10 Ways to Stay Creative While Working From Home |
- 10 Ways to Stay Creative While Working From Home
- How to Create A Web-based Video Player
- Blue Screen of Death Wallpapers for April Fool’s Day
- Fuel For Your Phone: World’s Smallest Smartphone Charger
| 10 Ways to Stay Creative While Working From Home Posted: 28 Mar 2013 11:59 PM PDT Working from home is a dream come true for a lot of us. We get to choose our own hours, spend more time with family, work in our PJ’s if we want to and can even take an unplanned day off! But as awesome as awesome as working from home is, it can seriously affect your creativity at times.
Working at home alone, day in and day out can take its toll. You find yourself unable to concentrate, the quality of your work starts slipping, and every idea you come up with seems contrite and unimaginative. In short, you lose your creative spark. Luckily, there are a number of ways to keep your creativity intact. Recommended Reading: 10 Tips To Make ‘Working From Home’ Work For You 1. Take your work outside
If you’re feeling the walls of your office close in on you every time you try to concentrate, it may be time for a change of scenery. If you have a backyard, a front porch or even a balcony, consider taking your work outside. The fresh air, the hustle and bustle of your neighbourhood, or even the quietness of it may be what you need to revive your creativity. If you live in an apartment, and don’t have access to any of the above, then head to your nearest park or coffee shop. Combine the fresh air with people-watching and your head will soon be brimming with ideas and possibilities! If nothing else, you’ll come back home feeling a lot better than how you were when you left. Also Read: Get Off The Internet: A Challenge To Reconnect With Yourself 2. Get your hands dirty
Spending an entire day coding, designing, writing, editing or Photoshop-ing can take its toll. If your work is starting to swim in front of your eyes, it may be your brain’s way of telling you to take a break. Spend some time doing something with your hands – well, something other than moving your fingers over your keyboard. Instead of typing words and hitting commands that stopped making sense hours ago, step away from your computer and do something else. Cook a meal for yourself and your family. Instead of hurrying through your lunch or dinner, take the time to enjoy it. Colour. Use crayons, paint or markers. Even if you just stencil your name, taking 30 minutes to create something with colours will relax your brain and give it something new to focus on. If you have a garden or house plants, take the time to weed and water your plants. Pot a plant if everything’s tended for. Any gardening fan will tell you how rejuvenating working with plants is. Sometimes, doing something with your hands is just the boost your brain needs. Your creativity will thank you for it. 3. Work on a personal project
We all have a project or an idea for a project that we’d love to do if we ever had the time. Well, with your creativity fried, now is the time. Nothing boosts creativity like working on a project you’re personally vested in, even if it is something like reorganizing your office space. And you’re passionate about your personal project. You want it to be perfect. This project is what you want to stop doing everything for. Nothing boosts creativity like passion. So start working on it. Your passion and enthusiasm for the project will take care of your creativity. Before long, you’ll be bursting with positive energy and ideas, and you’ll will want to work again! Recommended Reading: Creative & Modern Office Designs Around The World 4. Exercise
This is by far the toughest thing to do. But it’s also the most effective. Exercising is the one activity that is guaranteed to improve your overall mental well-being. So not only will your creativity be boosted, but you’ll feel more energetic, positive and healthier too! If you don’t exercise, it is definitely time to get moving. Even if it’s as simple as doing Pilates at home, get your bums off the chair and onto an exercise mat. For those of you who already exercise (notice how I don’t include myself in the already exercising group?), it might be time for a change in the form of exercise you do. If you use a treadmill, head out for your run. If you run outside, try cycling or swimming or hiking. Anything that gets your body moving is a guaranteed way to boost creativity. 5. Stop and ask ‘What’s wrong?’
