How Famous Companies were Named

A very interesting post, mirrored from somewhere else. Enjoy!

Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Sun Microsystems
Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network.

Sony
From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

Red Hat
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

Oracle
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such).

Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

Microsoft
It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Lotus
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or 'padmasana.' Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.


Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.


Hewlett-Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.


Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.

Google
The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Cisco
The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco . The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge .


Apple Computers
Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.


Adobe
The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock .

A short story you need "Guts" to read

Warning : This is not for the faint of heart.

When you feel up to it, read "Guts", a short story by Chuck Palahniuk (writer of "Fight Club", a book [and movie] I end up quoting multiple times a day).

Click here to read 'Guts'

Mind maps

Just read Tony Buzan's "How to Mind Map". While I'd heard of (and used every now and then) the concept, I hadn't ever thrown myself into it completely. I'm very much a one-line-after-another to-do list sort of person.

So I'm trying this.

http://www.mind-mapping.co.uk/make-mind-map.htm

Or Google it, I'm sure there are better tutorials out there.

AF4

If you've ever had to make a to-do list to get things done, you have enough things to forget. At one point, I'd ended up with a list 4 pages long :/
AutoFocus4 is a system to get through all of that, systematically *and* intuitively.

Try it.

http://www.markforster.net/blog/2009/9/5/preliminary-instructions-for-autofocus-v-4.html

The Pareto Principle (80-20 rule)

Originally, the Pareto Principle referred to the observation that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to only 20% of the population.

More generally, the Pareto Principle is the observation (not law) that most things in life are not distributed evenly. It can mean all of the following things:

* 20% of the input creates 80% of the result
* 20% of the workers produce 80% of the result
* 20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue
* 20% of the bugs cause 80% of the crashes
* 20% of the features cause 80% of the usage
* and so on ...

The numbers don’t have to be “20%” and “80%” exactly. The thing to appreciate is that most things in life (effort, reward, output) are not distributed evenly – some contribute more than others.

How can this be used effectively?

- reward the employees that produce the maximum result
- sort out the critical bugs before you get to the rest
- focus on the customers that give you the maximum revenue
- and so on ...

The economics term for this is "diminishing marginal benefit".

Realize you have the option to focus on the important 20%.

• Quality - When you're looking at overall quality, *everything* needs to be looked at. But when you're just trying to finish off things that need to be done - focus on the important 20% first, then look at the remaining.
  
• Effectiveness - You could read 3 articles in depth - or, skim a dozen articles in an hour (5 min each) and then read the 2 most relevant. Which is more effective?
  
• Volume - "Superstar management" : if you get top results from your 'superstar' 20%, spend all your time managing them. This theory is flawed, because it would be better to take 80% up a notch than try to squeeze more out of the hens that lay the golden eggs. Sheer numbers guarantee that.
  

And while you're at it, here's an interesting link about The Internet and the death of 80:20. And here's an application of the principle to betting on horce racing.

Work smart, not hard - on the right things.

English Pronunciation!?!

This is a re-post of some forward I'd gotten sometime somewhere.
"I kan the taalk eenglees, and the waalk eenglees" :}

--

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.


Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

The five 'C's - an approach to visual texts

Or "How to read a photograph : the preliminaries".
Wish I'd found this before I'd submitted by assignment for my Semiotics course.
*sigh

The five 'C's - an approach to visual texts

1. Context - When was this made? What is the subject matter? What clues are given for a time frame? Consider clothing, implements - tools, weapons, architecture, etc.

2. Characters - Who or what is portrayed here? Is it a person? Animal? Symbol? What clues are given about who/what they are?

3. Color - What colors, if any, are used? Do you think they were used just for visual appeal? What is the mood or tone established by these colors?

4. Composition - Look at the use of space. Is one image bigger than another? Is that to suggest a relationship? What kind of relationship? Is the entire space used? Why or why not? What is the foreground? The background? Do either suggest importance?

