atul jha – Page 209

Tibetan superstitions

I bought book title “Folk Culture of Tibet”, I am done finishing first few sections which mentions about known superstitions prevalent tibetan culture, some of these seems similar to hinduism.

tibet

I am adding some of the crazy/funny/interesting ones here :

1. A man born with tail [really] is regarded auspicious, considered closer to homo sapiens.

2. Never marry a girl whose front two teeth are separated by an empty space, it is believed they will not make good wife & affect your lifespan. mehh..

3. If your palm itches it is believed someone is back biting you.

4. Wrong news about death of somebody increases life of that person.

5. It is considered auspicious if while starting your journey you see dead body carried for final journey.

6. It is considered inauspicious to leave someones house by having only one cup of tea, one should have at least two even if its just a sip.

7. It is believed food cooked by machines is less tasty rather cooked by hands.

8. Tibetans tame cats because they keep away mice & rats.

9. Howling of jackals and dogs considered very inauspicious.

10. To break a cup is unlucky incident.

#Faces : Ordinary people with extraordinary efforts.

mehh

Before I begin, credit for this goes to my friend Jugal Mody It was his suggestion while i am traveling i should make notes about interesting people i meet in my overall trip.

During this 20 days trip I met over 7-8 people, who are amazing in there own ways. I am going to add individual post about each one of them. I will also add why they are awesome. So just Stay Tuned need to add few more here, will do it in coming days.

2014 passed, 2015 welcome!!

Happy New Year to everyone to start with.

one

Year 2014 been amazing in following ways :

1. Joined The New Stack, working on building community & writing occasionally.

2. Sister got married to one of the smartest kid I have met so far in 20+ odd years of my life.

3. Moved to Bangalore after staying in Mumbai for over an year.

4. Made few amazing friends & lost some others.

5. Traveled to over 20 cities across 10+ states in India.

6. Finally made trip to Kathmandu to meet awesome entrepreneurs in town written a post on same here

7. Read over dozen books which helped me in finding answer to “what i really want from my life?”

8. Most of my friends either married or blessed with kids.

What I learnt from 2014 :

1. Its about happiness – We are so busy with so many external needs that we totally forget about our happiness.

2. Love yourself, life depends on it – I read book written by kamal ravikant a must read for everyone. The book tells you one thing, love yourself, your body, your mental well being.

3. Money – It is not everything, it will come and go.

4. Empathy – Before jumping on any conclusion understand the situation of one sitting on other side of table.

5. Love/Relationship – It will never happen the way they show you in bollywood or in fairytales.

6. Time as a healer – All it takes is some amount of time to fix everything.

7. Do what you love – Don’t live in this world/job/relationship/agreement for sake of it. Move on, get out of it if you are not enjoying it or its only for your EMI or 5 star hotel bills.

8. Mentors – I am lucky to get few awesome mentors who are always there to help me when i am stuck with any difficulty.

9. Ask for it – Last not the least, this i learnt after following posts, books, podcasts of jamesaltucher You need to ask from them what you need without counting on probability of success or failure.

Plan for 2015

1. Stay happy 🙂

2. Love myself & take good care of my health. If possible loose few kilos.

3. Continue with my traveling spree.

Last not the least

Trying to eat a raw crab like that man vs wild folk!! Enjoy watching!! 🙂

I hope 2015 brings more happiness to everyone’s life!!

Contributing to Open Source

Searching “contributing to open source” throws About 30,100,000 results (0.56 seconds)

Now the real question is being an Open Source evangelist, what/how should one proceed when talking about same?

I am still from Old school & believe contribution to Open Source comes from inside hence:

1. Telling someone to use Open Source because its virus free is absolute BS.

2. Telling someone to use Open Source because closed source software is bad, is another BS.

3. Telling someone contribute & get a chance to visit across world is another BS.

These things are secondary & if someone gets motivated only after knowing these then its not contribution but need fulfillment.

Open Source is all about choice not a circus where you feed elephant & they will dance.

If you want to be an Open Source Evangelist in the purest form, please go read these 3 books before grabbing a mic or getting to speak at any conference.

1. Art of Community

The critically acclaimed The Art of Community by Jono Bacon and published by O’Reilly brings together over a decade of experience in growing, empowering, and leading communities to success.

2. Open Advice

Open Advice is a knowledge collection from a wide variety of Free Software projects. It answers the question what 42 prominent contributors would have liked to know when they started so you can get a head-start no matter how and where you contribute.

