Feyyaz Alingan

The IMDb 7.0 Rule

2012-07-12T00:00:00-07:00

The IMDb 7.0 Rule

12 Jul 2012

I watch a lot of movies (probably more than I should). And I believe watching a good movie is very similar to reading a good book. The problem I’m sometimes facing is that movies take about 1.5 to 2 hours to watch and I hate wasting time. Now watching 2 hours of a great movie is time well spent and I’d never regret that. But watching a mediocre or bad movie for two hours where I haven’t learnt anything would piss me off. That’s why I “created” the IMDb 7.0 rule. It’s really simple: If a movie has a 7.0 or above rating on IMDb, I’ll watch it (if the movie seems appealing). But if it is below 7.0 I only watch it if I like the actors playing in it or if the trailer is exciting.

Why 7.0? Because I found that it was the perfect barrier between “meh” and good (I can’t back this by scientific evidence, it is just my experience which I accumulated over the years, YMMV!). You have to be careful though! Between 6.5 and 7.0 are a lot of good movies, so make use of the exception (→ Like the actors playing in it? Like the trailer? Give it a try!).

Examples of the rule:

Batman: The Dark Knight – 8.9
Superbad – 7.7
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – 8.0
Headhunters – 7.5
The Fighter – 7.9
Un prophète – 8.0

Now exceptions to the rule:

The Transporter – 6.7 (because of Jason Statham)
Contraband – 6.5 (because of Mark Wahlberg)
Taxi – 6.8
Righteous Kill – 6.0 (because of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino)

These are some of the examples (there are many more) and if you’re into different movies, that’s fine as well. My friends love horror movies and they constantly watch movies which have a rating between 4.0 and 6.0. Although a very low rating, they are super pumped about the movies, so the rule may vary depending on your favorite genre.

Give the IMDb 7.0 Rule a go and let me know how it works for you!

Book Notes on "How to Win at the Sport of Business" by Mark Cuban

2011-11-20T00:00:00-08:00

Book Notes on “How to Win at the Sport of Business” by Mark Cuban

20 Nov 2011

Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage.

Lesson #1: Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service. How can they put you out of
business? Is it price? Is it service? Is it ease of use? No product is perfect and if there are good competitors
in your market, they will figure out how to abuse you. It’s always better if you are honest with yourself and
anticipate where the problems will come from. Lesson #2: Always run your business like you are going to be
competing with biggest technology companies in your industry—Google, Facebook, Oracle, Microsoft, whomever.

That’s what success is all about. It’s about the edge. It’s not whom you know. It’s not how much money you have.
It’s very simple. It’s whether or not you have the edge and have the guts to use it.

The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.
loving this Mark Cuban article compilation so far!

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Rule #1: Sweat equity is the best startup capital The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are
those that began with little or no money. Dell Computers, Microsoft, Compaq, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of
others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages.

In this kind of economy, it really is a numbers game. You are going to have to keep on applying for anything and
everything that opens a door you want to walk through. You can never slow down. It’s hard work finding a job!

You don’t have to be right every time. You just have to be right one time.

No one keeps score. There are so many ways that each of us can find happiness and success in our endeavors, that
it never really matters how many times you fail. You only have to be right once.

Book Notes on "The Education of Millionaires" by Michael Ellsberg

2011-11-20T00:00:00-08:00

Book Notes on “The Education of Millionaires” by Michael Ellsberg

20 Nov 2011

People tend to feel safer and more comfortable with the known over the unknown. An “impact” is a change in
course, so if you want to make an impact in your field, you’re asking people to venture into the unknown. The
more of a change of course your innovation or leadership represents, the more you are asking people to abandon
safety and comfort, which is not usually something they’re willing to do without overcoming a great deal of
resistance.

Those who do end up leading often achieve leadership, amass wealth, fame, or support, or make an impact on the
world, largely through the effects of word of mouth. Followers/customers/fans convert other people to
followers/customers/fans, who convert more people to followers/customers/fans, until a big group—which business
author Seth Godin calls a “tribe”—has amassed around that given leader, company, or artist. This is how most
artists, musicians, actors, writers, and entrepreneurs who become famous and wealthy do so—through the viral-
effects word of mouth.

“We are in a critical state right now. We’ve got maybe ten years to save our oceans. And there are all kinds of
problems of that magnitude. However, I believe the future of our world is not going to come from the nonprofits.
I think it’s going to come from business—because business is incredibly powerful. I just don’t think that
holding bake sales and begging for little handouts by nonprofits is going to act quickly or powerfully enough.

Business knows how to get things done. But it has to have a conscience, it has to want to make the world a
better place and not just make a profit at any cost. It clearly doesn’t today.”

The Art of Earning a Living is the art of finding creative ways of bringing the spheres of money and meaning
together and making them overlap significantly.

And doing things that no one has done before—that is, leadership—involves uncertainty, risk, and danger. Which
means, as Anthony suggests, losing sight of the shore. The greater the impact you want to make in your field,
market, career, industry, or profession, or in the world, the farther you have to travel from shore.

You need to free up time and space for some experiments in leadership, innovation, making a difference, and
finding meaning. If you’re working freelance gigs (as I was during this period), then there’s always a way to
find a few spare hours each day for starting a pursuit that might feel meaningful to you.

And yet, I don’t believe the people I feature in this book simply took a bigger bet than everyone else and
happened to get lucky and win. Rather, I’ve seen that they have systematically and intentionally developed a
style of working that allows them to take lots of small bets—bet after bet after bet after bet—all the while
making sure that they don’t get wiped out of the game if one or many of them go south. In other words, I believe
that for most of the people featured in this book a trait even more important than luck was resilience.