Stop! Stop doing whatever you’re doing right now. Whether it’s browsing, checking email or answering the phone. Now ask yourself why you’re not feeling creative. Is something stressing you (apart from your lack of creativity)? Is there something bothering you? What aspect of your personal or professional life feels off-balance? Once you’ve pinpointed the problem, try and figure out how you can solve it. What can you do to make the situation better? Your problem may not be something that can be fixed immediately. But finding out what’s wrong and acknowledging that something is wrong may be all you need. You’ll find yourself feeling much ‘lighter’. You’ll be able to concentrate on your work too! 6. Meditate
Meditation is a great way to relax. The simple act of concentrating on your breathing can significantly reduce stress. You don’t even have to leave your chair if you don’t want to. Just turn off every ‘screen’ that’s on, close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Inhale and feel the air move through your body. Exhale and imagine all your stress leaving your body. Of course, mine is a very amateurish take on meditation but focusing on your breathing really helps. There are plenty of excellent meditation resources that you can refer to online. Find one that suits your work schedule. 7. Take a nap
If this is the first time your creativity has deserted you, then a nap may be all you need. Quickly go over your routine for the past month. Have you been going to bed on time? Getting enough sleep? Peaceful, uninterrupted sleep? If the answer is no to any of those questions, then a nap is in order. Your nap can be anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours. It really depends on the needs of your body and the time of the day. I wouldn’t recommend taking a 2-hour nap at 5 pm! If a nap is out of the question, focus on going to bed on time (or even earlier) to catch a little more sleep than you usually do. In a few days, your body would have recovered and your brain would be back to its fully functional creative self. 8. Collaborate
If a project has you stumped creatively and you’re wondering what’s wrong with you, here’s something you probably haven’t considered: The problem may not be you. Not all projects are created equal. Sometimes we need help. If you’re unsure on how to proceed on a project or can’t come up with ideas, then seek help from a friend. Collaborate with another freelancer or even hire a consultant if you can. Two pairs of eyes are always better than one and two brains bouncing ideas off each other can be just what you need to get back in the groove of things. 9. Create a virtual water cooler
Loneliness is a very common feeling among people who work from home. While office workers long for some peace and quiet to work in, freelancers who work from home long for just the opposite. If you work alone from home, then I’m pretty sure there have been times when an entire day has gone by without you uttering more than five words. If you haven’t found yourself in good company in a while, then remedy the situation. Call a friend, a sibling or even your mom and talk to them. Skype with somebody in your field who also works from home. Join a small online forum, start tweeting, anything that gets you to interact with people. This helps you create a virtual water-cooler not unlike those found in traditional offices that are a hotbed of gossip. The good thing with a virtual water-cooler is that you pick your own people and topics of conversations. So get talking to people and feel your creative mojo come back with every conversation you have. 10. Laugh
Laughter boosts creativity. Even the monsters in Monsters Inc. found it to be true! So who are we to argue with a Pixar cartoon? If you’re feeling stuck and uncreative, watch your favourite comedy movies and shows. Whether it’s the movie Hangover, the television show Big Bang Theory, or a medley of funny children and animal videos on Youtube, get watching! Me? I’m going to go watch some Monty Python right now and give myself a much needed creative boost. More TipsIf you need more tips on how to increase creativity, check out:
Have you ever found yourself in a creativity slump? What’s your favourite way of boosting creativity? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How to Create A Web-based Video Player Posted: 27 Mar 2013 04:13 AM PDT In our previous post we have covered how to create an Audio Web Player as well as how to customize the player skin. This time we are going to do it with video. Yes, we are going to create a Web Video Player. The video player will be embeded using the HTML5
In case, the browser does not support it, an embedded flash player will be delivered as a fallback, so you need to install the Flash plugin before you are able to play the video. This screenshot below shows the final output of our video player. PreparationAs usual, before we get busy with the code, we need to prepare some stuff first, especially the video. In this tutorial, we are going to use this video from TED Talk by Kelli Anderson in Youtube. To download it, you can use this web tool, called KeepVid.com. For wider browser compatibility, we need to provide two formats of video, MP4 and OGV. By default, when you download videos from Youtube with KeepVid.com you most likely will get the MP4 format. You can use Miro Video Converter to convert MP4 video to OGV format, it’s available for FREE for both Windows and OS X machine. Furthermore, we also need an image file for video cover. To create this cover you can play the video with VLC and then go Video > Snapshot to take a snapshot of the video. Regarding the user interface icon, we are going to use FontAwesome. Lastly, we also need jPlayer, jQuery to run the video, as well as a new CSS file to store the video skin styles. After collecting all this, put them in their appropriate folders, as shown below:
HTML StructureNow, create a new HTML document and link the jQuery, jPlayer libraries as well as the CSS file in the <link type="text/css" href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.jplayer.min.js"></script> Regarding the HTML structure for our video player, it’s actually similar to the how to create an Audio Player from the previous tutorial. Only, this time we have a button to turn the video into fullscreen format and a play button at the center of the video. Place this code below inside the <div id="jp_container_1" class="jp-video"> <div class="jp-title"> <h1>Kelli Anderson - Disruptive Wonder for a Change</h1> </div> <div class="jp-type-single"> <div id="jquery_jplayer_1" class="jp-jplayer"></div> <div class="jp-gui"> <div class="jp-video-play"> <a href="javascript:;" class="jp-video-play-icon" tabindex="1"></a> </div> <div class="jp-interface"> <div class="jp-controls-holder"> <ul class="jp-controls"> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-play" tabindex="1"></a></li> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-pause" tabindex="1"></a></li> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-mute" tabindex="1" title="mute"></a></li> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-unmute" tabindex="1" title="unmute"></a></li> </ul> <div class="jp-volume-bar"> <div class="jp-volume-bar-value"></div> </div> <ul class="jp-toggles"> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-full-screen" tabindex="1" title="full screen"></a></li> <li><a href="javascript:;" class="jp-restore-screen" tabindex="1" title="restore screen"></a></li> </div> <div class="jp-progress"> <div class="jp-seek-bar"> <div class="jp-play-bar"></div> </div> </div> <div class="jp-current-time"></div> </div> </div> <div class="jp-no-solution"> <span>Update Required</span> To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your <a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank">Flash plugin</a>. </div> </div> </div> Activating the VideoActivating the video is also similar to our previous Audio Player. The only difference is, this time, we need to link the video poster and the supplied formats are now m4v and ogv. Put all these scripts right below the jquery and jplayer links we have added before. <script> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#jquery_jplayer_1").jPlayer({ ready: function () { $(this).jPlayer("setMedia", { m4v: "vid/TEDxPhoenix-KelliAnderson-DisruptiveWonderforaChange.mp4", ogv: "vid/TEDxPhoenix-KelliAnderson-DisruptiveWonderforaChange.ogv", poster: "vid/TEDxPhoenix-KelliAnderson-DisruptiveWonderforaChange.png" }); }, swfPath: "/js", supplied: "m4v,ogv" }); }); </script> At this stage, our video player still looks plain as shown in the following screenshot.
Adding StylesAfter adding those script, you should now be able to run the video. But, the player still looks unpresentable, so let’s make it nicer by adding styles. Open up the We will start off by adding the @font-face rule and remove the underlines from all the links. @font-face { font-family: "FontAwesome"; src: url('fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot'); src: url('fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('eot'), url('fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff') format('woff'), url('fonts/fontawesome-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), url('fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg#FontAwesome') format('svg'); font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; } a { text-decoration: none; } Video WidthThen, we specify the width of the video container and place it at the center of the browser window, like so. .jp-video { margin: 0 auto; position: relative; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } .jp-video-270p { width: 480px; } Video TitleWe turn the color of the title to dark grey, specify the font-size and align it to the center. .jp-title h1 { font-size: 1em; text-align: center; color: #555; } Play ButtonThen, we style the play button. We place this button at the top over the video and to display the Play icon, we assign .jp-video-play { font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: absolute; top: 45%; left: 46%; } .jp-video-play a { font-size: 2em; color: rgba(255,255,255,.7); display: inline-block; width: 50px; height: 50px; line-height: 55px; text-align: center; background-color: rgba(0,0,0,.8); border-radius: 5px; } Video User InterfaceThe User Interface for our video player will look similar. It will have a gradient with the orange color scheme while the icons to control the video, like the Play, Pause and Volume will be in white. .jp-interface { width:100%; bottom: 0; position: relative; background: #f34927; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #f34927 0%, #dd3311 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#f34927), color-stop(100%,#dd3311)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #f34927 0%,#dd3311 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #f34927 0%,#dd3311 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #f34927 0%,#dd3311 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #f34927 0%,#dd3311 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#f34927', endColorstr='#dd3311',GradientType=0 ); overflow: hidden; -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0px 1px 0px 0px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.1); box-shadow: inset 0px 1px 0px 0px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.1); } .jp-interface a { color: #fff; text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.3); } .jp-controls, .jp-toggles { padding: 0; margin: 0; font-family: "FontAwesome" } .jp-toggles { position: absolute; top: 14px; right: 14px; } .jp-controls li, .jp-toggles li { display: inline; } .jp-play,.jp-pause { width: 55px; height: 40px; display: inline-block; text-align: center; line-height: 43px; } .jp-mute,.jp-unmute { position: absolute; right: 85px; top: 0; width: 20px; height: 40px; display: inline-block; line-height: 43px; } .jp-progress { background-color: #992E18; border-radius: 20px 20px 20px 20px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: 55px; top: 14px; width: 55%; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.2) inset; box-shadow: 0 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.2) inset; } .jp-play-bar { height: 12px; background-color: #fff; border-radius: 20px 20px 20px 20px; } .jp-volume-bar { position: absolute; right: 40px; top: 16px; width: 45px; height: 8px; border-radius: 20px 20px 20px 20px; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.1) inset; box-shadow: 0 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.1) inset; background-color: #992E18; overflow: hidden; } .jp-volume-bar-value { background-color: #fff; height: 8px; border-radius: 20px 20px 20px 20px; } .jp-current-time { color: #FFF; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px; position: absolute; right: 115px; top: 13px; text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.3); } At this point, our video player start looking nice, as shown in the following screenshot.
