Time has come to tell you how to draw Mind Maps. Here are the steps to draw a mind map.

1. Take a blank piece of A4 paper and put it down in landscape mode.
2. Start in the center and draw an oval or a circle (why not square, any shape that you like) and write the topic you are working on.
3. Leave your brain to wander around the topic and see what all it brings. It could be images or any other sensual aspects that might come to your mind. Take an example, say you want to mind map about “Sun”. Close your eyes and think about Sun and what all your mind brings. Coolers, beach, baywatch , sun bath, water melon, ice cream were few that comes to my mind. But if you are mind mapping a topic that you have learnt from a book, grab the relevant pieces that comes to your mind and any important associations. These associations could be part of the context or out of it, doesn’t matter. The idea is to bind that association and make it stronger.
4. If the central topic is like a book name then main topics around the central topic are like chapters of the book. Draw thick lines, which connect to these chapters or sub topics to the central topic. Optioinally write one word associated with each of your sub topics in CAPITALS next to the line.
5. Start to add another level of thought, using thinner lines, linked to each sub topic. These are your associated thoughts.
6. Attach words or images to the sub topics at any level.
7. Be creative and add your personal touch. Make your map artistic, colorful and imaginative.
8. Add humor, exaggeration or absurdity wherever you can. Your brain will delight in getting enjoyment from this process.

Look at the MindTools article for an elaborate explanation on how to draw mind maps. Here is a mind map of the mind map series so far we have discussed about. Click on it for a larger view.

I used a software called MindManager from MindJet. There is a also a freeware tool called FreeMind which you can use to create mind maps. If you are a beginner start practicing by drawing it on a piece of paper rather than using tools.

Think about your kinder garten school days or look at how kids are taught. The textbook used lots of pictures and big letters and colors. This attracted the child’s attention and whatever is taught gets associated to the images and colors in the child’s brain. If you get a chance, take a look at the alphabets book or a kid’s math book. I remember the way math was taught to me. For example additions were taught something like below.

What we started learning in the right way is not what we do as we move along. Ofcourse the contents gradually increase and it becomes difficult to create a book of that type but not impossible. Thats where mind maps are very helpful. You read a topic, understand and try to associate with things that come to your mind naturally and depict them diagrammatically with the topic as the central context in mind. Once you have this mind map in your hand, your revisions are with the mind map rather than the book (but make sure you have all the key points captured. With the mind map you should be able to reproduce the topic in text using your own words).

There are some books which present the contents with good visual information so you can read and remember them easily. As I write this the following books come to my mind.

Beyond Code - Learn to distinguish yourself in 9 simple steps by Rajesh Setty
The Circle of Innovation - You cant shrink your way to greatness by Tom Peters
OReily’s Head First series

So what are the benefits of using a mind map? The following is the list of advantages that mind map provides.

1. As said in the previous post you are going to utilize your cortical abilities that is your intellectual capabilities.
2. It is graphical and so it catches your eye very easily. The brain stores the information you see in the map very easily through association because it contains lot of eye catchy stuff. Ofcourse it depends on how well you depict the mind map and dont worry you dont need to be an artist to do it.
3. Mind maps can be applied through all walks of life. We will see a list of where mind maps can be applied in the coming post.
4. It helps one in planning and taking a route or helps in decision making.
5. Mind maps can be created with humor and can use absurdity. The key point is whatever it takes to make you remember information easily is what matters.
6. Mind map helps in gathering data and putting them in one single picture. It gives a holistic view of the entire problem in scope.
7. It can be used to do a brain dump and thus help in picking out the best options.

The cerebral cortex is the part in your brain that is responsible for intellectual skills.  The intellectual skills include logical abilities, identifying lines, colors, numbers, words, day dreaming, rhythm and spatial sound differentiation (this is what makes you appreciate Dolby and THX sound effects). These get categorized into the visual or the auditory senses accordingly. The visual sense is so powerful that most of the association happens through this.  For those who are visually impaired, the other senses become sharper and powerful and usually it is the auditory sense that gets in charge. So how does the brain associate? Brain constantly learns once you are born. And it learns consciously and unconsciously.

All the intellectual information helps in building shape, structure, look and feel, composture, the feeling of everything you come across life.  These information are linked like a foreign key relationship to the primary object in focus. It is an extremely powerful relational management and fetching of information is so fast and amazing that you cant even think of super computers performing that fast.  So Mind Maps is all about utilizing this amazing association capability that is built in in you which you never realized and used it to maximum.  Mind maps are for anyone who wants to utilize this powerful feature and is not restricted by cast, creed, religion, sex or where you belong.

Mind maps has been my favorite since my school days. It helped me learn stuff easily and more than learning it helped me remember what I learnt. This wonderful tool helps you capture your thoughts in a creative fashion that will help you remember and act upon it whenever you want. A mind map is a diagram consisting of nodes in the form of a tree spread across a sheet of paper. The brain learns in an associative fashion linking various senses (visual, auditory, touch and so on). This associative learning helps in storing and remembering information again associatively. The more you associate with various senses more chances are that you will remember what you learnt for a longer period of time.

For example you could think of a friend whenever you see a restaurant or have a delicacy that you both had when he/she was with you in a restaurant. Your brain has associated your friend’s image with the perception and view of the restaurant, with the look and taste of a particular food. If this associative information is recalled very often, the brain marks it as a useful information and leaves a lasting impact. When you can simulate a way to denote this association and forcefully look at it few times you will remember what is there and reproduce it any time. This is very effective than writing down your thoughts and reading it. We will see more about it in the coming posts.

If you are a java developer working on web application using lot of open technologies, the first time you setup your application, I am sure when you try running it the first time, you would get into ClassNotFoundException one way or the other. Sometime it could be straightforward and you would be able to add the necessary jar files that would fix the problem, but most of the time you would have never heard about the class that the exception says it is missing. Even if you fix one, that would trigger another one and by the time you fix all of it, this whole thing would have eaten up a lot of time. Here is a really cool site called Jar Finder, that can help you solve this, and identify the jar that has the class that’s missing and a link that can take you to where you can get it.

After completing the hardware verification and loading the hardware interrupts, the BIOS needs to hand over the control to a OS. Since when you start up a computer the memory is clean, the BIOS needs to find the OS code that can take control from not the memory but at another storage device such as the hard disk, floppy disk or a CD-ROM. The boot sequence is a configuration option in the BIOS setup. This configuration lists the media to look for, to load an OS. The BIOS looks up each of the device in the order listed and if it finds one then it loads up the OS. Typically the media would be the hard disk of your PC. Sometimes you would want to change this to a CD-ROM in case if this is the first time you are setting up your machine.

The boot code of any OS is available in what is called a Master Boot Record(MBR). In case of a hard disk it will be cylinder 0, sector 0 and track 0. The MBR contains information about where to look for the starting point of the OS in the disk. The BIOS picks up this information and loads the kernel or the core of the OS into the memory and handles control to that program. After that point the OS takes in charge of your PC. A detailed explanation on the MBR and the entire BIOS sequence is wonderfully explained here in DEW Associates knowledge base