Nov 6, 2014

Sixty Ideas for Businesses, Startups, Hobbies or Whatever

oooh, lightbulb!

What is an idea? 

It is the first step on a journey that can take you anywhere you want. 

The destination can change before you get there. You might not even complete the journey. You might get eaten by trolls and your self doubts while on the way. There is an even bigger chance that you ignore the idea because it looks like too much hard work and who has time for that? Right? Wrong?

I have no idea, but you can have some.

All I am going to do here is give you a spark.

60 sparks, if we are going to be exact.

60 ideas.

They're all yours.

You can make something of them, or maybe someone else will. Can these ideas be startups? Full blown Businesses? Hobbies? NGOs? Jokes? Failures? World wide successes? No one knows, not you, not me, not Elon Musk, not Tim Cook, not Bezos, not anyone.

The only way to measure the success or failure of anything is by doing it. Because when you do it, the gods align themselves in your favor.

I'll just say two more things before the list begins.

We're living in volatile times.

  • An app called YO got crazy funding, it does just one thing, and that not too well. 
  • Ten years ago, even the idea of twitter would be called crazy by almost everyone. 
  • People are buying selfie sticks and using them too. 
  • There are plastic orifices that are designed to look like the biological orifices of your favorite pornstar, and people are buying them. 

So, if you tell me that any of these ideas is so crazy that it won't work, I'd dare you to prove me wrong.

Do it, fail and tell me that – shit, Pallav, your idea was so crazy that it didn't work. Because then we'd both learn something new.

Last thing: you get into any kind of legal trouble or any physical or mental trauma by using these ideas, I will not be held responsible. You become successful or a complete failure by trying anything mentioned in this list, I will not be held responsible. I don't want anything to do with your success or failure. You don't like any of these ideas, that's totally your problem. Close the tab and go back to Twitter or Facebook. Anything else, I absolve myself of any responsibility. Now to the meat of the post.



THE LIST

100 startup ideas

1) men's club: membership only. Men can gather and do activities like read, play video games, play pool etc etc

2) localized app for book sharing. Book buying, book renting, book lending, book reviews, but limited to an area, like a city or a locality.

3) on call legal services for simplified legal information

4) one feature app that tweets your location every time it's opened. nothing else.

5) live storytellers/ newsreaders for old people. Employ young kids looking for part time work. Old people in retirement homes, living alone etc

6) tech help for old people. Setting up phones, Skype, downloads, printers etc. same target market as point 5

7) an app to remove all baby/marriage/honeymood pics from your timeline

8) an app that removes all selfies from your Instagram feed

9) an app/website for only playing contests. Like contests2win back in 2000. So contests can fuck off from twitter. It should filter your feed for only contests. Like mute/block in reverse.

10) text only twitter feed, like instapaper for twitter. No vids or pics

11) a theater where kids are not allowed

12) a pet only transportation service that transports pets in a humane way. Most airlines do a not so good job of it and it's always a tension on a pet owner's mind. It's a long shot, but it can be figured out.

13) training for pet owners who want to keep pets

14) training for kids who want to keep pets

15) life skills seminars for kids: opening bank accounts, saving money, small repairs, buying groceries, booking tickets, washing dishes, etc etc etc

16) supermarket where food is arranged according to nutritional value.

17) 3D malls (like google's maps), where you can browse the mall, visit shops, pick products and get them delivered to your home. (!)

18) know your roots seminars for kids who want to learn more about their religious and cultural roots. Target: NRI kids

19) an app that automatically takes you off the grid with one click. No mobile connection, no email, no internet, no nothing.

20) a service to deliver international products to India. for example: energy drinks, mountain dew flavors, international magazines, candies, chocolates, gadgets.

21) service: pre-packaged travel packs. clothes, toiletries, etc etc. frequent travelers can take membership and travel without luggage and pick their clothes+stuff pack at their destination. this can be tried on a national level and then taken international. but it has to be flawless, cuz the client would be traveling without any assumed luggage and even one mistake can cost a bomb to the company that decides to do it. advantages are no luggage check ins, no lost luggage, no damaged luggage, no forgotten luggage, etc etc etc (!)