But rather than never try their hand at any dream at all, and sticking to a safe-but-boring course instead, they
keep trying one dream after the next, maximizing their inner and outer resilience for the inevitable failures.

They fail early and often, and turn courses on a dime, until something begins to gain traction.

Unlike a gambling addict, they have consciously cultivated a lifestyle of resilience. They are ready to pick
themselves up, dust themselves off, adjust course, and try something else when they fail. That is the essence of
learning. Without failure, there is no learning. These people are not addicts of gambling; they are addicts of
learning in the real world. And learning in the real world involves failure. Lots of it.

“The problem is, most people view college as their learning experience, then they graduate into the ‘real
world’; as soon as they’re done with college and out into the ‘real world,’ they’re done learning. I view life
as learning. It’s all learning for me, all the time. I’m literally nonstop learning. Most people are like, ‘As
soon as college is done, I’m done with books.’ I read books every day. I talk to people every day. I’m always
out looking for new people I can learn from.”
network faster than you ever thought possible:

1. What’s most exciting for you right now in your life/ business?

2. What’s challenging for you in your life/business right now? If it’s a personal context (cocktail party,
dinner party, etc.), ask about their life; if it’s a business context (conference, networking event, etc.), ask
about their business.

This introduction took Elliott minutes to compose, and yet it helped me and my project immensely. Those few
minutes he spent earned him a lifelong fan in me. Would there be any chance he’d be able to win a similar amount
of appreciation, goodwill, fandom, and desire to serve him back on my part by spending hours and hours of his
day, say, fetching me coffee, scheduling my appointments, and making photocopies for me? The image of Elliott
Bisnow, one of the world’s most connected twenty-five-year-olds, spending time fetching coffee or writing
reports for anyone is absurdly laughable. Yet, that is precisely how many twentysomethings, including many
twentysomething college graduates, spend their days, in their entry-level corporate shit jobs. The difference
between the lowly impact most twentysomethings experience day in and day out in their shit jobs (with all the
attendant existential angst, feelings of resentment, and bitterness) and the massive impact Elliott Bisnow can
have on someone’s day with just two minutes of his time shows the power of connection capital.

“The amount of money you earn is the measure of the value that others place on your contribution…. To increase
the value of the money you are getting out, you must increase the value of the work that you are putting in. To
earn more money, you must add more value.”6

I never understood my fellow Brown graduates, who said they wanted to “make a difference in the world,” and then
went into $36,000 jobs licking envelopes at some nonprofit organization while eating ramen noodles at night.

“The right way to go about it is to be generous with the person you want to connect with. And in this case, the
generosity is: you tell a story. Tell a story about how you drew inspiration from their teachings and their
example, how it impacted your life, and all the ways you’re passing that gift on to others now. If you move me
enough with what you’ve accomplished with my teachings and how you’re serving others, then yes, of course I want
to help you.

Going to high school, going to college, playing sports. This is just doin’ what you’re supposed to do, in an
archaic system that doesn’t really teach you. The notion that college is learning, and if you don’t go to
college you’re not learning, is very silly. It’s all about learning, all the time. And I felt in order to
maximize my learning, I needed to learn different things than science and math and ancient history. In college,
I realized, I was a people person. Just as, if you want to be a lawyer, you need a law degree—I realized I was a
people person, and I needed to get educated in the game of life.”

you’re not going to create anything better for yourself unless you make a fundamental shift: from viewing
yourself as a passive follower of paths other people set for you, to actively taking responsibility for creating
your own path toward success, however you define it.

Unless you’re driven by a desire to solve a problem, you’re not going to be able to stick that out. If you’re
driven only by a desire for the status that is associated with being an entrepreneur, you’re not going to be
willing to deal with the humiliation of sleeping on people’s couches.”
Sell something. Now.5 If you’re an entrepreneur, or self-employed, marketing is one of your most important
jobs, period.

2. There’s no better way to rise up the ranks of your organization than bringing in new business, or coming up
with ideas that bring in new business. Not in your job description? If you’re seriously that attached to your
job description, one day someone is going to come along in your department who’s willing to go the extra mile
and go way beyond your job description.

when you’re communicating with a marketing message, you need to get inside the heads of your prospects, figure
out what matters most to them in their lives, and talk to them about that, not about what you want to sell them.
They don’t care about what you want to sell them. “If you aren’t talking to your prospect about their strongest
and deepest wants, needs, and desires, you are doing them a disservice,”

The process Craig offered was simple: make a list of your prospects’ biggest fears, frustrations, desires,
dreams, and nightmares around the issue your product or service helps them with. List twenty-five answers for
each of these categories.

When you talk with anyone about their deepest fears, desires, and dreams, there is a potential for manipulation.
That’s why you must always check in with yourself and approach these encounters with the highest integrity and
the most giving, generous intentions. You must truly believe that what you are offering will benefit the
prospect enormously.

Since my college career had been measured in months … I never took a marketing course. Everything I know about
marketing I learned on the job. My lack of [formal] education would have stalled a career in nuclear physics,
but it never hindered my career in marketing. You can’t learn how to be a good marketer from a textbook….

“My work does not seem to go anywhere,” [the journalist] said quietly. “Everyone says that my novels are
excellent, but nothing happens. So I keep my job with the paper. At least it pays the bills. Do you have any
suggestions?” “Yes, I do,” I said brightly. “A friend of mine here in Singapore runs a school that trains people
to sell. He runs sales-training courses for many of the top corporations here in Singapore, and I think
attending one of his courses would greatly enhance your career.” She stiffened. “Are you saying I should go to
school to learn to sell?” I nodded. “You aren’t serious, are you?” Again I nodded. “What is wrong with that?” “I
have a master’s degree in English literature. Why should I go to school to learn to be a salesperson? I am a
professional. I went to school to be trained in a profession so I would not have to be a salesperson. I hate
salespeople.

