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So I hacked this together to add a little communication between my (current) favorite methods of staying on my financial track – Google docs and Google Calendar.  This is quick and dirty and reads from a spreadsheet the name of a Payee, the Date that a Payment is Due and the Amount Due.  It loads this information into an event on the user’s default calendar.  Note that this is something I threw together after walking through the first example and reading the API a bit, and it has no logic whatsoever.

As I spend more time on it over the next few days I’ll add the ability to read multiple items from multiple sheets – my organizational system gives me one sheet for each month of a given year.  I’d also like to add support for writing to a different calendar, as well as a to-do list or even my new favorite toy – GQueues.

The functionality I’m really looking for is the ability to populate the information from the spreadsheet to multiple sources, and have my to-do list or GQueues push out to each source when the item is completed, ultimately logging the date (and amount paid) back on the spreadsheet.  But I tend to get ahead of myself – that will probably require more checks in both directions that I will ever feel like writing.

Oh, and a disclamer – I’m no programmer, I just dabble.  If you want to talk to a coder, talk to my brother.

function GoogleAppScriptExample() { 
 var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet(); //gets the active spreadsheet
 var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0]; //gets the active sheet
 var payee = sheet.getRange("A3").getValue(); //you can figure the rest out yourselves, its not that complicated.
 var dateDue = sheet.getRange("B3").getValue();
 var amountDue = sheet.getRange("C3").getValue();
 Browser.msgBox("Payee: " + payee + " Due Date: " + dateDue + " Amount Due: " + amountDue); //turn off for real deployment
 var cal = CalendarApp.getDefaultCalendar();
 cal.createEvent(payee + ": " + amountDue, new Date(dateDue), new Date(dateDue));
}

Have fun – I’ll keep posting stuff as I get it done.

Self-confidence is important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet many people struggle to find it. This can be a vicious circle: people who lack self-confidence can find it difficult to become successful.

If your self-confidence is low, can you do things to change that? Do you control your own self-confidence?

I believe you can take steps to increase your confidence. You weren’t born with low self-confidence and you don’t have to rely on others to increase your self-confidence. If you feel you are not competent, smart, attractive or whatever it may be… that can be changed.

Here are four steps to help build your confidence:

Accept yourself

Imagine what your life would be like if you could just be yourself, without thinking twice about other people’s perceptions of you. The first step is to accept yourself. Nobody is perfect, so why spend time worrying about the things you can’t do?

You’re probably familiar with the voice in your head saying you’re never good enough. Instead of listening to that voice; focus on your successes. Use them as an example to drive you forward.

Do something you enjoy

Decide what work brings you joy. This may seem obvious, but how much time do you spend thinking about the work you enjoy doing? It’s easy to get caught up in checking things off that to-do list or rushing off to yet another meeting. Take a few minutes this week, and make a list of all the work that jazzes you.

Don’t forget those non-work things that give you pleasure:

• time for family and friends
• look after your health
• pursue hobbies and interests
• stretch your mind

Find your peers

Building and maintaining self-confidence is not a solo effort. You need the support of like-minded people. It is easier when you are among people who are share the same interests mind-set as you. They will understand you and vice versa. This creates conditions for healthy conversations. You will feel more secure in your ideas when others want to hear and appreciate what you have to say.

Set Goals

Setting goals is not complicated. It can be challenging, but the process of goal setting can be of value to you in building excitement and commitment, which are important factors in achieving success.

The idea is to begin with a small single step that can then further developed into giant strides. Learn to do the work at hand rather than to overwhelm oneself by looking at the whole of a large task.

Break a big task into a list of small tasks. Check off each step you complete. A completed task, no matter how small, gives a sense of achievement that boosts self-confidence and gives more drive to try a bigger task.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 33 Striking Differences Between Winners And Losers – So Which Side Are You On? (healthmoneysuccess.com)
• Six Secrets for Building your Confidence (thecustomercollective.com)

Recommended: The Zen Habits Handbook for Life!

Self-confidence is important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet many people struggle to find it. This can be a vicious circle: people who lack self-confidence can find it difficult to become successful.

If your self-confidence is low, can you do things to change that? Do you control your own self-confidence?

I believe you can take steps to increase your confidence. You weren’t born with low self-confidence and you don’t have to rely on others to increase your self-confidence. If you feel you are not competent, smart, attractive or whatever it may be… that can be changed.

Here are four steps to help build your confidence:

Accept yourself

Imagine what your life would be like if you could just be yourself, without thinking twice about other people’s perceptions of you. The first step is to accept yourself. Nobody is perfect, so why spend time worrying about the things you can’t do?

You’re probably familiar with the voice in your head saying you’re never good enough. Instead of listening to that voice; focus on your successes. Use them as an example to drive you forward.

Do something you enjoy

Decide what work brings you joy. This may seem obvious, but how much time do you spend thinking about the work you enjoy doing? It’s easy to get caught up in checking things off that to-do list or rushing off to yet another meeting. Take a few minutes this week, and make a list of all the work that jazzes you.

Don’t forget those non-work things that give you pleasure:

• time for family and friends
• look after your health
• pursue hobbies and interests
• stretch your mind

Find your peers

Building and maintaining self-confidence is not a solo effort. You need the support of like-minded people. It is easier when you are among people who are share the same interests mind-set as you. They will understand you and vice versa. This creates conditions for healthy conversations. You will feel more secure in your ideas when others want to hear and appreciate what you have to say.

Set Goals

Setting goals is not complicated. It can be challenging, but the process of goal setting can be of value to you in building excitement and commitment, which are important factors in achieving success.

The idea is to begin with a small single step that can then further developed into giant strides. Learn to do the work at hand rather than to overwhelm oneself by looking at the whole of a large task.

Break a big task into a list of small tasks. Check off each step you complete. A completed task, no matter how small, gives a sense of achievement that boosts self-confidence and gives more drive to try a bigger task.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 33 Striking Differences Between Winners And Losers – So Which Side Are You On? (healthmoneysuccess.com)
• Six Secrets for Building your Confidence (thecustomercollective.com)

Recommended: The Zen Habits Handbook for Life!

theodp writes "Formerly only available to Apps Users, Google has made Apps Script available to everyone (sample script), including you Google Docs low-lifers. Apps Script lets you automate actions across spreadsheets, sites, calendars, and other Google services. No spamming, kids!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tenth annual Game Developers Conference is in full swing in San Francisco, CA -- and yesterday included a panel by Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment. Pardo spoke about design philosophy and how Blizzard approaches it, sharing not only Blizzard's success stories, but where they failed along the way, and what they did to fix it. Blizzard's design philosophy follows some key elements:

Gameplay First: Before anything else, you want to concentrate the game on the fun. All aspects of the game -- the design, the mechanics of encounters, the quests and story are focused on making the game fun to play. Not only fun to play -- but fun to play for players, not developers. The challenge is to keep players jumping through the correct hoops, while making those hoops fun. Sometimes this involves making some changes -- for example, only night elf males could be druids in Warcraft III, but for the sake of making the druid class, something that sounded like all kinds of fun, they had to be made accessible to both genders, and both sides. So the lore was adjusted so that females and tauren could both be druids -- otherwise they couldn't have introduced the class at all. And that wouldn't be any fun.

Continue reading Rob Pardo speaks about Blizzard game design

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Rob Pardo speaks about Blizzard game design originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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