22) disposable clothes. One time wear and throw it away. Looks good, feels good, disinitigrates in a week or so. Cheap.

23) clothes that don't get dirty. No need to wash them or iron them, just wear them in and out. repels water, oil, dirt, ink, color, ketchup. looks like branded clothes, feels like home.

24) training for parents who want to home school their kids and then further information on home schooling. Schools these days are piss poor when it comes to almost everything. Kids are in an unhygienic, uncouth, stupid environment that destroys their spirits, and schools cost a bomb but teach shit. Plus, at home, kids can be taught to become better people, for schools, they will always be a roll number on the register. MORE info on homeschooling.

25) Website to tell a new laptop's compatibility with the latest linux derivatives. This can also cover the root-ability of latest phones, tablets and jailbreak information for iphones. (not sure about the legality of the second part)

26) handwritten letters for people you love. Get students with good handwriting to write actual letters to people from your side. Write an email, they'll hand write it and send it off via courier. because receiving a letter is awesome.

27) Product: universal charges. It should charge every fucking gadget that you plug it in, nationally or internationally. The last charger you'll ever need to buy.

28) an energy drink in tablet format. Because drinking that shit can get tiresome at times.

29) a mount for your cellphone that makes it into an instant go pro. an app to go with it that films in high def, wide angle

30) Website that lists the small shops and supermarkets of a new place you're about to visit. Most websites focus on tourist destinations and attractions, but some visits that are for a longer duration, the visitors would benefit from information about the local place they're staying at.

31) a mirror on rent for selfies at parties. a full length, awesome fucking mirror.

32) photographers in restaurants who'd click your pic and send it to you so you can post it on the social network of your choice. Each photograph gets billed in your bill.

33) one click website creation, for birthdays, weddings, corporate meets. Fill data, pay, click and done.

34) beer app that tells you everything about a beer once you click a pic of that beer. Or anything about what kind of beer is available around your location

35) Go autos that don't say no.

36) App to check auto fair from a to b destination to avoid getting duped

37) pre-set birthday gift/card service. Add all birthdays once and the service will send them gifts every year. Choose gifts or go random as per your budget.

38) public database of autos in a city. Input an auto number to know where the auto is. App/website

39) an aeroplane shell converted into a restaurant. If it can be suspended in the air with cables that would be great

40) wheelchair with tank like treads to climb stairs.

41) reversible jeans that get cleaned when in contact with skin.

42) custom made jeans that have the designs that you want

43) app with list of traffic lights and their times so that you can leave home to time it acc to green lights with some margin of error

44) robot dogs for blind people. Voice controlled. With maps of home and cities they live in. (!)

45) database of startups in every city so that skilled people can share skills with each other.

46) a way to calculate how many drinks or would take to get you drunk. Will include data sets for a person's weight, drinking capacity, the kind of alcohol on offer and etc etc. Useful for parties, or times when you don't want to drink beyond your capacity

47) phones on rent! when you wanna show off, or you need a spare phone for a small time or you want a phone for testing purposes. full payment and you get refunded after a small rent and any damage to the phone is chalked off.

48) on-site data destroying service for corporate offices. totally crunch the hard drives into mashed spare parts. for confidentiality and privacy.

49) printing courier service. send docs to an email, pay via debit card, get them printed and handed to your office or home locally. for people who can't be bothered to set up printers or buy them or who do not have working printers in their office. complete confidentiality.

50) meal replacement tablets for those who do not want to eat food or don't want to waste time eating food. pop a tab at breakfast, lunch and dinner to get all the required nutrients, vitamins and whatever the body needs.

51) book storage for people who do not have a lot of space for their books or who want to keep books in a safe place under expert guidance. Subscribers can call the storage space for the book they want and it'll be delivered to their house easily. [city based]

52) surrogate shopping experts: Many people do not have the time or the inclination to go shopping. So surrogate shoppers go to the shops with go pro cams and live feeds enabled, on call with the shoppers and they can do all the shopping for the guy or the girl or whatever. They can pick clothes, books, groceries and what not. Go to malls in lieu of the person.