5. Construction - Someone conciously constructed this image for a purpose. Who do you think made this? Why? For what audience? Who would connect with this image? Who would not?

PS : I found the 5 'C's in a PPT on some site. Unfortunately I lost the link. If anyone happens to find it, do let me know. Thanks :)

How to mess with your sleep - at a whole new level

Most people work with a monophasic sleep routine ie. sleeping in a single stretch (as grandma says, 8 hours). Others prefer biphasic, where you get your one chunk at night and a nap sometime in the middle of the day - a very popular routine, with entire cultural phenomena (eg: the concept of 'siesta') designed around it.

But why one over the other? Or put differently, which is best? If you want to squeeze the maximum out of each day, consider time spent sleeping a waste, or simply have an exam coming up and syllabus to cram, read on -

Now, there is evidence that humans evolved on a biphasic or polyphasic adaptation. It would be hard to believe that our old monkey ancestors would get their forty winks at a stretch. There'd always be something or the other trying to eat you. *Not* being comatose for eight hours seems to give you a better chance to survive.

Research on napping and circadian rhythms also suggests that sometime in the middle of the day (around afternoon) there is a natural drop in body temperature - which is why sleeping *after* lunch is a good idea. You'll be sleepy anyway, might as well put it to use.
NASA's research on its trainees found that a 25 minute nap in the afternoon had the maximum positive effects on the human system. In fact, since the natural body rythm makes us drowsy seven or eight hours after we wake up, that also gives us the best window to nap - thiry minutes, seven or eight hours from the time you get up.

But that's simply biphasic sleep. It'll increase your energy levels, restore mental alertness and has a positive correlation with sustained memory. What if we could have all of that, while doing away with the one-third waste of a life associated with sleeping eight hours a day?

Behold, there *are* people nuts enough to do this. Enter polyphasic sleep, where you aren't going to get your total sleep requirement in one (or two) blocks. Your sleep requirement is dispersed over the day. In other words, you *dont* roll-over-and-get-up-many-hours-later sleep. You're awake, napping as needed. Clearly, staying up continuously and napping every few hours isn't the best way to go about this.

Enter a study which found a statistical correlation between man-made disasters, car accidents, fires and night-time sleep. That's right, boys and girls, they mapped the time of the day with the severity of loss. As you'd expect, both in number and scale, the "dead zone" period won. The time between 2 AM and 5AM is largely beyond reach for the majority of the population. People will drop off, and this needs to be accepted and dealt with accordingly. A night-out isn't the best idea for a student, and a construction worker handling heavy machinery needs to get some shut-eye during *that* time. So remember to allocate a 2 hour sleep period somewhere in that.

Also, remember that according the our natural circadian rhythm, a four-hour wake period seems optimal. Give or take a bit for individual stamina, but four hours is the most you should go without a nap if you're running polyphasic. Less than that and you won't get sleep, and more than that might make you crash for longer when you do finally get sleep.

So there you have it. Biphasic reduces your night core sleep and gets your day's total sleep to around five hours, giving you an extra two-three hours in the day and stable energy levels throughout. Polyphasic means you'll be napping for half an hour every four odd hours, which means you've cut your sleep down to under three hours in a day. If you go back to monophasic, keep in mind that most people function on a core requirement of five, so any improvement on that is a bonus.

If you're just looking for a quick fix to get through a few days without sleep, remember that sleep in humans is largely a 90 minute sub-cycle within our normal 24-hour rythm. In other words, if you need a nap longer than half an hour, plan for multiples of 90 minutes for maximum efficiency. You'll manage your sleep debt and functioning, yet save on a large chunk of time.

And now, I'm off to sleep. G'nite folks.

Break Away

There is sadness in every heart,
A loneliness in every soul,
Shambles where joy should have been,
Once life has taken its toll.

So many people just come and go,
Such few hearts ever come to stay,
Empty shells that smile at us,
And then they're on their way.

