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Your past thoughts and actions have created your present and what you do in the present will create the future – positive, negative or neutral. Therefore, it is incumbent upon you to be aware of what you are thinking, doing and, thus, creating.

Practicing awareness moment to moment is the key to avoiding the anxiety that accompanies the worrying ahead syndrome or uncertainty. Although, you strive to predict or control the future, your power lies in the present. When you are apprehensive about the future, concentrating on what you can do now rather than what may occur will help you remain calm and collected. When you are grounded in the moment you will no longer feel that your life is a series of coincidences that you are helpless to influence.

Grounding yourself in the present is a matter of recognizing that your ability to influence anything is limited to the actions you take in the moment. Staying focused on the actions you take in each moment will bring about the future events you wish to create.

Grounding yourself will facilitate your decisiveness remaining in tact, allowing you to boldly choose the path you wish to take and banishing pessimistic thoughts. Then, you can participate fully in the richness of your journey in life, moment by moment – fully aware of each step you take. When you ground yourself in the present, your mind will cease to focus on ‘what if,’ ‘if only,’ and all the thoughts one could focus on when one is uncertain about the future, thus anxiousness and uncertainty will be a ono-issue. You will be empowered to positively influence what is transpiring in the moment.

A program is a sequence of instruction codes. It is executed according to the sequence of instructions. In the realm of software development, programs are developed to provide certain degree of automation for an application. The ability of the application software to solve problems lies heavily on the logic of the program which I will describe as the “reasoning provider” of a program or application. Logic gives an application the ability to reason. The more advanced the logic, the greater the reasoning power of the application and the more the degree of automation. There is no ready-made logic for solving all problems. The development of the correct logic is a function of the IQ and experience of the programmer which determine his ability to meet the challenges of developing the right logic. However, tools like program flowchart and UML could assist in developing the algorithm and by extension, the logic of a program.

Tasks like signing up and signing in on the web can be used to demonstrate the artificial reasoning by a program or script. When you sign up and submit your profile, if the username and/or password have been used by someone else, the script would deny you signing up. How did the program know that the username and/or password exist? It is through the reasoning power of the program given by the logic which ensures that the script searches first for the existence of the username and/or password and then prevents the submission of data into the database upon finding that the username and/or password exist. The same thing goes for signing in into an account. It is through the reasoning power (logic) of the program that the script is able to know whether the username and/or password exist in the database. If the logic is wrong or inadequate, you might find a situation where a user can sign in successfully with a non-existent username or password.

We have seen what logic is all about. It is processed back-end and so site visitor does not see it and he needs not see it but he needs to see some results of logic processing such as login and sign up denial and the reason why. To this end, provision is made in scripts for outputting to the browser custom messages that are quite explanatory to the visitor. Dynamic messages like this and things like text, images, animations, forms, and what have you that enable visitor interact with a web site and browse are what you call presentation. You can create presentation using scripts and static HTML tags. Each scripting language has its own built-in function for creating presentation. For instance-

1. JSP- out.println()
2. PHP- echo()
3. ASP.NET- response.write()
4. ASP- response.write()

With these functions when used in web pages, you can create forms, tables, custom messages which visitors can interact directly with. The appropriate HTML tags are put inside the bracket according to the specific syntax and create presentation the way a static HTML web page would. In dynamic web pages, server-side scripts containing logic and these presentation creating functions can be interspersed with static HTML tags like in PHP, JSP, and ASP where you separate the server-side portion from the static HTML portion using special symbols like

Separation of logic and presentation is the key to highly maintainable software. The idea is simple- if the designers intend to change the presentation of the site, no logic should be modified, and if the editors change the content, no change should be reflected in the logic of an application. An effective way of separating logic from presentation is by the use of Server-Side Includes (SSIs) in dynamic web pages. SSIs allow you to insert the content of one file in another web page. By so doing, you can incorporate a single file in multiple web pages or multiple files in a single web page.

In PHP, it is stated as follows – include (‘filename.php’). What you do to separate logic from presentation is to create separate pages for the scripts that contain logic and separate pages for those that create presentation. The logic files and the presentation files will be made to work together with the inclusion of the Server-Side Includes (SSIs) statements in the appropriate positions in a web page which is determined by the order of execution of instructions in the page. For example, a Server-Side Include (SSI) statement containing a logic file can be put in the middle of dynamic web page that is a presentation file and all you will see are the details of codes of the presentation file while the details of the logic file will be elsewhere and the same result will be obtained with when there is no separation of logic from presentation.

However, maintenance is easier when there is separation especially when you are dealing with complex web application. If there is need to amend logic, you can quickly locate the file and changes in the presentation and design of the site will not necessitate changes in the logic scripts.

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My grandson, Carson, just turned one. He’s not quite walking, but he sure is trying. Hewon’t give up, and I expect we’ll see videos of those first solo steps very soon. As I watched him, I’m reminded of lessons that apply to learning how to be a great speaker.

If you’ve never walked, it takes awhile to learn how. If you’ve never given presentations, it takes awhile to learn how.

If you’re learning to walk, and fall down, you need to pull yourself up, and try, again. If your presentation BOMBS, you need to pull yourself up and try, again.

I think you see where I’m going with this Post.

Walking is a skill we learn. We don’t come into this world walking. We don’t learn to do this the first time we pull ourselves up and try to move our feet. It takes perseverance. We can’t give up when we don’t do it right the first time, or anytime after that. Falling down is part of the learning process.

We don’t fall down and verbally beat ourselves up about it with negative self-talk like: “I’m a failure. I’ll never learn how to walk. Everyone will laugh at me if I try it again and fall. I’m a loser!” Often, no one is there to pick us up, so we need to pull ourselvesup.

Sometimes when we fall, there is help available. Parents, siblings, and others help the child. We encourage them and applaud their efforts. Books, blogs, Toastmaster Clubs, and presentation coaches help the speaker when he stumbles. Their success are also recognized by applause and praise.

You can’t learn to walk without falling down. You can’t become a great presenter without falling downa number of times, either!

Most everyone learns to walk. We continue trying until we get it right. Once we learn this skill, we’re able to use it the rest of our lives.

Not everyone learns to be a good speaker and presenter. Why is this? We’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid we’ll make a fool of ourselves and forever everyone will remember how poor we performed at the lectern.

I fell down, and stayed down too long!

After taking a Public Speaking Continuing Education Course I joined a Toastmasters Club. I had given a pretty good Icebreaker Speech, the first one Toasties do, and didn’t prepare as I should have for my second talk. It BOMBED and I fell down. Instead of getting up and working hard on my next presentation, I dropped out. It wasn’t until several years later, when I realized how important presentation skills were, that I joined a different club.

I won’t tell you I didn’t Bomb, again, because I certainly did. I delivered some speeches not worthy of being presented a second time. However, and often with encouragement and help from others,I did stand, again!

Pleaselearn from my mistake. If you BOMB and fall down, don’t wait years to stand, again, Pull yourself up immediately!