53) pets for rent: for anxiety relief and tension, pets on rent. Trained pets that are sent to corporate office so that employees can play with them and just be around them. Will need social pets so that it's not anxious experience for pets either.

54) stress relief through breaking things: Rent a place outside city limits, buy unused and useless appliances from junk sellers, and arrange everything in that place. Like a room or something, with computer, tv, cabinets, etc etc. Get corporate employees or anyone else who wants to release some steam, and set them loose in that room with a baseball bat, tell them to break every thing.

55) telescopes on rent, with a team of space enthusiasts who can show people the new stars or old 
stars

56) shelters for street dwellers where they can get in by depositing a certain kgs of garbage. this will help to clean up the streets and also provide them with shelter in summer in air conditioned shelters, and in winter they can sleep in heated shelters -- not sure about the legal or human aspect of it.

57) an app that tells you whenever someone mentions you on twitter without using your @ handle.

58) an app/service that alerts you when your favorite paid apps go free. You register, make a list of paid apps that you'd like to download for free, and then you get alerted by SMS, email or social media that the app is free. This can be further expanded to include Kindle, discounts on products on amazon, flipkart. The whole idea is to get the user to make the list of products he/she wants.

59) everyone wants to know about their future. But what about the future of their gadgets? How long can a gadget be expected to work? Will the battery need to be replaced in three years? Will the system be upgradable to the latest in two years of time? Will the spare parts still be available in a year from now? Is it easily serviceable (ifixit sorts)? How much can you sell a gadget for after a year of use (kinda like quickr/olx but to get a fair estimate?

60) phone chargers on vehicle. Like those bicycles dynamos we had back in the day, with a light bulb attachment. But this can be a dynamo that can be attached to any vehicle's wheelbase. Then have an all day battery pack that you can use any time.



That's it! Yay, the shit list of ideas is finally over!

I am glad you made it this far down the list. So are these people!

These people have been paid to look happy. Not by me!


Want to discuss any of these ideas? Hit me up on twitter @69fubar, email me pa11av at live dot com or find me in Delhi and pay for my coffee. We can talk things over. 

*Edit 
61) someone make me an app to get the fucking formatting of this shit right the first time over. 

Aug 20, 2014

Why Priya is a Bad Boss

Priya's cute, though.

People smarter and wordier than me have written enough about the Airtel advert featuring the boss/wife Priya.

Words like feminism, gender and patriarchal society were definitely thrown around as people outraged and wrote explosive tweets and DM’d people for retweets. 

I’ve had a tiff with feminism earlier, and it was not pretty. So I am not even going to try to fuck with what I don’t understand. I am going to fuck with what I DO understand which is how shit works in an office.  

Here’s how that ad goes.

Priya is the boss lady and she has to get a project done within a deadline, but because she’s been lazy and undisciplined, she forgets about the deadline. The bosses above her want a report but she has no report to show! 

So what’s the boss lady gonna do? She is going to shove a danda up her team’s collective ass.

Nothing to do with the blog post, but just funny
Of course, here the Danda Theory comes into play.

(Danda Theory: When the upper management shoves a danda up the middle management’s ass, the middle management take out that danda, breaks it into small dandas and shoves them in the lower management’s ass who further shove the danda up the ass of interns and interns scream and yell at the office peons [They won’t teach you this theory in any B-school])

Anyway, so Priya’s husband works as her “subordinate” and guess whose ass she chooses to shove her danda in? (disturbing image) Right, the poor husband. She calls him in her office and tells him, “Sorry, yeh to karna hi padega.” (or something similar, I don’t get paid to remember shit like that)

And BAM! This one sentence in that whole ad fucked me up.

It made me want to buy a gun and shoot the TV. 

BC, MC, TMDL
It made me want to kick a pug and yell Punjabi swearwords at kittens.

I was fucking furious when I saw that shit and there was smoke coming out of my ears!