Where will you find one among these,
Who will you find above the mud?
Stuck in their own shallow reality,
With the same tears, the same blood.

Ah, we're on the same page again,
Have no fear, again we go,
Find another character to play,
Find another in our little freakshow.

Rolling down memory lane,
Roll by the brothers, smile at the smiles,
All the soft eyes and pretty voices,
Just keep rolling, put on the miles.

Sometimes rolling by candles on the way,
Flames that once lit up the darkening moon,
A few people that could light up your day,
Disappeared, like the stars at noon.

Maybe they'll twinkle yet again,
Perhaps they won't, who is to say,
Life so very long, yet so short,
A game of chance, that we all play.

Can you tell you, who will be there,
Standing by you, days after now,
Who can ever say what will be,
We can only wonder how.

To have those that make you twinkle,
Is a gift of chance to you,
Break away from the skies of gloom,
Take the chance, to live anew.

--
Originally written : Nov 2005

One of my people

You know who my people are?
There are people, and there my people. And if you're one of my people, you know who you are.

But this post is for one of my people who isn't anymore. We met and moved, and got lost somewhere on the way. And now we're in places where I don't see how things fix up. And its with too many people.

Too many people come and go, such few hearts come to stay.
They laugh and play, and smile with us,
And then they're on the way.

Ze defines the term "rock solid" human being, braving more hardship than I can ever think of facing. Zir said to me,"Whatever wrong I do, I get feedback about it right away. I will never hurt someone intentionally.","People who go back home. Eat. Roam around. They dont know how lucky they are. That they get things easy, they cannot call themselves unlucky.","My mother always said that you should never be sad (late) at night, because theres a new day just coming up. How you face it depends on you".

I said it to you then, I'll say it again - I'm lucky to know you.

Ze doesn't talk much, only to zir selected and about things that matter to zir. "India has too many people that talk too much and do too little" But ze speaks from the heart. And a strong heart it is.

Stay how you are, people like this aren't made anymore - rock solid human beings.

Gender-neutral pronouns

Why would anyone want to use them?

For times when it would be unsuitable to use 'he' or 'it'. Or when it is clunky to write over and over 'he/she'. Or when you don't want to disclose the gender of a person.

In terms of writing,
Wide use : No
Quirk factor : Most definite yes

Make of it what you will.

	Nominative (subject)	Objective (object)	Possessive determiner	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive
He	He laughed	I called him	His eyes gleam	That is his	He likes himself
Ze (or zie or sie) and zir	Ze laughed	I called zir/zem	Zir/Zes eyes gleam	That is zirs/zes	Ze likes zirself

Why, oh why, did the chicken cross the road?

A compilation of the most brilliant answers to the eternal question - "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialog with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of crossing?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmers Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

Ludwig van Beethoven: What? Speak up.

Robert Frost: To cross the road less traveled by.

Gilligan: The traffic started getting rough; the chicken had to cross. If not for the plumage of its peerless tail, the chicken would be lost. The chicken would be lost!

Heraclitus: A chicken cannot cross the same road twice.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping fifty tons of nerve gas on it.

James Tiberius Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

J.R.R. Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow- white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.

Begone, energy drains!

Remember the old saying, "Show me a man's friends, and I'll tell you what he's like"?
Well, I'd like to change that a little. Show me a man's friends, and I'll tell you what he'll become. Its hard enough to get somewhere, do something or (and? :) be someone worthwhile. Its harder trying to do it with negative energy draining you, bringing you down.

So who are these vampires? They are the people around you who whine constantly, the ones who spend their free time bitching, the ones complaining and cribbing about their lot in life. Sure, everyone has a bad day. But if you keep company with someone who does this with the majority of his or her free time, you're doing yourself and your future a lot of harm.

Lets get to this practically. Think of all the people you interact with. Go on. Get out a sheet of paper and make a list.
Whoever you interact with on a daily basis MUST be on this list. Then all the weeklies. The rest aren't all that important, my first priority is getting your immediate surroundings clean.