I call it the “I’m Above Learning How to Sell” mentality, and it’s pretty much the bread and butter of our
nation’s highereducation system. What they sell you is the idea that, if you get enough of their credentials,
enough letters after your name, then financial security, a great career, and real-world success will just fall
in your lap without your having to do anything.

No single skill you could possibly learn correlates more directly with your real-world success than learning
sales.

But if you can get into the underlying motivations—they’re not buying the twenty-pound weight-loss coaching.
They’re buying a new career. Or a shot at having a great relationship. Or a shot at being a mother, with kids.
“And if you can talk with them about that, and help them solve that problem—the underlying motivation—then
they’ll want to do business with you.

If you try to sell a solution before you’ve mutually agreed on the problem you’re trying to solve—which is what
most salespeople do—people mostly aren’t interested.”

“If you talk to billionaires and millionaires, and you ask them, ‘How important was sales to building your
business?’ you’ll find out, it’s like half the business. And none of the top schools teach it. Yet it’s
essential. So there’s an obvious disconnect there.

Seth continued on his riff: “Let’s say you got into Harvard and didn’t go. That’s a better story than you got
into Harvard and you did go. And a much cheaper story. And it takes four less years!” I imagine some kid sending
a copy of her acceptance letter to Harvard, along with a copy of her letter declining it, and saying to a
potential employer, ‘Here’s what I did with the four years instead. I have the brains to get into Harvard, and I
have the initiative to get a Harvard-quality education on my own, and I think outside the box. Hire me.”
Bookmarks do not have any content

“We’re afraid, ashamed—when we don’t have that story—to tell the other one, the one which is more unique and
shows more personality.

You don’t develop those things in college or grad school, you develop them by doing stuff in the real world. And
then making sure there’s a Google trail related to what you’ve been doing. That’s your brand. Create stuff. Sell
stuff. Market stuff. Lead stuff. Make sure it’s good stuff, then make sure there’s a good Google trail about it,
so when potential employers or clients Google you (as they all will), the brand impression they come away with
(the thoughts that come to mind when they hear your name again) are, “This person gets shit done.” Or simply,
“Wow.”

You must name your [brand] after yourself. Period. No one calls to talk to Alliance Capital; they call to talk
to you. No one refers Thinkwell; they give your name and number to their colleague who needs advertising. You
create the value, not your company name. Let’s face it, the only reason you chose that silly name was so that
people would think you’re larger than you are. But trust me, you’re not fooling anyone….
Google is the new resume for the twenty-first century. How does your resume look?
It’s easy to sell when you believe in stuff. I call it ‘Radiate and State the Facts.’ You just pound out your
devotion, your commitment to what you’re doing. Then state the facts in a very measured way about what you’re
doing. That’s it. I am going to radiate and state the facts and if you get it, great. If you don’t, then we’re
not right for each other.”

“You’re going to have customers who aren’t going to buy from you. Some might be rude to you or cut your
appointment short. You’re going to have days when you don’t reach your goals. And it’s OK to be negative
sometimes. But not for more than five minutes. You’ve got to live by the five-minute rule. Bitch, moan,
complain, vent, get it out of your system, whatever you’ve got to do. But just for five minutes. Beyond that,
there’s no benefit to dwelling on it. Instead, focus 100 percent of your energy on what’s in your control. What
can you do now? How can you learn and benefit from the experience? How can you move forward?”
“There are two decisions you need to come to in order to be free, and to be more effective. First is that you
are not entitled to anything in the world, until you create value for another human being first. Second, you are
100 percent responsible for producing results. No one else. If you adopt those two views, you will go far.”
run always toward creating real-world results for people who are willing to pay for these results, and you’ll
never have to worry about money; it will always be there for you in sufficient supply.

“People with an employee mind-set don’t want to be the one responsible for making a bad decision, so they move
away from responsibility for all decisions. It’s part of protecting their job.
Because they’re not making any real decisions, which means they’re not having any real impact. They’ll be the
first to go when leaders start looking to trim fat.”

A key aspect of the entrepreneurial mind-set is seeing the world around you as largely made up. Sure, there are
societal rules, but those rules are often arbitrary and outdated, and can therefore frequently be broken, bent,
bypassed, or just plain ignored, to good effect.

“An educated man is not one who is trained to carry a few dates in history—he is one who can accomplish
things…. A man’s real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the
discipline of life…. A man may be very learned and useless…. Merely gathering knowledge may be the most
useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test. If a man
could hold up his own end, he counts for one. If he could help ten or a hundred or a thousand other men hold up
their ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is
a learned man just the same. When a man is a master of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he has won his
degree—he has entered the realm of wisdom.”

The basic fact is, when you come up with a great idea for something new, the correct thing is to just do it.
Because there’s no training for it, there’s no way you can prepare for being an entrepreneur.
Systems theorists have known for decades that the more complex any system gets (whether it’s a physical or
biological system, a social network, an organization, or an entire economy), the more unpredictable its behavior
gets. The more elements of a system there are (people, businesses), and the more interconnections between those
elements (cheap global transportation, global media, and the global Internet), the less useful predictions about
the future behavior of that system become.

The Startup Genome Project (http://www.startupgenome.cc). The Project is inspired by the work of successful
serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, who argues in his books and teachings that a startup is an organization that
should be designed specifically to learn. “A startup needs to learn about the problem, the solution, who the
customers are, the market, and getting all these pieces to fit together. An early-stage startup is a set of
assumptions, and you need to test those assumptions systematically,”

Book Notes on "Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development" by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

2011-11-08T00:00:00-08:00

Book Notes on “Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development” by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

08 Nov 2011

most startups fail because they didn’t develop their market, not because they didn’t develop their product.