See, once you leave aside the concepts like feminism, gender and sexism (I have no idea what they have to do with this particular ad), Priya is just a bad boss.

She literally makes her team do overtime for reasons better known to her (cuz she forgot that she had a deadline) and then she goes home to cook food while her team members drink shitty coffee and work on shit that was Priya’s responsibility.

The real kicker here is when she tries to distract her fucking husband/team member by sending him a video of the food!

The poor guy is tired, hungry and working on bad coffee and probably a shitty sandwich from office pantry and she sends him a fucking video of warm food? That’s barbaric! That’s inhumane!

But Priya has no limits.

She will not stop! No, sir!

She tells her husband/team member to leave the work and come home!

Who the fuck will do the work then?

Didn’t she just make that poor guy sit in office after everyone including Priya had left, and do work which was so fucking important just a few hours ago? Now she is telling him to come home! And by the time he gets home, whether work is done, or not done, the food will be cold!

Thanks, Priya for being a horrible boss/wife and even worse human being.

Near the end of that ad, just look at how the guy drops his phone once he is done looking at the video of the hot, delicious food.

That one second is the whole meat of the advert. 

You got hell coming for you, Priya. Hell.

The look on his face, the almost silent sigh as he turns towards the computer screen; all scream that he is going to beat the shit out of Priya when he gets home. Then he’ll eat all that food, too. I mean, the guy looks like he can throw a punch, no?

Hit me up on twitter @69fubar if you're offended by this post. I am on a break so I won't reply. haha.

Jul 29, 2014

Bad Behaviour on Twitter - Thoughts etc

I don't need to and I don't have to write this blog post. But, being a professional asshole there are some things that need to be documented and when no one else would take the responsibility, I will.

I am going to write this in rapid mode and there will mistakes, grammar errors and other such shit in this post, but if you've been reading my blog, you must have been used to that by now.

And this is not even a post defending my actions on twitter, as I saw some people tweeting so on my TL (I blocked those people, I don't need that kind of negativity on my page).

So, what really happened?

Tweet God Mode

I shot my mouth off on Twitter again. 

The usual. There were some people who were pissed off and some tried to get me fired from my job, but they were unsuccessful cuz I don't even have a job.

So I've got that going for me. What really happened was that I was talking to my friend on the TL, just the light banter cuz I know the friend is cool and we can tease each other. It's like sitting with friends and you're calling each other MC BC but no one minds cuz everyone knows that you don't mean that.

But, the problem with twitter is that when you're talking to Person A, Person B is also reading that conversation, and Person B doesn't know about your equation with Person A and this can lead to hilarious consequences. And if Person B hates you or doesn't like you, they're gonna milk your words to their own ends. Like it all did on Saturday. One thing lead to another and soon I was calling a fatty a fatty.  Why does it always happen to me?

A feminist in her natural habitat

So, I ended up writing some anti-women tweets, called some fat bitch a fat bitch, and made some dude wonder how a person like me could find a woman to love and marry.

Bleh.

And those people were all probably ganging up and discussing how to get my twitter account cancelled, which hasn't happened so far. I am cool with that. You can nuke a twitter account, but you can't nuke an idea.

All said and done, it's bad behaviour to barge in on people's conversations. If you've to apologize before doing so, then why're you even doing it at all? It's like saying, I am sorry for this, but I will have to stab you in the ass.

Doesn't compute. Doesn't make sense. People are so stupid.

Me getting butthurt on Twitter


Of course, I was butthurt like any veteran twitter user would be. So many tweets and so many years laters, you know what I've learned? NOTHING.

Sure, I was wrong in saying all those things to someone, but do I care if I was wrong? Will it matter in a 100 years or so? Is it my fault that people live sheltered lives and they can't take a joke on the internet? Am i wrong in calling a fat person fat? How long are we going to live politically correct lives even on the Internet. Sure, the other person can tell me to go and die under a bus and that's OKAY. Cuz, girl and fat girl at that. Let's mollycoddle everyone cuz the world outside will do the same to them. Right? WRONG.