Video FullscreenWe are able to switch the video to fullscreen. For that reason, we also need to add styles to specifically target when the video is in fullscreen mode, including adjusting the width and the height of the Play button, the width of the progress bar and the video should be on top of others by specifying the .jp-video-full { /* Rules for IE6 (full-screen) */ width:480px; height:270px; /* Rules for IE7 (full-screen) - Otherwise the relative container causes other page items that are not position:static (default) to appear over the video/gui. */ position:static !important; position:relative; } /* The z-index rule is defined in this manner to enable Popcorn plugins that add overlays to video area. EG. Subtitles. */ .jp-video-full div div { z-index:1000; } .jp-video-full .jp-jplayer { top: 0; left: 0; position: fixed !important; position: relative; /* Rules for IE6 (full-screen) */ overflow: hidden; } .jp-video-full .jp-interface { position: absolute !important; position: relative; /* Rules for IE6 (full-screen) */ bottom: 0; left: 0; } .jp-video-full .jp-gui { position: fixed !important; position: static; /* Rules for IE6 (full-screen) */ top: 0; left: 0; width:100%; height:100%; z-index:1001; /* 1 layer above the others. */ } .jp-video-full .jp-video-play a { font-size: 3em; height: 80px; width: 80px; line-height: 95px; } .jp-video-full .jp-progress { width: 83%; } And this is how our video player looks like in fullscreen mode.
Add ShadowThis is only optional, but I would like to add shadow to make the video player look nicer and more prominent. .jp-video-270p .jp-type-single { -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); } And, that’s all the codes we need, you are now able to see the video and download the file source from the following links. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Blue Screen of Death Wallpapers for April Fool’s Day Posted: 29 Mar 2013 02:03 AM PDT The day for tomfoolery is a-coming, the much-awaited (or much feared) day we turn friends to sworn enemies and get revenge for last years’ pranking. While we wait for Google and BBC to pull their latest hoaxes, let’s not be content with just changing relationship statuses or ‘hacking’ into a friend’s Facebook to post humiliating declarations. Let’s take it up a notch, and give them a shock.
In this mini-post, you will find the ‘Blue Screens Of Death’ wallpaper optimized for the screens of multiple tablets and smartphones. We’re not really sure if most of you can pull this off but you will need access to your victim’s phone. Download the right wallpaper (see full list below) and set it as the wallpaper before freaking out about how you crashed your friend’s device, or leave it like that for them to find. Recommended Reading: 30 Priceless Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) to Chuckle About Download Wallpapers
Technically, April 1st is the only day you can run this joke without being killed. If you survived it, let us know what happened after. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fuel For Your Phone: World’s Smallest Smartphone Charger Posted: 29 Mar 2013 02:03 AM PDT There are a lot of external batteries or power banks out there in the market, an apparent need because of the inability of our smartphones to last a full day. While you can lug a power bank around or recharge your device with cables or special charging cards, no phone charger can give you so much while taking so little space. Devotec Industries created a tiny charger which you can just keep with your car keys. Attach it to your key ring and bring the charger anywhere with you.
Despite being pint sized and weighing only half an ounce, the tiny Devotec Fuel Micro Charger packs a punch when it comes to charging power. It has a battery capacity of 220 mAh which could charge up your phone for 20 to 30 minutes of talk time or a few hours of standby mode, depending on the usage of your phone.
It’s not supposed to fully recharge your phone but it makes it count when you need to make an important phone call or when you need to power up your GPS to find your way again. The body is made using pure die-cast aluminium giving it a strong yet light exterior.
It can also last long on a single charge. Charge it up and leave it for a month and it won’t suffer any drain in battery juice. The makers say it can last up to 3 months but it is recommended that you charge it every once a month.
For now, the charger is only available for micro USB devices, which means if you’re using an iPhone you can’t use this charger. But who knows what will happen in the near future? Devotec has already achieved their required pledge but if you want one, you can pledge $20 for it and get one around July this year. |
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