3. i want 2 do project. tell me wat 2 do.

This book has been written to help students and professionals as well to work on free and open source software (F/OSS) projects. These software projects are released under a freely distributable license, which allow you to use, copy, make changes, and distribute the software.

Apart from this it will be great to read Eric S Raymond books if you want to contribute to Open Source:

How to become a hacker

How to ask questions the smart way

On building a tech community

I have been asked several times about community building. For a start, the following points form the basis for any tech community.

fool

Passionate Leader: To build a good community it is essential to have a passionate leader with strong temperament. The leader must be duly motivated, ready to accept suggestions and advise accordingly. The leader must also be ready to help members, motivate others and stay positive throughout. With a strong temperament like this, I would say half of your work is done.

Coordination: Every member of the team should be aware and coordinate with other members to comprehend the happenings of the project. Members should have equal say in the product development under a democratic process if available.

Contribution/Documentation/guidelines: Good documentation will result in easy user base creation. It will also motivate a lot of these users to turn into collaborators. Hence it is always suggested to provide easy, clear and crisp contribution including some quick screencast.

Why startups abort?

Product market fit: Let’s say you have built an e-commerce product targeting the local market but it has limited internet penetration & online banking close to 0%. What happens to your product? It becomes restricted and misfit in the market you are targeting.

Uber changed its payment policy in India because less than 10% of the Indian population owns a credit card.

Traction: When you have built a product with little dissimilarity from existing players in the market, how are you going to compete and get purchase?

Difference of opinion among founders: Building a startup is much more than entering into a relationship or finding a friend. It requires a lot of hard work, patience and dedication and is definitely not for everyone. In startups, it is common to see differences in opinions among the founders which results in a bungle.

Lack of funding: Nobody will fund you if you fall in the above three categories namely where you have no money, no traction, no product/market with illogical partnerships among founders.

information overflow

We are in age of information overflow. Everything is just click of a button for us i.e pizza/taxi/grocery. It has done wonders for us but at same time it has bought lots of noise which can distract you to new high.

1. Paid Opinions: It is too easy for a firm to get our opinion mapped the way they like. We have too many mediums for it like social media or advertisements via apps.

2. Privacy: Ooh, its past now. Your life is no more private we know where you are, what you are eating, whom you are partying with.

3. Too many source of Information: You have to choose your source smartly else you will end up watching, reading, listening crap. 24 hours news channels in India are live example of it.

My only suggestion would be to spend some time with yourself. It is good to be part of this new phenomenon. It was meant to make our life simpler/easier/productive not slave.

How to Start a Startup note #5

startup

Today I spent listing to Paul Graham in the how to start a startup series lecture. Paul is fucking awesome, full of fun, honesty & blunt in giving an opinion. We need more such motivators in our startup ecosystem.

My notes from his lecture:

Listen to your intuition
Work with people whom you respect and have known long enough.
Understand your user, make something people really want & that is how your startup will grow.
Success of your startup is not fundraising.
Starting a startup during college is not a good idea.
An idea & co-founders is what college can provide.
Domain expertise is what will give you an edge over others when you are building your product.
If you work on things you like you don’t have to force yourself 4 being efficient.

How to Start a Startup note #4

startup

Moving on to how to startup series class, I spent time watching Lecture 13: How To Be A Great Founder by Reid Hoffman

My notes for his class:

Network network network.
VC always tends to invest in company with co-founders as they compliment each other.
Right place to start a right business like finance related startup makes more sense in Mumbai.
Go talk to smart people and listen to their suggestions on your idea.
You have to be both flexible and persistent.
You have to be both confident as well as cautious.
Listen to feedback, criticism
Data as well as vision are important for your product.
Be smart & take intelligent, focussed risk.
Solve short term vision immediately, but do keep eye on your long term vision.
Product needs to go out in the market ASAP its ready, product distribution is key.

It is good to be naked

flowers

Past few months been great. I met few amazing people and Twitter got me my life coach Kamal Ravikant & James Altucher.

I am writing about being naked, what do I mean by that?

1. Please be as you are.

2. Do not pretend to be someone.

3. Feel inner peace not materialistic one.

4. Do what you love not what others want you to do.

5. Money will come and go, your identity will remain even after your death.

6. Get out of “What if” state of mind, it will kill your creativity & will make you sick.

7. Please treat humans as they are i.e waiter, drivers, maid, shopkeepers, pantryboy they are one of us.

8. Travel, eat, drink, meet people, stay happy.