Some women can drive, most can't


That said, everyone has the right to be butthurt and I wish there was an open twitter war where we could all just knife each other in the guts. It would improve the condition of that cesspool dramatically.

Talking of war, there is a war coming. And it is going to change everything. Choose a side or stand aside.

Anyway, here's a nice picture. 


Jul 5, 2014

My love for U2's POP

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who love U2 and those who've not heard of U2.

There might be a third kind of people who don't like listening to U2, but they'll soon be eradicated from this planet for having a shitty taste in music.

Now, if you were born recently, you might not know about the band, which is a horrible thing and you must educate yourself instantly. That's that about the band, but I want to talk about the album called POP. There are great U2 albums, and there is POP. There is no measure of what POP is, no comparison. Leave everything that U2 has done musically, and you can't compare it to POP. It is something else in its entirely. It feels like the band was touched by angels when they were writing and composing this album.

Back when POP was released in 1997, lot of people hated that album because U2 switched from their conventional sound to electronic loops and samples in this album, and that fact, in my mind, made it one of the greatest music compilations I have ever heard. Hell, even Bono said that he didn't like POP as much as their other works. But Bono can't be right all the time.

From the first song Discotheque to the last song Wake Up Dead Man, the band goes through a journey and takes the listener with them, too. Listening to this album opened up my mind in so many ways that it is 90% responsible for making me what I am today.

I remember I bought the cassette of POP for 90 rupees when I was in school and the first time I played it in my tape deck, the cassette reel got caught in the deck. It was so badly tangled that I had to cut it out and do some emergency surgery on it and because of that, I've missed a part of the MOFO from the album and even today when I hear that song, my mind goes through a dissonant phase for a second. That was then, I think I still have that cassette stashed somewhere, but I'd be hard pressed to find a player for that.

Now, what makes this album so great is the fact that each song is an emotional trip in its own. The music takes you through a spectrum of emotions, it makes you want to dance, it makes you want to headbang, it makes you remember that one special night, and it makes you want to break down in tears at all the beauty in the world that you'll never get to see.

The energy, the beauty, the poetry, the anguish and the anger in the album just bleeds into your soul till you can't tell Bono's angry howls from your own.

It really is a life changing experience to listen to this album and if you're still a POP virgin, you need to de-virginize your ears immediately.

That's all I have to say about this, I am gonna listen to POP for another hour or two.




Jul 3, 2014

Why Comments Suck

There was a long long time ago when comments were all the rage on blogs. People used to leave comments left, right and center and that's how most of the early blogs got traction and became popular.

Heck, back when Steve Novak used to blog at My Brain Hates Me (the blog is dead now) his comment threads used to go to 100s of comments in 5-10 minutes of him publishing a new post. Even I used to love getting comments when I used to write stories on this blog. Every time you got a mail that someone commented on the blog, it used to be a rush.

And that was the time when we didn't have Internet in our phones and the only way to check my email was to walk to the cybercafe and if the place was full of people, you had to wait for your turn.

This is same as your father telling you that he used to walk to school barefoot and in boiling sand.

Yeah, I've been on the internet a long time and I know this shit.

Back to the topic of comments. The problem, I feel, with comments is that no one really gives a fuck on the internet. You might be getting comments from people saying that your blog post or your work of art was the hottest shit they've seen, but you've to wonder why they're leaving that comment, what is their motivation behind that comment, is it genuine or if they're just fucking around with you.

On the rare chance a person leaves a genuine comment, how valid is their opinion? Is that opinion an informed opinion or the opinion of just another dumbfuck who will ingest everything that is thrown his/her way.

Let's look at it this way, we're living in a world where tv shows like Honey Boo Boo are getting second and third seasons and good men are dying like flies in wars fought in lands they were never even meant to step in. In our good country, movies that make absolutely no sense are doing business worth crores and there are children begging on every fucking streetlight and tourist attraction.

Why is this happening? This happens because people turn a blind eye to unpleasant things and whatever bullshit they see, they want to forget it, even if it's for three hours in a dark movie theatre or hours spent sitting in front of the television, vegetating till you fucking die of heart disease.

