy code I've got working elsewhere and I get on with solving problems instead of trying to make everything "perfect".

Of course, I'm still a programmer so, while I'm working, a throw in a dash of genius in now and then, for my own satisfaction and without allowing it to negatively affect my deadlines.

Brain Boosters
When you're really struggling to keep focused, you can use brain boosters. One brain booster I use is an MP3 I bought here that helps me focus creatively. I got a whole bunch of other boosters with the pack but the "creative focus" MP3 is the one I find myself coming back to time and again. It's just a 20-minute sound clip that you can listen to while you work. I play music at the same time and it still works incredibly well.

It works so well that I forgot what it feels like to hit a brain-block while coding. I'm serious! One day I forgot to put the booster on and I hit a brick wall and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't solve what should have been a simple problem. Then it dawned on me and I put on my brain booster track. 5 minutes later, I solved the problem and carried on working on other things. Magic!

You see, the trouble is that we surround ourselves with so much stress and so many inputs from the world around us that we struggle, these days, to focus. So while you might feel that a "brain booster" sounds weird and unnatural, I think it's the most natural thing. If it wasn't for all the other noise in our lives, we'd be able to focus any time we wanted. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;)

I also find that the relaxation and deep-relaxation MP3s, available in the same pack of boosters, help a lot. I doze off and wake up, 20 minutes later, ready to take on the world. I would suggest these to anyone - they really work.

Keep a list
I have a list of "Things that Work for Me". Yes, that's what it's called :)

All it is, is a list of basic ideas that help me work when I'm not really feeling up to it. I go over the list and put some of the suggestions into action and, eventually, I start working. Here's the exact list I use, every day:

- Sleep properly (8 hours, even if I go to bed late).
- Look at the cash figures - both due out and due in. They can be inspiring.
- Write down what needs to get done before switching PC on.
- Ignore email/facebook/skype/phone/gtalk.
- Copy site down to local PC. (Or a ZA host)
- MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC. Boring music is better than no music!
- Creative focus brain booster (better than constant concentration one)
- Copy code that's working elsewhere.

So that's it. Take what works for you, drop what doesn't and come up with your own list and you'll find that, even on the worst days, you'll be able to get something done and maintain momentum which, I believe, is incredibly important. A little bit done every day makes a big difference.

"Make measurable progress in reasonable time." -Jim Rohn

"Remember, a monthly income of R1000 from an automated knowledge product is akin to having R150K in the bank, earning interest for you. So, if you are earning about R7K a month from these sort of sales (through a variety of means, maybe), you are effectively an internet millionaire, receiving the interest on R1M in the bank, for which you do not have to work." - Frank Muller

If you do the math, keeping in mind that Capitec Bank offers savings accounts with a per annum interest rate of 8%, it works out. With that in mind, I've been an internet millionaire for a few months, then :)

Sure, I don't own the Viper RT/10, the huge flatscreen TV or any of those other things that I might normally associate with being a millionaire but I do have a lot of free time. I took yesterday off to spend with my wife to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. I generally only get in the office at 10am. I seldom spend more than 2-3 hours at a time in the office at a time because I take longish breaks for lunch, my USN shakes, and so on.

In fact, if it wasn't for my debt, I might actually stop working at the tender age of 27.

I recognise that I still have a ways to go but it feels good to know that, on some levels, I have arrived!

Having said all that good stuff, I also figured out today, thanks to my income spreadsheet, that I work too hard. This month, if I do nothing else at all, I will still earn over 50% of my required income via passive income source and yet, I have still booked up just under 100% of my time with "normal" work. It would appear that someone is having trouble letting go of the work-life! We won't mention any names but he looks, sounds and acts JUST like me. Silly rabbit.

I was born "Honorio Bartolomeu De Sousa". Honorio, if you look it up, is Portuguese name meaning "honorary one" or "honorable one".

However, the kids I grew up with couldn't quite pronounce it so, later in life, I shortened it to just "Norio". It's what my family called me (as my real name, Honorio, is pronounced more like Oo-norio). It was easier to write, easier to spell and, well, just made sense.

Of course, it's still to much for most people to get, especially over the phone, so maybe I'll just shorten it to 'N'. We shall see.

Anyhow, I've lived most of my adult years (all 7 of them) being called 'Norio' without thinking much of it.

I later found out (by Googling myself) that 'Norio' is a common (not popular, just common) Japanese name. I never took it further than that but it was an interesting thing to know.

And today, I found out, by visiting http://www.norio.be, that my name means "man of principles.

I wanted to confirm that so I Googled it a bit and found this site, which says it means "lawful man":
http://www.japanese-names.org/?meaning-of=norio

As it turns out, I do tend to be quite a lawful, principled kinda guy. Sometimes to the surprise and frustration of some of my friends.

So I've come to the conclusion that, try as we might, we cannot escape our "destiny". I don't really believe in a god-given destiny but I do believe in a destiny that I give myself and it seems obvious to me that I gave myself the destiny of being a lawful, principled, honorary kind of guy. I'm not sure what that's worth but, hey, at least I now know better than to fight it :D