Random Thoughts: Some life lessons.

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I am no billionaire philanthropist  or a startup guy who just made a big exit. The content of this post has more to do with my experience with life/people & surroundings over year of time.

These are some of the learnings:

1. Family should get all the attention.

2. Heath comes next

3. People will come & go in our life

4. You have to be honest with yourself

5. Its good to have one honest friend than bunch of  friends.

6. Learning does not require college degree it can come from everywhere

7. People will change over time.

8. You cannot be happy always, but you can try to maximize it with efforts.

9. Think before speaking in anger as its consequences can change your life.

10. Love comes from all corners, you have to keep eyes open to feel it.

11. Money come with stress/pain.

12. Your ego is what you own in reality.

13. Failure hurts, glorifying it does little help.

14. Successful people practice to perfection.

15. Working hard & smart both matters.

16. Empathy will make u more successful.

17. Worrying about future & screwing present will do more harm.

18. You have to clean your mess

19. Smile more, its free.

20. Slow down a bit in life it helps.

21. Go offline for one day in week.

22. Respect mother nature

23. Travel more, see the world.

24. Challenge yourself with some monthly goal can be hobby/learning/exercise.

25. Celebrate life, taking it too seriously will make you sad & stressed.

26. Eat healthy food [more fruits & vegetables], avoid junk and sodas.

27. Exercise regularly

28. Read regularly, it helps

29. Be grateful & respect everyone.

30. Anger, happiness, sadness are never permanent. It is part of life.

 

 

Some Apps/Hyperlocal service which I regularly/occasionally use.

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We are living in App driven economy from Match making to Cab to Pastry to Doctor all it needs is a mobile phone loaded with app.  You can get world news, podcast, jokes everything in this little supercomputer called smartphone.

I am part of this same world like you all & felt like sharing my favorite ones. I use Android hence adding app links in title.

Podcast Addict:  I am addicted to listening podcasts, podcast addict app on Android is one simple app for me.

Ola Cabs: I don’t have to say much about it, local commuting via a mobile app. I prefer taking Ola Auto & saves lot of my blood because autowalas go by meter.

Nafex : It took me less than 30 mins to get some Euro for my recent trip  & got great deal. They are aggregators of various forex agency in town.

Strike:  An app which runs inside google mail app & via email id tracks other social media connection. I use it regularly, it is still in early beta. [Disclaimer: Founders are good friend of mine.]

Reddit:  I get most of my news, crazy cat gifs from Reddit

Pocket: I get curated set of suggested stories & also save stories for future reading. Most of my Interesting Reads goes inside it.

Buffer: I don’t have any of the social media app on my mobile & Buffer is one app which gets me everything.

Dunzo: Its a concierge app available in Bangalore, India.  I get most of my little stuff including pastry & water delivered from them. [Disclaimer:  Founders are my close friends of mine]

Workflowy:  I don’t keep a note because i have got this simple app Workflowy, it solves my requirement.

I would love to know about your app kit, feel free to share the same if you like.

 

 

 

Random Thoughts: Food & Life

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I have been experimenting with what I have been eating for past 60 days.  I am adding  list of same & its outcome.

  1. Lots of fruits.
  2. Eggs in breakfast & sprouts in dinner.
  3. Heavy lunch rice/chapatti & some lentils.
  4. Beer 1.5 L/Week from one or the other microbrewery in bangalore.
  5. One death by chocolate from corner house weekly.
  6. A glass of green tea.
  7. A bottle of Red Wine/Month

The trick: I have turned into calorie manic & making sure i do not cross 1400 calorie a day so if am having beer that is my dinner or ice cream. I am using this app [Its not 100% accurate]

Walking & Exercise: I try to spend 2-3 km walk daily & 30-35 minutes cardio.

I got this Basis health tracker/watch to monitor my sleep patterns, steps I walked, heart rate.

Outcome:

  1. Lost 6 kg in 60 days.
  2. Getting much better sleep [ REM]
  3. More energetic & refreshed
  4. More happy & calm

PS: I am no health expert or dietician, I just wanted to hack my health & this is what i did. This worked for me, if you have similar story feel free to share. 🙂

My first 60 days at minio

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Most of my close friends know that I joined https://minio.io  couple of months back. As a developer evangelist, most of my time is spent getting application developers excited, evangelize Minio and also hack on Minio’s software stack (yes you heard it right!)