Customer Development is a four-step framework to discover and validate that you have identified the market for
your product, built the right product features that solve customers’ needs, tested the correct methods for
acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources to scale the business.

Customer Development will help you – force you – to make better decisions based on tested hypotheses, rather
than untested assumptions.

CustDev concentrates on getting to and preparing to cross the chasm.

Seek out new technology to solve their (or their companies’) problems

Don’t rely on references from others to make buying decisions.

Early Adopters want to help you and (here is the best bit) want you to be successful. Early adopters enjoy
opportunities that allow them to be heroes, by solving real problems.

Market segments are comprised of like people, who share a common interest, who have access to each other and who
look to one another as a trusted reference.

YCombinator does the same. Start with a small segment, scale and then grow

While targeting multiple segments is less expensive today in terms of development costs and marketing
efficiency, sticking to the “one segment” philosophy maximizes the benefits of segmentation.

Learn faster about market fit Find an “unoccupied” segment, i.e., no competition Become a market leader earlier
(by dominating a segment) Line up (and knock down) segments like bowling pins (one segment conquered
successfully destabilizes its neighbors)

True market disruption often requires major technology innovation or uses existing technology in a new and
unforeseen way. Most likely, you are re-segmenting a market.

1. Your customers’ view of your market type is more important than yours.

if you don’t have a lot of money, you need to act like you
if you don’t have a lot of money, you need to act like you are re-segmenting a market.
If you don’t have millions of dollars to spend, you must build your business or prove the traction to investors
by dominating a specific niche market segment.
the goal of positioning is to have them understand what benefit they will receive from you and why you are
better than everyone else.

So, for example, if you are the first to offer a sales force automation tool in a SaaS business model, your
customers don’t buy because you are SaaS, though this is your primary differentiator. They buy because of the
benefits that SaaS provides outweigh the benefits that an in-source solution provides: IT costs are lower;
deployment costs are lower; remote access is easier; integration with the web is easier; web interface lowers
training costs, etc.

Product-Market Fit In a Nutshell: When a product shows strong demand by passionate users representing a sizable
market.

“achieving Product-Market fit requires at least 40% of users saying they would be “very disappointed” without
your product.

A startup which combines fast, iterative development methodologies with customer development principles.

As Eric Ries writes “by testing, each failed hypothesis leads to a new pivot, where we change just one element
of the business plan (customer segment, feature set, positioning) – but don’t abandon everything we’ve learned.”

Pivoting is at the heart of the “fail fast” concept.

The sooner you realize a hypothesis is wrong, the faster you can update it and retest it.

Go speak (in person, if possible) with living, breathing customers to determine the validity of your
assumptions.

First, draw a map of your ecosystem. The entities involved.

Flow of currency.

Product Distribution.

Second, define the value proposition for each player. Each entity is only a member of the “ecosystem” if it will
receive benefits by participating. For each member of the ecosystem, what benefit do they gain and what are they
willing to trade in exchange?

Third, posit a final MVP As defined above, an MVP is “a product with the fewest number of features needed to
achieve a specific objective, for which users are willing to ‘pay’ in some form of a scarce resource.”

Fourth, where’s the risk?

Fifth, create your Value Path Your value path is the journey of Customer Discovery that takes you from where you
are today to your proposed final MVP and includes both intermediate MVPs and core assumptions to be tested.

Your values will be reflected in your business and so will also affect how you conduct Customer Discovery.

From the value propositions you created in the previous chapter, you will now specify your core C-P-S (Customer-
Problem-Solution) hypotheses for each mission-critical entity in your business model.

it doesn’t matter if you are right, you must understand and describe the problem you are solving from the
customer’s perspective.

Don’t Mistake Guesses for Facts You likely know what you don’t know. You certainly know you need to test for
those things. But you also need to test what you know you know. Those pesky “facts” you like to share about your
business are likely the most significant assumptions you hold onto and are the most difficult to face head on –
document and test ‘em.

Who has the problem? What problem(s) are you trying to solve? How are you solving the problem? How is this
person dealing with the problem now? How is your solution better? What benefits does the user get by using your
solution instead of their existing solution or workaround?

Write specific assumptions. Just about any assumption can be written so broadly that it is both irrefutable and
un-testable at the same time. It is better to be wrong than vague. If you are wrong, you iterate; if you are
vague, you have wasted your time and cannot draw any conclusions.

“Before you pick up the phone and talk to someone you don’t know [assuming you get over cold call jitters], it’s
usually a good idea to know what you want to say. What you don’t want to say is, ‘Hi this is Bob and NewBanking
Product, Inc., and I’d like to tell you about our new product.”

Instead, you want to create an atmosphere of “needing their expertise,” to which most people respond positively.

Book Notes on "Ignore Everybody" by Hugh MacLeod

2011-10-14T00:00:00-07:00

Book Notes on “Ignore Everybody” by Hugh MacLeod

14 Oct 2011

I really enjoyed this book, just because it essentially tells you to quit whining and start acting

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they may not want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They might prefer things the way they are, that’s how they love you—the way you are, not the way you may become.

GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS. THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.

Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to think about all that, for a change.

Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.

Being good at anything is like figure skating—the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That’s what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.

Good ideas have lonely childhoods. This is the price you pay, every time. There is no way of avoiding it.

Good ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. Good ideas exist in a social context. And not everybody has the same agenda as you.