Made that list? Good.
Now classify these people in terms of the effect they have on you.

Some really kick you into gear, inspirational, leave you feeling better than how you were when you hit them. You know who these people. Mark them down with a '+' - they affect your life positively. Then there will be some people who don't do much to your mood. Y'know, they come, they go - its just the same. They don't add much, but they don't take away. Just put a 0 (zero) next to them. And last come our disasters - the people who bring you down, weigh on you emotionally, nag and crib. These are people telling you things can't be done. The ones nitpicking with your plans. The naysayers, the fools who aren't grateful for what they have. Put a '-' (minus sign) next to them.

These are the ones you have to get rid of. You have to.
There are no two ways about it. You are the company you keep.

Stay around sheep, you'll find yourself bleating soon, being shepherded into the next big thing, working jobs you hate so you can buy shit you don't need. (Thank you, Fight Club) Stay around people without direction, and you'll be floating with them. If you keep people in your life who drag you down, you are conciously making the choice to degrade the quality of your life.

You don't need that aggravation.

You only have one life. You only have so much time to get your dreams running. Do you really have the time to sit and bitch about things that can't be changed? Is that really the best thing you could be doing that time? Don't keep negative influences in your life. In fact, try to minimize the zeros as well - if they aren't pulling you up, someone else could be. They're just taking up space.

Throw them out. Simple and most effective. Find a way to avoid the vampires completely. Make sure you don't cross paths.

If you can't do that, you have to learn to defend yourself. Grow some thick skin. Be a little bull-headed.
Don't let their negativity affect you. Keep yourself motivated.
If they're the sort who keep dragging themselves into trouble and then come running to you to console them, tell them once and for all that they should stop messing with their lives. You cannot be the saviour of people who like the drama, or are sorrow magnets.
You cannot change a sadist. You shouldnt have to. But understand that they will behave the way they do, and figure out how to make sure it will not affect you.

What I'm trying to say here is - be the change. Be optimistic, be cheerful. You are the little guiding light of the world. You should leave every person feeling a little better than how they were before they met you. You can do anything you set your mind to. Don't let the vamps get in the way.

Be a positive, people, and take care.

The easiest way to regulate your weight

Pretty much no-one is happy with how they look or how much they weigh. And we all know how those new year "resolutions" fare. If you're a guy who wants to bulk up, you'll likely end up spending four days a week in the gym, two hour sessions and then find yourself only marginally better off. The girl trying to lose wait, starving herself and then fretting over her figure isn't going to do much better.

The first thing you need to realize is that you need a lifestyle change. A paradigm shift. You cannot live a fat man's life and grow an eight-pack. Life doesn't work that way. Get your training and nutrition right.

I'm going to give you the easiest way to handle your nutrition. Taking notes, boys and girls?

Dr. Squat suggests the following (and I quote) : "When you sit down to eat, ask yourself,'What am I going to be doing for the next three hours of my life?' Then, if you're taking a nap, eat less; if you're planning on a training session, eat more. And so forth" (ISSA : The complete guide Unit 6 - p.165)

This represents efficient eating. You'll end up getting leaner and drop noticeable fat with just this little change.
If you're the sort who likes putting a number on things, chew on this:

Calories in meal preceding	Relative to average meal (calories)
strenous workout	+300
moderate workout	+200
vigorous activity	+100
moderate activity	avg meal
light activity	-100
relaxing	-200
a nap	-300

So whats the first step in getting this working? Figure out YOUR maintainence caloric level and plug the number into the chart above.
Or if you aren't doing this by numbers, stick to this guideline:

If you're going to rest or chill, eat less. If you're going to workout, eat more. If you're just operating the way you do, eat how much you normally do.

Clearly, if you want to bulk up, do the opposite. Which is why eating heavy lunch and going to sleep is one of the best ways to slow down your metabolism while bulking up (take note, muscle enthusiasts).

Keep at it, people!