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Theme for the year Just like massive organizations assign a theme to the year, I feel like doing the same for my personal life. If it does some good long tailed organizations like the Church and Rotary, the idea ought to do my life some good. To that end, I'd like to assign a theme to this year. I have already assigned one to this decade - The deliberate decade. Its time I dig a tad deeper give a name to the first year of this decade. Its funny actually as I hadn't thought of this earlier. ...

I woke up to a decade of being alive, alert and deliberate. I was born in 95. Spend the next 5 years figuring out the people, world and goodness around me. In 2010, I'd love to say I knew where I was but I didn't. Similarly, I spent the next 10 years dealing with basic education. Really just running away from school and studies. In 2011, I was hoping the Mayans were gonna come through on their body of work. They didn't I spent the decade again dealing with education, just this time accepting ...

Chasing a dream Be irresponsible. Be a bum. Bums don't owe anybody any thing. Responsibilities suck the energy out of you. The more responsibilities, the lesser energy. Which is why chasing a dream right from when you are young is a great thing. Chasing dreams requires huge amounts of energy. Use people Pay them, give them credit. Be nice to people, then use them, then be nice to them. See the gifts within others, then utilize them. If you cant be used, you're useless. Be 0 or a 100. No one w...

Never be predictable or an absolute slave to a routine. Some scientists believe that driverless cars will not work unless they learn to be irrational. If such cars stop reliably whenever a pedestrian appears in front of them, pedestrian crossings will be unnecessary and jaywalkers will be able to marching to the road, forcing a driverless car to stop suddenly, a great discomfort to its occupants. To prevent this, driverless cars may have to learn to be angry, and you occasionally maliciously f...

While investing time in the method of learning sure makes sense, I also see it as potent to give a lot of time to choosing what you want to learn. You've got limited time and energy so you need to devote time to pinpoint what you want to learn. How do select that choice? You may have many desires but only devote time to things that matter - Things that - increase happiness, credibility / demand, capitalize on a strength, go beyond a life crisis ...

Reading books is not about how many books you've read or how many are in your attic. It's about having a select few collection of books that really resonate with your personality and goals and to read them repeatedly, going back to them when you need advice. ...

problem #opportunity #competition Learn X in one day Problem is, I really dont want to learn x for the sake of learning x. I want to learn X to do Y while I am P. If the course title does not contain XYP then I am not interested in it. Even if I can learn X in an hour, I do not care. I have no desire to know 'What a variable is' I am however, eternally interested in making a bot that auto reminds me of my follow ups or better still, does them for me. If learning what a variable is will make th...

I believe learning to use a software should be easy, fun and quick. I see software as a tool. To achieve a goal. But this change in perspective came only recently. Just until two years ago I used to think of MS office and the Adobe suit as mammoths with a steep learning curve. It is only recent, this co-relation I made between the buttons on an Oven and the buttons in Photoshop. How much time did you take to learn how to operate a hammer? a spatula? or an oven? I doubt you'd need more than one ...

I see multiple companies selling online 'diploma' courses. I'm not against any of those but the idea of them irks me. In my opinion, University and higher education degrees are as much about the core concepts as they are about networking and after class chats with the knowledgeable professors. Its about building that one to one connection with those stake holders MOOCs or even these online Diploma organisations for that mattee cannot provide you with this. Hence the only thing they could be con...

This is an acronym for You Ain't Gonna Need It. Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them. This Extreme Programming (XP) principle suggests developers should only implement functionality that is needed for the immediate requirements, and avoid attempts to predict the future by implementing functionality that might be needed later. Adhering to this principle should reduce the amount of time and effort being wasted on functionality that ...

Another player in the game who reveals to us or weaknesses. See your competitor company or co worker as rivals ...

Photography is story telling and photographers are artists, a particular one at that. Not a musician or a performer but a painter. Your calling as a photographer is to tell a story through that one frame, in that split 10th of a second of life. Just as one would stop and admire the Monalisa at the louver, your photography too should aim to stop people in their tracks and just think about what you've created. ...

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.” ― Noam Chomsky I find this applied to myself now more than ever before. ...

Story telling through photography Typically, storytelling has been about a plot, a set of characters, and environment and conflict. This however would make for a very bland and basic story. ...

We may often make one choice with our rational mind but end up practicing another. Sometimes these two things are exactly opposite. How could this be ? Which one is the correct one? Well, yes and yes. If someone is to ask you what kind of men are you into? you instant answer is - I'm really like intelligent men who are judicious with their spending but when in a social setting you are almost immediately attracted to the most well dressed man. How could this be? Well because there is a disconnec...

I find it interesting why people who do graffiti do it. They risk their lives, the art work bears no exclusive names. If you ask them its all about getting a high when they know that stuff they have put out there is being viewed by others. That it travels and has a life of its own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaKV2pgCF14 ...