And these are the people leaving comments on blogs. Heck, even the lower denominator than this. These are the people liking and sharing pictures of gods and goddesses on Facebook in hope that it will bring them some amount of luck.

These are the people who have never read a single book and they're fucking proud of it.

Think of it this way, you're wearing your best dress and walking on the road and every person who passes by expresses his/her opinion on how you look and what they think about it.

Do you really want to know all this? Because the joy of 100 people saying that you look beautiful can be destroyed by one person saying that you like a pile shit that has been eaten a puked by a diseased dog. It stings, no matter how hard your skin.

Not allowing comments on your work is the biggest and best way of saying that you just don't give a fuck. You're going to create your shit and people will have to deal with it, one way or the other.

(And anyway, no one leaves comments on blogs these days. It's all just for backlinks and shit)

Summing up, a quote I just saw

"It's very important to create for the sake of creating."‏

Jul 1, 2014

Is Discipline Overrated?

I was never much for discipline in life. I think that shit is better left for students, people in army or people who are into organized sports, right? I am most probably wrong, but I don't care. 

Back in the job years, I had a set routine, I used to wake up at 9 or 9.15 AM, rush through a bath and then jump on my bike and ride like hell to office. It was risky, it was dangerous, I had two small accidents on way to office in all these years, and had I been riding slow, I could have avoided them. But, fuck riding slow. Bikes are made for speed and riding slow is a sin. Except when you're on a Bullet Enfield. Riding that bike slow is a way of life. 

Anyway, I'll try not to digress from now on.

My problem with a disciplined lifestyle is that most things in life are not disciplined. The sun rises in the morning, but it never rises at the same time, the rain falls, but it doesn't fall at 9.58 AM on a particular day and year. That's going into details but then, the god and devil both live in details. When something like nature that is all around is so random, then what, I ask, is the point of following a disciplined routine in life. 

Living is basically a game that we're all going to lose and when we spend so much time fucking around with rules and regulations, we don't spend that time having fun and doing things that will make an impact on the world.

By letting go the need of discipline, I don't mean that we should all just give in to the chaos of the world, all that I mean here is that we should stop taking things so seriously. 

We're all going to die, one way or the others, so what's the point in hurting yourself over something that is just simply not in your control.

There was probably a point to this blog post, but I have successfully managed to glaze over that point in the mist of words. 

I'll probably try to be coherent in the next blog post. 

Hit me up on twitter @69fubar for more bullshit. 

Jun 18, 2014

The scam of motivation

You know what the Internet is filled with? Porn and scams. 

These two categories are fighting each other so hard that they are almost encroaching into each other's territory.

I bet there are at least one or two porn stars who have given up their career in porn industry and taken up motivational speaking out writing books about motivation.

You look for motivation online and you can find more flavors than Baskin Robbins ice cream. There are four hour work weeks, four hour bodies and minimalism and GTD and what not. There is personal motivation and business motivation and God knows what the fuck all.

What I mean here is that, all these people trying to motivate others are not really doing a good job. The whole world is in a much more chaotic state than say the 80s or the 90s. People are not sure about anything,  shit is changing so fast. More businesses die out than those that actually make a mark.
Every venture like Facebook is built upon the corpses of a thousand kickstarters. 

Why does that happen? Why?

Because people don't want to be motivated. Motivating others is as big as a scam as anything. Hell, I believe that a person can be motivated for a day or two or maybe months, but the overall sum of humanity needs more than motivation to do actual real shit that matters.

As Yoda said, you do or do not, there is no try. Motivation is trying. And trying to do things sucks. Just do shit and be done with it.

Next time someone tries to motivate you to do something,  tell them to fuck off.

