General - Swaroop CH

Exploring blockchain and smart contracts with Ethereum dev bootcamp, [email protected]

Background A few months ago, Mayank convinced me to get some Ether (Ethereum cryptocurrency) because it was going to go on a bull run, thanks to high-profile companies backing Ethereum by joining the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA). So I did. And that event did happen – including Microsoft, Intel, MasterCard, Cisco,

General

Automatic acquired by Sirius XM!

NOTE: This story here is my personal perspective, it does not represent the views of my employer. 6 years ago, I worked with Thejo Kote on NextDrop. 5 years ago, I joined Thejo on his (then) next adventure, Automatic which launched 4 years ago, that story is here. The premise

General

NH7 Weekender 2013

NH7 Weekender 2013 Pune was fun. Well, I thought it was better music last year, but the festival is definitely worth visiting every year. Nucleya, Madboy/Mink, Ankur Tewari & The Vinyl Records are the new discoveries for me this year. Started downloading some of their albums and playing their songs

General

Learning where to invest money from MoneyLife

Investing in property and gold is the first thing that comes to mind for us Indians when we want to invest money. But somehow I’ve always preferred finding out a more systematic way of figuring out how and when to invest. Bajaj Capital has been my financial advisor for

General

BGs Clojure Course Day 2

1 Pro Tip Pro Tip: Always set this in your REPL to prevent long data structures or infinite loops from hanging your REPL: (set! *print-length* 50) (set! *print-level* 10) 2 Workshop problem Starting the day with this problem: Given a text file, let’s find the n most common and

General

BGs Clojure Course Day 1

Continuing my journey of learning Clojure, I am attending BG’s Clojure Course. Today was Day 1. ~30 people in one room and BG as teacher for the weekend. Of course, I was looking forward to it. Most people in the audience had a background of mixture of C/C+

General

Khadakwasla Dam and Sinhgad Fort

Long ago, friends told us that Sinhgad Fort is a nice weekend getaway from Pune, finally, yesterday (Sunday) morning, we took out our getaway car and visited Khadakwasla dam and the beautiful misty land of Sinhgad. It was totally worth it.

General

Automatic launched this week

The startup that I’ve been part of for more than a year has launched this week : Automatic – Your Smart Driving Assistant. It’s a hardware device + mobile app + cloud combination that helps you save money by helping you drive in a more fuel-efficient way, monitor your car engine’s

General

What I learned in gamification class

For 2-3 weeks after Prof. Kevin Werbach’s Gamification course ended, I literally felt my weekends were dull without listening to him! And I’m not the only course attendee who felt that way. The best part about the course for me was how engaging and interesting the topics were

General

Exploratory Cycling

I recently got my cycle fixed up at Rider Owned Bikes (ironically, despite the grumpy owner of that shop). I hadn’t done that good a job at reassembling the bike gears after I had taken apart the wheels and put them all in the back-seat of the car when

General

Learning Gamification by attending a MOOC

I remember when @Ravi_Mohan kept talking about MOOCs and how excited he is by it, I didn’t pay attention to it at the time. A few weeks ago, I watched Daphne Koller’s TED talk and was blown away. I ended up signing up for one of the

General

Life without a TV

During our stay in Pune, in the first apartment we stayed, the owner had provided a TV. We had to soon move out because the apartment was in the topmost floor which translated to unbearable heat in the summer. In the second (and current) apartment, the owner did not provide

Books

Book review: Thoughts from Jaya, a retelling of Mahabharata

The world around me is very unsettling. First, we have the incompetence of the governments of the day, and then the startling realities highlighted by Satyamev Jayate show, even if it is not the whole truth, and so on. And these strange behavior of man to hurt and not help

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Freelancing for NextDrop

SMS and interactive voice response systems are emerging as a significant methodology for gathering and spreading information in the developing countries. This is important to note because in 2010, more than 4 billion people paid for mobile phone service. That’s 6 of every 10 people on the planet compared

General

Freelancing

I’ve been a long-time reader of Ramit Sethi – I love his irreverent approach to money which has influenced me positively. About a year and a half ago, he launched the Earn1K program and I was immediately curious about it. Having failed to run a business once, I thought this

General

Married

As a general rule of thumb, I do not write about friends or family on this blog so as to keep my professional life and personal life separate. But exceptions are to be made for exceptional people. One such exceptional person is my life partner – Sharvari. We got married a

General

PESIT Alumni Newsletter Guest Editorial

I was recently asked to write memoirs of my college life for a guest editorial for my alma mater’s alumni newsletter, and I jotted down a few thoughts while reminiscing the past. Long-time readers may not find these stories new. For the others, I have hyperlinked the related old

General

Featured Blogger in Outlook Magazine

This blog has been featured by Outlook Magazine as one of the “8 Bloggers to Follow and Bookmark” in the B-Drive / Best B-Schools Snippets section of their Sep 27, 2010 issue (cached PDF here). It is indeed an honour to be featured along with TechCrunch, Rajesh Jain, Amit Agarwal and

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In praise of Raghu Dixit

Last night, I was privileged to attend another performance by Raghu Dixit at B-Flat. This would be the fifth time I am watching Raghu Dixit live – first was at Opus, second at a Nokia concert, third at foss.in, fourth at a TiE mixer, and fifth at B-flat yesterday. More

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Musings on 2009

– Work – Resolutions Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. I got sidetracked by struggling to make a business. But don’t regret it for even a moment. Learned a lot about the real world. Changed from being a meek guy who liked to hide behind

General

The magic of foss.in

Why do I keep going back to foss.in? Because I’m the kind of person who needs extrinsic motivation. That’s why having a good circle of friends with a positive attitude is so important to me. And that’s why the foss.in community is so important to

Business

To get somewhere, you already have to be there

The irony in this world is that “To get somewhere, you already have to be there.” From an individual perspective: * If you want to make money, you need to already have money. * To get a job, you need to be one-year experienced and not a fresher. * If you’re experienced

Business

Thought for the Day

The world is no place for a logical/rational person. — Swaroop C H Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. — Albert Einstein A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress;

General

Writing Principles

I think of this weblog as a small place for me to write. The reason I write is because I have this innate implicit belief that I learn only by teaching. In hindsight, that’s why I wrote those books and that’s why I keep writing in this space.

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Thought for the Day

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You,