To me the test of how useful or uselessness of a particular thing is completely dependent on how and how much its end users interact with it. To me it does not matter how long you have toiled in writing the code or the choice of color pallets or whatever. Does the end user use it? end of story. They should either love it or hate it but never ignore it. If they love it and use it.. Don't repair it if it ain't broke. If they hate it but still use it,I see it as scope for improvement. But God forb...

The value of a particular stock is nothing but the perception of the value of the stock that the majority of the masses have. Okay, that was a mouthful. Ref the tulip crises of Ireland Or investing in art and painting. Ancient paintings hold value and auction for such a high price simply because the common perception is that they are valuable. No one thinks the same of the paintings my niece made last summer. The example of this idea being implemented and coming crashing down is a Ponzi scheme g...

The Pareto Principle suggests that in some cases, the majority of results come from a minority of inputs. I am yet to see a significant real life application of this law in my personal life. I'll probably update this entry when I do. ...

People do not get tricked because they are dumb, they get tricked because they desperately want the hoax to be true. They, in a way, want to be lied to. The need the lie to be true. R: book blink gladwell ...

I see a desperate lack of automation in the small and large and mid size companies. Case in point, My own employer, a mid sized, 50 year old pharma player has people employed who pick up hefty packages for rule based routine work. I do not blame the management. How could they know better. But moving forward I do see a stark change in the structure of the workforce. Irrespective of the core business of the company. I see each companies employing a 'Chief Automation Officer' either on payroll or a...

It has come to my notice that hype too is governed by a law - This law suggests that there is typically a burst of excitement around new technology and its potential impact. Teams often jump into these technologies quickly, and sometimes find themselves disappointed with the results. This might be because the technology is not yet mature enough, or real-world applications are not yet fully realized. After a certain amount of time, the capabilities of the technology increase and practical opport...

I'd often wonder why certain heads of departments would crib to me about how a certain manager, vendor or employee had not delivered on a promise or had out right not preformed their task. This had directly blocked them from undertaking their own tasks. Taking action was out of their locus of control. "Why not simply let the VP know that X had not done their job?" I'd think to myself. "Why don't they just go and tell the MD that X was not performing and get them to add pressure." I now realize ...

the reason why in school one could potentially score 100/100 in math but only 80/100 in history, languages or 'moral studies' is because unlike religion, language or human interactions, math has only one right answer. An answer will either be right or wrong, true or false, 1 or 0. All my student life I thought it was a huge conspiracy that worked in the favor of smart people, I wish someone stepped in and told me this back then. I would probably have worked harder and even focused more on a give...

"Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they cant afford time to think. Tuition fee increases are a 'disciplinary technique' and by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the "disciplinarian culture. This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy" Noam Chomsky This. This is so true for almost everything I have to s...

Everyone white face You have no messages I'm happy to hear you are doing fine So depressing but so hilarious but so depressing How not to tell a story of course The general explaining his plight People looking straight at me with slaves burning inside Made me fear old age more than death And a life without purpose or reason ...

“We can kind of read the animal’s mind in a way, we can predict what the animal is going to do before he does it,” Churchland said. “When you’re a novice at something your brain is doing all different things, so you have neurons engaged in all different things. But then when you’re an expert, you hone in on exactly what you’re going to do and we can pick up that activity.” R: https://www.cshl.edu/the-difference-between-an-experts-brain-and-a-novices/ ...

For the longest time I've thought of taking supplements as being unnatural and inhuman even but my thought is changing. I've know for long but only recently paid attention to the fact of chickens being injected with hormones, vitamins and yes supplements. For decades I've had no qualms about consuming this form of food. Kind of hypocritic it is of me, now that I think of it that the food of my food is indeed full of supplements, and I am against supplements. Now that I think of it, food itself ...

Reed's Law Reed's Law on Wikipedia The utility of large networks, particularly social networks, scales exponentially with the size of the network. This law is based on graph theory, where the utility scales as the number of possible sub-groups, which is faster than the number of participants or the number of possible pairwise connections. Odlyzko and others have argued that Reed's Law overstates the utility of the system by not accounting for the limits of human cognition on network effects; ...

Another cool piece of triva I recently came across that is more principle than trivia. I present to you Hutber's Law - This law suggests that improvements to a system will lead to deterioration in other parts, or it will hide other deterioration, leading overall to a degradation from the current state of the system. I see this law hold true in many aspects of my work life. It reminds me of this podcast that spoke of the Galileo principle (by Tim Harford) that speaks of how improvements meant ...