Jun 17, 2014

The Importance of Pain in Life

Everyone is in pain

Pain is a sign that somewhere things are wrong and it tells you that they can be set right

Physical pain many times is an indication of a deep psychological pain

Pain is the precedent to change, for good or bad, who knows

Pain is progress

Pain is an option to grow

Pain is at times an indicator that you need to shut the fuck up and lay low

Pain at times makes things worse before they get better

Pain is a sign that you fucked up and if you get through this shit, you need to do better next time

Pain is your friend

Pain is a teacher

But, fuck, if you're in constant pain, go see a fucking doctor, cuz philosophy on blogs is much different from the hurt of real life



Jun 16, 2014

The Death and Rebirth of Blogging

Look, I'll be very frank with you. Most of us never really had any patience for blogging. That is why you see more people wasting time on facebook and twitter than people on Blogger or Wordpress. Why? Because twitter and facebook are relatively easy to manage, the reward is instantaneous and hey, if your tweet or fb post bombs, you can always write another one.


Blogging was never meant to fight with these new mediums of expression/validation or whatever you might want to call them. Blogging is something different. It's something you do out of love, it's something you do because it feeds your soul. You might or might not seek validation or approval from others, but it's mostly because you feel you want to say something and you feel that it's important.

Blogging is not inane like a silly tweet about breakfast or dinner, because it takes some amount of effort, time and gumption to write a post. Hey, even if it is a post on a teenager's blog with meandering thoughts or rambling something in the title, that shit took more effort than a tweet and for that reason alone, I'd go and read it.

About death of blogging

As it goes on the internet, blogging as an activity dies about three times every year. You can google the phrase and you'll get countless hits that blogging is dead and tweeting or facebook-ing or pinning pictures is the new shit. I beg to disagree. Blogging can never really die, it just goes to sleep, maybe and wakes up again. I like to think of it as ebb and flow of a tide. Things happen and when those things cannot be expressed in 140 characters or the confines of a facebook post, people blog. Whether those things are personal or on a larger scale, they make people think, they make people move their fingers on their keyboards like lazy spiders, but shit happens and shit gets posted.

There are still people out there who are much more busier than you or me, plus many of our friends combined, but they still find time to write a blog daily. Seth Godin, James Altucher and many others, you can look them up.

So, here's something I am going to try. I am going to put an alarm on my phone for 10 PM and I'll write a blog every day that alarm rings.

I don't know what it will be about, but it will be about something. 

May 7, 2014

21 Reasons Why I Hate Facebook


  1. People lie on facebook...
  2. ...a lot
  3. Comment trees with irrelevant discussions that you get notified for. WHY!
  4. People tagging people who are not in picture. WTF, why?
  5. Couples posting PDA messages to each other. Ugh
  6. Marriage pics where no one invited you or you didn't go.
  7. Honeymoon pics. Why should anyone else give a fuck about your honeymoon?
  8. Baby pics suck, cuz only a mother can love that face
  9. Vacation pics! Yeah, you went on a vacation, stop showing off!
  10. People checking in at different shitty places
  11. People pimping their blogs on Facebook
  12. People pimping their business on Facebook
  13. People pimping their political opinions on Facebook
  14. People sending game requests for a game you played only once
  15. People posting three year old jokes to appear witty
  16. Advertisements that look like posts from your friends
  17. Chat. If I wanted to talk to you, I'll do that in person.
  18. The stalkers liking pictures from 2009. DA FUCK?
  19. Strange privacy options that you just can't figure out
  20. People asking for Likes on their whatever pics
  21. People asking why you unfriended them when you meet them in real life
I just looked over these reasons and realized that I hate all kinds of things that people do on Facebook. 

I am off to delete my account.

Fuck facebook

Apr 19, 2014

Rubik's Cube - Lessons I've learned.



I got my first cube in 1997. 

I remember the thing very clearly in my head. It had white skeleton and the pieces were of different colors than a regular cube. One of the sides was pink! When I got to play with an actual, official Rubik's Cube, there was no pink side to it. I played with that cube in 1997 and finally managed to solve one of the sides. 

It was a big achievement for me cuz I was a just heading into teenage and no one in my friend circle had even seen a Rubik's Cube, let alone solve it completely. I finally broke that cube by rotating it too much and then I learned to put it back together again. I put back all the pieces in all the right places and then I had a completely solved cube, but of course, I knew I had not done it the way it should've been done.


