On ThemBid.com’s blog, Elmer Thomas reproduced a timeless success formula created by Benjamin Franklin and described by Napoleon Hill. This is a list of virtues reproduced below and a formula to enact them in your own life:

THE THIRTEEN VIRTUES

1. Temperance
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality
Make no expense but to do good to others and yourself, that is, waste nothing.

6. Industry
Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut of all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice
Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11. Tranquility
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents, common or unavoidable.

12. Humility
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

THE FORMULA

To make these virtues habit, they must be practices daily; however, not all at once.

Daniel Miessler posted an interesting article regarding the encryption of Gmail and other Google services communication. First the article shows using TCPdump capture why it is dangerous to not use encryption when connecting to Gmail. Then the well known workaround is described: use https instead of http when connecting to Gmail. But when using link to connect to the service, the connection may be in http. In the article and the comments, there are several suggestion to solve this problem:

• Use bookmarks made with https
• Don’t connect to the Google services through links
• GmailSecure userscript for GreaseMonkey that forces https connections on mail
• Use CustomizeGoogle Firefox’s Extension

The plain English campaign provides a writting guide called “How to write in plain English”. I found this guide useful as it helps to write better informative text. So this might be valuable for other bloggers to. The advices provided by the guide are:

• Keep your sentences short: A clear sentence should have an average sentence length of 15 20 words
• Prefer active verbs
• Use “You” and “We”
• Don’t be afraid to give instructions: Use imperative instead of you should …
• Avoid nominalisations: Use verbs (complete for instance)  instead of their nominalisation (completion)
• Use positive language
• Use lists where appropriate

The guides provides at the end a list of words to avoid and suggests alternatives. Some words to avoid (alternatives in round brackets):

• additional (extra)
• particulars (details) 
• regarding (about)
• terminate (end)