The old men would go hunting every first Friday of the month. This one summer Friday morning they decided to take Malcom along. They had this strategy they described to Malcom - when the hunt dog dumps a Rabbit, the rabbit runs a whole circle and sooner or later it returns to the exact same spot where it was jumped. Malcom, after understanding the strategy simply position himself such that the Rabbit could not get to that spot without passing him first. The old men could not stop singing his pr...

When your whole industry is sinking you really have only 3 options - Bond together with your rivals and get people to buy more of you products Pivot to next closest product in demand Fight for the scraps https://open.spotify.com/episode/3BDaZl5CsevUQN9owZuAyj?si=smZWVZLLR3Wo-ZDVDinSWA ...

The KISS principle is something cool I recently came across - The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. Originating in the U.S. Navy in 1960, the phrase has been associated with aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson. ...

I hate the Google search front page whenever searching for help on say note taking you'll be introduced to the most useless content possible. This one article was literally an image along with an intro and a conclusion both of which was referencing some other study The image too was an infographic prepared by some other University. What exactly made them deserving of the top spot on the search result? I have no idea. (Do comment below if you do) The second link had a similar story to tell ex...

I love his these three play with each other, one more so with the other. Like colors at war. I do not want to miss one of the most crucial part of game however - architecture. Lines and curves that provide the three with a canvas. I also have an unusual proclivity to dim lights. Especially the yellow sodium street lights and the dense shadows they allow ...

As said by Saj on 191114 - "The goal of the MR is not to just generate prescription, it is to get into the mind of the doctors" I take it a step further in saying, The Moto of the MR is to generate prescription The Mission of the MR is to become a part of the minds of the doctors ...

I hate wasted potential, that shit crushes your soul. ./ Tyler the creator ...

In a family, what the eldest child does often sets the standard for each that follow. This is more so true with career and education. Seeing the eldest one talk about markets, finance and economics may get the younger ones curious about the matter. Thereby causing them to pursue similar fields if not the exact same industry. ...

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships— relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. There is some disagreement to the exact number. Dunbar proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. He put the number into a more social context, the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a ...

Some notes on integers that I learnt today. Integers Integers are numbers you count with (hence fractions and roots cannot be integers) Even integer - divisible by 2 Odd integer - not divisible by 2 prime - divisible by 1 and itself (1, 3, 5). They have to be greater than 1. ./ #star 2 is the only even prime number 0 - is the only non negative, non positive integer ./ #star Non integer value cannot be determined as odd or even -- Factors are positive integers that make up a number evenly. (fi...

A person may be a great human being on Monday, Tuesday and Friday too but come Saturday you have no guarantee nor idea of what they can be upto. Hence never put anyone, even a god above God. Use your sanity and be you. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3043772/Model-goes-10-hour-horrifically-painful-procedure-change-60-belly-tattoo-featuring-Lost-Prophets-lyrics-paedophile-singer-Ian-Watkins-jailed.html ...

A management concept developed by Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip), the Dilbert Principle is inspired by The Peter Principle. Under the Dilbert Principle, employees who were never competent are promoted to management in order to limit the damage they can do. Adams first explained the principle in a 1995 Wall Street Journal article, and expanded upon it in his 1996 business book, The Dilbert Principle. ./ see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle ...

Descriptive stats 2 Measures of spread (5 number summary) Here we are trying to figure how spread out the data is. Two given set data may have same mean but have different min and max. Histogram is useful for this 5 number summary => min , first quartile (median of data on left side of main median), second quartile (median) , third quartile (median of data on right side of main median), max Standard deviation - Measure spread of data set with a single value it tells us, on average h...

The Spotify Model based on Spotify Labs The Spotify Model is an approach to team and organization structure which has been popularized by 'Spotify'. In this model, teams are organized around features, rather than technologies. This allows for a more focused work force that is intuitively aware of what is right and how priority should be assigned. It also creates an environment where the 'residents' understand each other and the greater goal of the 'neighborhood'. The Spotify Model also popular...

Take expectations and do something unexpected with it. [r: http://www.baldessari.org/] ...

Make tasks easy especially if you want someone else to do it. The lesser steps something has the more likely you are to actually do it and do it regularly even. ...

I often get asked how could one find a mentor. Where should one look and what criteria should one have? While I may not be able to answer all of those, I do happen to have found a sure fire way select a good mentor. Seek out true masters. People who don't do things as a career but as a heritage or a moral responsibility. ...

Nothing is permanent Nothing is finished Nothing is perfect Imperfection creates individuality adds value. Seeking out imperfection ...

To evolve from showing people how a place looks to making them experience how a place feels. Driving atmosphere and emotion through visuals. That's what my style of photography is all about. To me photography is not reality, it is a representation, a simulation, an interpretation of reality Nothing illustrates this better that one of my favorite artists René Magritte's painting - La Trahison des Image ...