You are responsible for your own experience. Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful, or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.

Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it. It’s your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an oversubscribed, vainglorious myth will only hinder you. Is your plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.

I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it.

FRANKLY, I THINK YOU’RE BETTER OFF DOING something on the assumption that you will not be rewarded for it, that it will not receive the recognition it deserves, that it will not be worth the time and effort invested in it.

Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside. The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a ton.

And every kid with a guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work. So the bars of West Hollywood, London, and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore, their B-plans having been washed away by beer and vodka years ago. Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off.

The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not. It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain.

In other words: Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you. In order to navigate the New Realities you have to be creative—not just within your particular profession, but in everything. Your way of looking at the world will need to become ever more fertile and original.

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Don’t make excuses. Just shut the hell up and get on with it. Time waits for no one.

One part of me thinks it’s good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, and maybe one or two of them will make it, maybe one or two will survive the cull. That’s what being young is all about, and I think it’s wonderful. The other side of me wants to tell these kids to beware of choosing difficult art forms for the wrong reasons. You can wing it while you’re young, but it’s not till your youth is over that the Devil starts seeking out his due.

Nobody cares. Do it for yourself. Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay, etc., especially if you haven’t finished it yet. And the ones who aren’t too busy you don’t want in your life anyway.

Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time. You can argue about “Selling Out” versus “Artistic Purity” till the cows come home. People were kvetching about it in 1850, and they’ll be kvetching about it in 2150.

Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually. Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.

You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long. Conversely, neither should you fret too much about “writer’s block,” “artist’s block,” or whatever. If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.

Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough. In the meantime, you’re better off going out into the big, wide world, having some adventures and refilling your well. Trying to create when you don’t feel like it is like making conversation for the sake of making conversation. It’s not really connecting, it’s just droning on like an old, drunken barfly.

Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.

Whatever choice you make, the Devil gets his due eventually. Selling out to Hollywood comes with a price. So does not selling out. Either way, you pay in full, and yes, it invariably hurts like hell.

The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it. If you have the creative urge, it isn’t going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.

Remain frugal. The less you can live on, the more chance your idea will succeed. This is true even after you’ve “made it.”

“A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”

It’s not just guys in business who fall into this trap, unfortunately. It happens just as often to people taking a less conventional path. It’s sad enough when you see it happen to a friend of yours. When it happens to you, it’s even worse.

Being Poor Sucks. The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.

Once you “make it,” your work is never the same.

Start blogging. The ease with which a blog (or whatever social medium you prefer) can circumvent the gatekeepers is staggering.

So put some of your ideas on a blog and get them “out there.” Eventually the fish will start biting. Just remember that it doesn’t happen overnight. It usually takes a couple of years of continual posting to build up enough trust to where people are willing to invest in you financially. But you never know. It could be a couple of months, it could take a couple of years. But it certainly beats a decade waiting tables in Manhattan.

you are still as beholden to the day-to-day realities as any living creature. Birth, sickness, death, falling in love, watching TV, raising families, mowing the lawn, going to the movies, taking your nephew to a ball game, drinking beer, hanging out with your buddies, playing Frisbee on the beach, painting the house, tending the garden. No matter where your adventure takes you, most of what is truly meaningful is still to be found revolving around the mundane stuff you did before you embarked on your adventure. The stuff that’ll still be going on long after you and I are both dead, long after our contribution to the world is forgotten. But often, one needs to have that big adventure before truly appreciating how utterly wonderful all that simple, mundane stuff actually is.

When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams. If you are successful, it’ll never come from the direction you predicted. Same is true if you fail.

Van Gogh once told his brother, “No painting ever sells for as much as it cost the artist to make it.” I’ve yet to meet in the flesh any artist who could prove him wrong.

It’s good to be young and full of dreams. Dreams of one day doing something “insanely great.” Dreams of love, beauty, achievement, and contribution. But understand they have a life of their own, and they’re not very good at following instructions. Love them, revere them, nurture them, respect them, but don’t ever become a slave to them. Otherwise you’ll kill them off prematurely, before they get the chance to come true.

If I had to condense this entire book into a line or two, it would read something like, “Work hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Create your own luck. Be nice. Be polite.”

Book Notes on "Letters from a Stoic" by Seneca

2011-09-14T00:00:00-07:00

Book Notes on “Letters from a Stoic” by Seneca

14 Sept 2011

The first book I read from Seneca and also the first book I read on Stoicism, after being introduced to it in high school (where I didn’t like it at all!). I’ll probably reread this book from time to time.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships.

if at any moment you find yourself wanting a change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before. Each day, too, acquire something which will help you to face poverty, or death, and other ills as well.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.

Certainly you should discuss everything with a friend; but before you do so, discuss in your mind the man himself.

After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.

Regard him as loyal, and you will make him loyal.

the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action.

The very name of philosophy, however modest the manner in which it is pursued, is unpopular enough as it is: imagine what the reaction would be if we started dissociating ourselves from the conventions of society.

The standard which I accept is this: one’s life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular morality. People should admire our way of life but they should at the same time find it understandable.

Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

‘What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all.

Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach.

‘For whose benefit, then, did I learn it all?’ If it was for your own benefit that you learnt it you have no call to fear that your trouble may have been wasted.

A person adopted as a friend for the sake of his usefulness will be cultivated only for so long as he is useful. This explains the crowd of friends that clusters about successful men and the lonely atmosphere about the ruined – their friends running away when it comes to the testing point; it explains the countless scandalous instances of people deserting or betraying others out of fear for themselves.

‘Any man,’ he says, ‘who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.’

It does not make any difference what a man says; what matters is how he feels, and not how he feels on one particular day but how he feels at all times.