Minio stands for minimal cloud storage and derives from our belief in the philosophy minimalism.  “Minimalism is not a lack of something. It’s simply the perfect amount of something.” Nicholas Burroughs

Philosophy aside on the technical side –

Minio is an open source Cloud Storage server written in Golang, compatible with Amazon S3 and released under Apache 2.0 license.

I would like to share what has been my learning this far in this short duration:

  1. Got back to hardcore technology & spending good amount of time playing with newer technologies such as Cloud Storage, Micro Storage, Micro Services.
  2. Started using github almost daily.
  3. Writing bash scripts & hoping to convert them to python scripts later this year.
  4. Got into habit of waking up early, yes 9:00 am. (we have our daily round table)
  5. Contributing to stackoverflow, quora etc.
  6. Realized markdown is better than docbook. 😛
  7. Back on Ubuntu as my primary machine, did not enjoy Macbook for development/testing work.
  8. Getting mentored from every single member of the team about technology and life.

 

Minio is a Open Source project & contributions are welcome. We all hang out at Minio Gitter chat channel. My nick is @koolhead17, holler me!

2015 PASSED, 2016 WELCOME!!

Happy New Year to everyone to start with.

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Year 2015 been amazing in following ways :

  1. Joined minio.io as developer evangelist [blog will follow soon :)]
  2. Met long time friends Razique & Heiko  in person after interacting with them for over 4 years on IRC regarding  OpensStack project.
  3. Two of my junior buddies Prashant & Jithesh are doing awesome, they got new job/task and are just loving it.
  4. Got in touch with awesome folks from startup community via aroundstartups  interview podcast.
  5.  Finally get to meet few of my life mentors & talk to them in person.
  6. Lost few kilos & yes not drinking too much of beer these days.
  7. Traveled across 6-7 different indian states including Kerala for first time & international trip to Canada.
  8. Started blogging regularly & launched my podcast aroundstartups on india’s startup  ecosystem.  Thanks to my friends Prashant & Abhishek for helping me on this project.
  9.  Made some good friends & lost few.
  10. Started  entrepreneurship journey, failed miserably & learnt a lot.

What I learnt from 2015 :

  1. Time heals everything & you have to keep moving with life.
  2. Its good to have few close friends always around who are there to listen to you & help you when you screwup.
  3. Parents are getting older & they need more attention from me.
  4. Keep finding mentors, learn from them.
  5. Each one of us are awesome, great in our own way & we have so much to learn from each other.
  6. Empathy is biggest asset a human can have.
  7. Don’t do things or commit to projects you are not motivated about. This will save time and effort to you and others who are working 100% on the project.
  8. Listen more & then act.
  9. Its good to get disconnected from the world once in few days & spend time reading or wandering in nature.
  10. Stay away from toxic/negative people, they will only add negatively around.

Plan for 2016

  1. Stay  happy, motivated & continue on healthy life.
  2. Work on upgrading my bash scripting skills.
  3. Keep meeting people, making friends, learning from mentors & helping whoever i can with whatever way i could.
  4. Read more books.
  5. Organize myself in much better way.

I hope 2016 brings more happiness to everyone’s life!!  Stay blessed & have a good one. 

Random Thoughts: On Depression

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Woke up & read this r/linux thread  where Ian Murdock [Debian Linux project founder] tweets are mentioned. Ian says he is committing suicide.  I will be more than happy if these tweets turn out to be hoax or coming from someone else who gained control of his Twitter account.

This incident got me thinking about one of the biggest issue we all have gone through in our life i.e depression.  We can easily track number of well known faces we have lost because of going in depression.

These are some advice I got when I was in depression, most of these worked:

  1. Don’t just stay alone, talk to parents/friends.
  2. This will pass, its just a phase
  3. Listen to some good music
  4. Exercise & meditate
  5. Avoid alcohol & eating junk
  6. Travel, connect, eat, meet, see newer part of this world.

How did you fight with your depression & came out from it?