If you want to go far but feel at home, take your women along with you. Mothers, sisters, wives and mistresses Not because you own them but because you need them, your soul seeks and depends on them. They bring with them their culture, their way of life, the stories they tell you the stories they tell others. you Need them to feel at home. ./ From seen unseen podcast women in Indian history 49:00 ...

Your peer do not necessarily know what's best. By the New York Times’s and Abrams’s own account, though, hubris killed Friendster. A group of venture capitalists persuaded Abrams to turn down a $30 million offer from Google and then ran it into the ground with novel features rather than keeping the creaky site functioning smoothly. Pages just didn’t load. [r: https://pocket/read/2696858016] ./ startup advice ...

Balding is an absolute misfortune not so much lack of ambition I find it funny. People are worried how they will look on their wedding day. About making sure they get married before they go bald so as to 'not look old in wedding photos' but not at all bothered by not fulfilling the dream of being a millionaire / owning a house ; business ; a jet before the same deadline. ...

It is true that you cannot control everything in life. But you can surely be deliberate about how you want to utilize your time, given its fleeting nature. ...

If you don't respect your time, no one else will. Can be applied to ability, skills, privacy, productivity, your very own being in general. ./ #aos #shorts ...

/ the no fuss blog I often get asked why I choose listed over the other blog platforms. Here is my answer .# I like hassle-free .# I like fast .# I like no-bloat .# I like the minimalist The no fuss blog Always worrying about font style, images, format and what not. Listed is no place for such fancy. Blogs I steal spirit from Paulgraham.com Seths.blog Sievers.org Fs.blog ...

I was at the train station this morning when I for the first time noticed the silver steel bench. It was the gleaming arm-rest that really caught my attention. "So thoughtful out the authorities to provide this little detail." It was physically comforting but for some reason I couldn't get myself to accept this kind thoughtfulness. It was only a week ago that I had read an article in the Times that spoke of how New York subways are ditching the traditional seats to opt for 'lean only' benches. ...

Getting work from your boss is a privilege. It is only those who deserve the work that get the work. Beyond skills, it the ability to finish projects and see things to the end that earns one this privilege. If you do not showcase these abilities, I am sorry you do not deserve the work that your superiors would rather assign to your peers. One of the best movies that expanded on this idea for me was Whiplash. The scene in which the instructor says "Its not your part. It is MY part and I am lendin...

Ask yourself how often are you unsatisfied, irritated, regretful of your life? How many days of a 30 day month do you think about any of these? The answer to these questions is not dulling the senses by way of drugs and alcohol. The foremost thing to do is to fully accept that change is indeed needed. "If you plan on being anything less than that which you are capable of, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life" Abraham Maslow The idea is clear, to be happy one needs to actualiz...

First 30 second impression of the movie Gotham happens when rich people, governments, businesses, aren't doing their job, driving the economy the way they should. Papa Wayne is every charismatic rich man ever, giving great hopes yet coming through on only a few of them. Phoenix plays the part beautifully primarily because of the acting he does when he isn't acting. The acting that happens when he is absolutely silent yet has to convey emotions without words or gestures Validation and self-este...

Perhaps, there probably isn't anything more 'human' than a cop accepting a bribe. His salary is laughable, his social life is non-existent, his health too is rapidly on the decline. What ever little extra he can earn to put food on the table and perhaps buy his wife a nice sari in his eyes is absolutely fine. He is human. There is no such thing as the perfect politician or a perfect professor or a perfect employee even. These are all human beings responding to things they see as incentives or b...

No picture sums up the predicament of a fresher better than this https://is.gd/CkQ5sw I've read so many articles and guides that go into the nitty-gritty of designing a résumé and preparing for mock interviews - which clothes to wear and what not. While completely forgetting the core of what will actually get you the job - credibility. Work experience is doing the same job for 10 years Credibility is the trust one has that you'll find a path no matter what task is thrown your way. The latter ...

Making decisions tires you. It's a real thing. Hence many choose to minimize decisions and just rather go with the flow. You may have an infinite amount of general energy but you surely have a finite amount of 'decision energy' Every decision you make depletes it a little more. Therefore it is common to go the way of satisficing in that you satisfy yourself by buying the first item on the shelf that suffices your need. It is also perhaps the reason why Albert Einstein had 6 identical suits or ...

Writing can be a great stress buster. That's nice but one often makes the mistake of writing only about that which troubles oneself. While this may work fantastically for some, it hasn't always worked for me. I find myself getting even more frustrated when I force myself to think about thoughts that depress me. When angry, the last thing I want to do is think about things that further anger me. Contrastingly, writing about random stuff has worked beautifully for me. I even get around to thinkin...