Only the wise man is content with what is his. All foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with itself.

Happy the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presence but even when he is in their thoughts!

Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model.

Well, we should cherish old age and enjoy it. It is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit tastes most delicious just when its season is ending.

Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.

The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others.

But whatever you do, return from body to mind very soon. Exercise it day and night. Only a moderate amount of work is needed for it to thrive and develop. It is a form of exercise to which cold and heat and even old age are no obstacle. Cultivate an asset which the passing of time itself improves.

Whatever is well said by anyone belongs to me.

‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.’

if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away, be sure it is not something natural.

If you want a man to keep his head when the crisis comes you must give him some training before it comes. This was the aim of the men* who once every month pretended they were poor, bringing themselves face to face with want, to prevent their ever being terrified by a situation which they had frequently rehearsed.

‘Rehearse death.’ To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, warders, bars to him? He has an open door.

A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness.

What difference does it make how many masters a man has? Slavery is only one, and yet the person who refuses to let the thought of it affect him is a free man no matter how great the swarm of masters around him.

This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot – the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else’s shadow. They never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning.

They exercise their memories on things that are not their own. It is one thing, however, to remember, another to know.

nothing can be well-regulated if it is done in a breakneck hurry.

treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors.

We have neither successes nor setbacks as individuals; our lives have a common end. No one can lead a happy life if he thinks only of himself and turns everything to his own purposes. You should live for the other person if you wish to live for yourself.

Why does no one admit his failings? Because he’s still deep in them. It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failings is a sign of health.

‘Thinking of friends who are alive and well is like feasting on cakes and honey. Recalling those who are gone is pleasant but not without a touch of sourness.

Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow. For when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them, and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still.

Now I bear it in mind not only that all things are liable to death but that that liability is governed by no set rules. Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.

Come now, surely you know that dying is also one of life’s duties? You’re leaving no duty undone, for there’s no fixed number of duties laid down which you’re supposed to complete. Every life without exception is a short one.

As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.

Comforting thoughts (provided they are not of a discreditable kind) contribute to a person’s cure; anything which raises his spirits benefits him physically as well.

refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.

What’s the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then?

Another thing which will help is to turn your mind to other thoughts and that way get away from your suffering. Call to mind things which you have done that have been upright or courageous; run over in your mind the finest parts that you have played. And cast your memory over the things you have most admired;

What really ruins our characters is the fact that none of us looks back over his life. We think about what we are going to do, and only rarely of that, and fail to think about what we have done, yet any plans for the future are dependent on the past.

But there is really only one liberal study that deserves the name – because it makes a person free – and that is the pursuit of wisdom.

If they are pointers to events, what difference does it make to be aware in advance of things you cannot escape? They are going to happen whether you know about them or not.

So let us face up to the blows of circumstance and be aware that whatever happens is never as serious as rumour makes it out to be.

all the works of mortal man lie under sentence of mortality; we live among things that are destined to perish.

Can wisdom, then, the greatest art of all, be picked up in the course of taking a trip? Take my word for it, the trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears. If it did, the human race would be off there in a body.

To be feared inside your own home, it may be added, is as much a source of trouble as being feared outside it – slave or free, there isn’t a man who hasn’t power enough to do you injury.

Besides, to be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself.

He needs but little who desires but little. He has his wish, whose wish can be To have what is enough.

Fired by this teaching I became a vegetarian, and by the time a year had gone by was finding it an enjoyable as well as an easy habit. I was beginning to feel that my mind was more active as a result of it

Why finest? Because while we are young we are able to learn; when the mind is quick to learn and still susceptible to training we can turn it to better ends. Because this is a good time for hard work, for studies as a means of keeping our brains alert and busy and for strenuous activities as a means of exercising our bodies; the time remaining to us afterwards is marked by relative apathy and indolence, and is all the closer to the end. Let us act on this, then, wholeheartedly. Let us cut out all distractions and work away at this alone for fear that otherwise we may be left behind and only eventually realize one day the swiftness of the passage of this fleeting phenomenon, time, which we are powerless to hold back. Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.

Don’t you think it’s living unnaturally to drink without having eaten, taking liquor into an empty system and going on to dinner in a drunken state? Yet this is a failing which is common among young people, who cultivate their capacities to the point of drinking – swilling would be a better description of it – in naked groups the moment they’re inside the doors of the public bath-house, every now and then having a rub all over to get rid of the perspiration brought on by continually putting down the piping hot liquor. To them drinking after lunch or dinner is a common habit, something only done by rural worthies and people who don’t know where the true pleasure lies: the wine that gives a person undiluted enjoyment, they say, is the wine that makes its way into his system unobstructed instead of swimming about in his food; intoxication on an empty stomach is the kind that gratifies a man.

Moreover the man who lives extravagantly wants his manner of living to be on everybody’s lips as long as he is alive. He thinks he is wasting his time if he is not being talked about. So every now and then he does something calculated to set people talking. Plenty of people squander fortunes, plenty of people keep mistresses. To win any reputation in this sort of company you need to go in for something not just extravagant but really out of the ordinary. In a society as hectic as this one it takes more than common profligacy to get oneself talked about.

One shouldn’t, accordingly, eat until hunger demands. I shall wait, then, and not eat until I either start getting good bread again or cease to be fussy about bad bread. It is essential to make oneself used to putting up with a little. Even the wealthy and the well provided are continually met and frustrated by difficult times and situations. It is in no man’s power to have whatever he wants; but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn’t got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way. And a stomach firmly under control, one that will put up with hard usage, marks a considerable step towards independence.

23

2011-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

23

30 Aug 2011

A few weeks ago, 4 to be exact, I turned 23 years old.