Update : Ian Murdock is no more.

Random Thoughts: On-boarding new developers to open source projects. Then & Now.

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We are entering in 2016, my journey to open source started in 2004-05 when i attended one of the Linux User Group meetup in New Delhi, India. Those days we had to pay one$ for surfing internet for an hour, having a dial-up internet at home was considered luxury.

What was the scene those days?

  1. Linux user groups were more happening, we had demo days and most open source software developers were under single roof.
  2. We were more glued offline for beer/kebab/pizza and hangouts.
  3. To on-board new users to open source we were regularly conducting workshop across colleges and cities.
  4. We had mailing list, IRC, wiki [they still exists]

How are things now?

  1. Internet is everywhere & is part of our life.
  2. Mobile usage has exploded, information about everything is one tap away.
  3. Installing Linux & open source software has become much easier, internet & advanced GUI development gets credit.
  4. The whole open source ecosystem got divided into different camps & all started organizing/mentoring its own users/contributors.
  5. Web and social media platforms quora, stackoverflow along with free MOOC courses are loaded with all information.
  6. Online conferences like ubuntu developer summit summit and live streaming of conferences gave more wider audience.
  7. Github, Slack, Gitter are new cool among developers.

2016 & beyond new user on-boarding.

  1. We don’t have to spoon feed anymore, most of the information are available on the web. This generation is way smarter then us.
  2. We don’t have to go for extreme evangelism because web has enough information those who are interested will find a way.
  3. All we have to do is to mentor & help only if they need it.

 

PS: This is not a rant against all those who are still working on building a open source community in 2000 style, this is my thought & i might me wrong here. 

8 learnings from reading book title : The Phoenix Project

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Past 3 weeks I spent reading The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win [Amazon] I have to admit that i am not a usual reader hence finishing a book in 3 weeks time is a big achievement for me.

These are the 8 things I learnt reading this book:

  1. Trust is very important part in any organization.
  2. A process is what makes or breaks an organization.
  3. A leader for success of his organization needs to accept total responsibility.
  4. A successful leader finds smart subordinates/team leads to delegate entire operations.
  5. Ego, distrust  & pessimism among peers can bring down an enterprise
  6. Its not in age but flexibility or desire to adopt the changes which makes or breaks an organization.
  7. Learning can come from any corner, place, people or sphere all we need to do is to have our eye & heart open.
  8.   Empathy among peers & junior subordinates can do miracles in overall outcome.

If you have read the book, feel free to share your thoughts.

Random Thoughts: On Identity

When we were born we had no identity, we were just another creature on planet Earth.

Then came :

  1. Parents : religion, caste, surname
  2. Physical appearance: Looks, Color, Weight, Height
  3. Personal nature: Empathic, Rude, Jolly
  4. Job & Education: MIT/IIT/IIM/XLRI/MIT/Harvard
  5. Social Status: Bank balance, Car, House

You will be judged & reminded about your identity at all these 5 places the moment you will fail to deliver or try to go out of the league.

You have got 2 options

  1. Follow the norm, try carving out Identity for yourself at all those stages.
  2. Be a rebel & build your own identity like hackers, visionaries  & painters

What are your thoughts?

meggg

 

Random thoughts: On Romanticizing Failures

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People say success & failures are complementary. It is like two side of coin & both co-exist. Over last few years I have noticed in every spectrum people are celebrating failures be it cover page of famous magazine, online portal, help/advice avenues like Quora or social media portals like Twitter, Facebook, Medium or LinkedIn.

 I have nothing against them, these are my thoughts :

  1. Weather its absolute NO in love/relationship.
  2. Not clearing interview of your dream job
  3. Failing miserably after taking enormous amount of funding from external investors.
  4. Got backstabbed by best friend or business partner.

I have gone through some of these & all I can say is coping up with failures is not easy. It can hit you hard & at times it can cost your life.

I have learnt from my past & moved on. I am not going to write a best-selling book glorifying my failure because someone has done so, in the end it is a failure. I don’t need extended coverage defining my celebration but an extended coverage of how I fixed my failure, my only hope with this is that it will help others not take the same route.

What are your thoughts about failing?