I bought more cubes over the years, cheap copies that had screws in them, that got stiff and then broke apart in pieces if I rotated them too much. I bought small 2x2 cubes that were attached to keychains, and I bought a jumbo cube that was bigger than a coffee mug. I tried them all, and I couldn't solve it. 

By that time, we were all on the internet, and I tried looking up solutions online, but I never had the patience to sit quietly, read everything and try out the solutions. I always had an unsolved cube in my house that I spun few times every month or so, but I never solved it. I wanted to feel that pride of solving the cube on my own without looking at any guide or online solutions. That pride held me back and I still had an unsolved cube in my possession.

The WHY of it is really funny, and now that I have had some free time in my head, I've given it some thought. The wanting to solve it was not enough. The feeling of wanting to be proud for solving it was not enough. 

The excuses that I gave myself were not the results that I wanted to see. So I finally opened the guide that I had downloaded years ago, and gave it a read through. I applied the moves given in the guide and voila, solved cube. 

Now all that remains is to learn those moves so that I can finally solve the cube without looking at any kind of guide. There are three things that I learned from all this.
1) You have to give up the pride.
2) You have to take help from where you can.
3) Your actions have multiple consequences.

Right now, I have a solved cube and there is still a slight feeling of unrest in my head. Because as they say, it's never about the destination, but it's about the journey and there are many more journeys ahead...

PDF link, right click and choose save as.

Mar 26, 2014

Playing Candy Crush Taught Me All This


Do you know what Candy Crush Saga is? Yes? Good.

For those who have been living under a rock, it is an addictive game, where you join three/four/five shapes of similar colors and complete certain objectives in the game. 

Right now there are some 400 levels of the game, and the game is huge in terms of the money it is earning and also in terms of its reach. 





Every time I am in Delhi metro, I see people leaning against doors or sitting with their phones or tablets in their hands, playing Candy Crush, going through the levels again and again. 

It is a brilliant time killer, and if not checked, it can be an equally brilliant time waster, too. There is a lot that creative individuals like you can learn from the game, and apply those principles to maybe become better at what you are doing and what you want to do. So, what are these principles?






Patterns
Success in Candy Crush largely depends on seeing and recognizing the repeating patterns on the screen, predicting them, and creating situations so that the patterns are in your favor. 

And this, is easily applicable to anything in life. From business to relationships, if you look around, human behavior is pretty predictable. Some people will never listen to you, others will latch on to every word you say. Knowing how people behave in patterns, is the key. This is how people predict the future.




Connections 

Connections are the currency to success in Candy Crush and in real life too. And it's a very give and take kind of relationship. You send lives to your Facebook friends and they'll send lives to you. 

Heck, they'll even help you out when you're stuck at intermediate levels. Similarly, help enough people in real world, and sooner or later, help will come back to you when you need it the most.






Habits 

What is the one thing that you want to do every day? If there is no luck factor involved (lot of luck factor in Candy Crush, though) in it, you cannot help but get better at that activity. 


Example: your mom can definitely cook better food than anyone else in your house. Why? Cuz she has cooked for almost every day of her life, probably three times a day and she can't help but be awesome at it. So, decide what you want to do, and then do it. On repeat. Even if you suck at it at first, if you do it every day, you'll get better. 



Giving Up is NOT an option:
Yup, the Level 65 of Candy Crush is a bitch. I spent almost a month at that level when I was playing that and through that time, all I could think of was, when can I get back to my tab and play that level again. 

So, whatever you're doing in life, don't give up before you've tried absolutely to the point of failure. And the only real failure is giving up, which, is not an option. Because, whatever it is, people before you have done and people after you will do it again. And, as I said in point A, it's all about patterns.


These are just some of the things that I can think of right now about the game and life, I am sure you can think of more comparisons.

The gist here is that you can find life lessons and inspirations from even shitty, irritating, potentially useless things like mobile games that are just time killers.

How you view the world is up to you.