I am so excited to be 23 it might seem unreal to you. 23 was always the year I’d turn my life around, to one where I’d do only what I want, follow my passions, make money and be independent.

Well Feyyaz, you might ask, why 23?

Simple: Michael Jordan – the impersonation of excellence, determination and hard work.

I’m not sure whether it was that or something else, but something did change. I began to work more serious, plan more carefully and execute very well. The first time in my life I started to recognize my talents and one (or more!) possible path for myself.

My university exam results will probably be published in a week or so, but I’m almost 100% sure that I won’t continue at this point (I might simply take a pause) even if I pass all of them. I have too much energy for other stuff and I feel like the time is right. I always thought that university will let you graduate when you graduated on your own terms. I did, a few weeks before I turned 23. And I feel like I’m ready to take on the world. At this point everybody could tell me that I’ll fail but I’d just laugh them off, because I have so much faith in myself. I might not get to the top tomorrow, but I’m sure that I’ll get there the day after tomorrow. Failure is not an option.

I’m currently planning my short-term and long-term goals. Short-term is obviously to make a little money, to be not much of a burden for my parents. I was thinking about doing simple web development for a niche group, where such “talent” is needed. I’ll learn to code on the side, but this time I’ll walk the walk and not talk the talk. I learnt through the hard way that knowing just the surface of a subject isn’t enough, especially not in computer programming.
Depending on the complexity of the project, I’ll either try to launch it myself or hire a freelancer to create it for me. If it’s not absolutely time and finance critical, I’ll do it myself. But if there’s an opportunity, I’ll move fast. So my long-term goal is to become a self-sufficient developer who can plan and launch projects. I’m not thinking about doing EVERYTHING myself, but at the beginning I think it’s important for me to correct my own mistakes and try to be as independent as possible. After reaching a certain level of knowledge I’ll try to contribute to open source projects or start something with a group (read: at least 2) of people. My ultimate goal is to change as much lives as possible for the better. Money isn’t the primary goal (it never was), but I think it kinda goes hand in hand with the projects I’d love to realize, so it’s a goal on the list.

Be aware that these are only my career goals (I have a ton about personal development, too!) and they might slightly change, but I realized that the skill computer programming has so much potential for the future, I’d be stupid not to try my best for some time. Will I be the best developer there ever was? No. But I think the combination of my skills as a hustler and my future skills as a hacker is f*cking good combination to realize some great stuff in this world. Naive? Maybe. Determined? Definitely.

It took me 23 years to realize that ideas are worth shit, if you don’t execute them. It took me 23 years to realize that being a business guy only puts you in the wrong corner if you want to get to the top. And finally, it took me 23 years to realize that I (you, you and you too!) have the potential to reach greatness within my terms if I only plan and execute.

I always told my friends and my parents that I’ll get to the top somehow, sometimes they encouraged me, sometimes they laughed at me. And now I’m ready to show them: Failure is not an option.

Don't change the world, change lives.

2011-07-17T00:00:00-07:00

Don’t change the world, change lives.

17 Jul 2011

Everybody wants to change the world. That’s great, I do too. But if you look at it from a realistic and pragmatic perspective (depending on how you define world change for yourself) most of us won’t be able to change shit.

So what should we do? Stop trying? Nope. I think we should try to change lives instead of the world. It’s not a new thought I’m proposing but it’s far more easy to do for most people (limited time and money; basically everybody).

What you do is to try to change the life of every person you meet for the better. Now you don’t have to buy them cars or houses to realize their dreams! But you could try to hook them up with a job, you just heard about.

You need two simple skills to help people: 1. Listen to them 2. Keep your eyes open for opportunity.

Through listening you learn about them, their character, their interests and their wishes. It’s really not difficult, just pay attention and watch the details unfold.

An example: You talk to your good buddy James. By listening (and genuinely asking) you know that he likes this one mountain bike, wants to become an author and hates his job. Now besides the obvious gift you could organize him with your other friends (the bike) you’ll keep your eyes open for writing internships, freelance writing gigs, books about becoming a better author (I heard great things about “On Writing” by Stephen King) and self-made author (follow them on twitter!) presentation in your city. That’s the opportunity part. So during your stroll through the university campus you see a poster that says “Meet the Author: Tim Ferriss” organized by Apple in the Apple Store (OT: something similar happened to me actually, where I had the great chance of meeting Tim Ferriss, true story.). Great! So you call your buddy and ask him whether he has time and interest. He’s pumped as hell, prepares some questions and gets his camera ready for some pics of his idol. So you attend the event with him and it’s a huge success for your friend. He gets to meet his hero, asks him about how to get started and wants to start right away.

Fast forward a few years: Your friend has successfully started a blog (through the tips he got), now has more than 10’000 hits every month on his website and is happy as hell. He’s doing a freelance writing gig (which you organized him, by helping another friend out) on the side to support his blog lifestyle. That’s how you change lives.

Now your situation might be completely different, but I think it illustrates how a simple step (meaning: keeping your eyes open) has helped your friend to change his life for the better. The best part: You can do it for everyone, almost always. Sometimes you won’t be able to help them immediately, don’t be sad. Just make sure you listen to them and try to help them as much as you can, the rest will follow, trust me. It always does.

The best thing: When you need the help, that one tip that can help you, all these people will happily help you to find the solution. Don’t expect help from no one, though. I think it’s important to be as self-sufficient and independent as possible. But from time to time you’ll receive help without noticing or expecting it.

Another great part of this method: When you reflect on your life, you’ll realize that if tomorrow everything ends, you helped x amount of people for the better. What a great feeling!

During your great life, you’ll meet so much people who you can help, who in return will help someone else. This is how you change the world. So go out and change lives!

Opportunity

2011-06-12T00:00:00-07:00

Opportunity

12 Jun 2011

As you might know I started my job as an intern for loqize.me development about a few months ago. It is going well and I’m really happy to be able to learn from such cool people.

I consider myself an opportunist and I think you should be one too. I don’t define opportunist negatively (a person that profits from another persons loss), au contraire: I’d say an opportunist is a person who recognizes a good situation and tries to make that situation work for him (without hurting others). A lot of people simply go blind through the world and miss a lot of opportunities. And that’s basically the only reason I don’t miss opportunities, my eyes and ears are open. I pay attention to the stuff happening around me. I read tweets differently when I’m looking for a job, I search on tumblr differently when I’m looking for a certain topic. I read the newspaper differently when I’m trying to learn everything about a certain topic. During the day you’ll get in so much situations which could potentially help you achieve your current goal. What happens if you go blindly through the world? Exactly. You miss all the good stuff.

That’s how a friend of mine got a very good job at a big bank through me. That’s how the same friend became a last minute member of the MUN (Model United Nations) Basel team although she studies in Zurich. That’s how I got the job at loqize.me. That’s how I got my last job as Executive Director of an incorporated company. That’s how I found a programming mentor to help me learn ruby. That’s how I met a lot of interesting people through twitter, facebook and Hacker News. That’s how I found the best gym in Europe which is just 10 minutes from my appartment. That’s how I’m going to find my mentor for my future startup.

Opportunity is also something you can create out of an existing situation. Let me explain. Let’s say your hero is coming to a place near you to speak about a topic you’re interested in. You’re pumped, you’re definitely going there. Now if you go blindly through the world you would miss that event in the first place, by ignoring that newsletter from your university, that you send directly into the spam folder or by ignoring all the posters around the university. So let’s say you got through that first step. You attend the event and the speaker talks exactly about stuff you were wondering a while ago. Should you ask that question? No, why embarrass yourself in front of all those people, it’s probably an obvious question to others, right? Wrong. What have you got to lose? If you ask that question you might go out learning exactly what you needed to know. Why care about what the rest thinks about you? Missed opportunity number two.

So you asked that one question and the speaker gave you an in-depth answer. Great, but you’d like to know a few more details. Should you ask the speaker afterwards? I’d say, yes. Maybe the speaker is just as interested in this topic as you are. (he or she is talking about that subject for a reason, right?) Through that conversation after the presentation you notice more and more that this person could mentor you through a lot of problems at your current startup. Why not ask him or her to get some coffee another time and talk a little bit more about it? Maybe he or she is interested in advising your startup? Maybe he or she invests in your startup? I could go on with examples. All these situations don’t come back, you won’t get a second opportunity why not profit from that one?

Bite the bullet, open your eyes and use those opportunities to your success!

Fail Spectacularly

2011-05-13T00:00:00-07:00

Fail Spectacularly

13 May 2011

A few weeks ago I started working as an intern for loqize.me. Since my first day not a lot has changed in terms of organizing my work with loqize.me but I learnt a lot. The git commands are now more or less memorized and the TextMate commands are coming along slowly but surely. But today, I realized that I failed spectacularly the first few weeks. Let me explain.

When I first started out and had no clue how to do stuff, look for stuff, change code, commit it etc (and sometimes I still have no clue what I’m doing.) I just looked at what the CTO, Philipe, was doing and copied his moves and his code. Implementing a new feature? Easy! Just look up how it was done earlier, with another feature and copy the code. Change the view or the template or sometimes just the wording and you’re set. Right? Wrong.

See programming isn’t just copy & paste, it’s a creative process and a lot of starters (incl. me) feel overwhelmed by this task. They just think reading through a tutorial or a book will make them super-hackers. Copying some examples, writing one line will surely solve your problem you set out to solve. But that’s not what programming is all about. The creative process of programming starts before looking at any code, writing anything down. It starts in your head. And that’s what I got wrong, too.

Two weeks ago Philipe asked me about my new task and we talked about a mobile version of loqize.me. I instantly jumped on the ship because I knew this is possible for me and a huge task at the same time that could benefit both the company and the community. We decided to build separate controllers for the mobile version, because in case you break one thing, you won’t break the other. After setting up the structure of the mobile page I was ready to roll. Then I started what I could do best at that time: Copying and thinking that this is programming. So I copied some files, some code, changed a few lines and had a (ugly) mobile version working (read-only mind you). But the more I tried to iron out some design stuff I caused more errors to appear. After going through some code and some steps with Philipe the problem was clear: I failed spectacularly. Instead of creating something new I squeezed existing stuff into a wrong format. So Philipe explained me why I shouldn’t do this and why this was causing some errors as I went on.

Although I failed spectacularly I learnt an important lesson: Try to create something new, be creative and come up with your own solution, even if it’s scrappy! I was averse to learning the difficult stuff and that’s why I tried to solve the problems through copying & pasting. That’s how I failed spectacularly. That’s also why I’m going to be a better programmer tomorrow.

My First Day as an Intern at Loqize.me

2011-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

My First Day as an Intern at Loqize.me

02 Apr 2011

So yesterday was officially my first day as an intern at loqize.me. I know I promised you the article yesterday evening but I hadn’t got time to write it all down because it was all in all a really good day.

I’ve met the Co-Founder and CTO, Philipe Fatio, around 8.40am in Zurich. That meant getting up at 6.30am, after sleeping less than 6 hours to catch the train on 7.30am (all for the hustle, baby!). We setup the necessary tools on my Mac to get started. I had already Git setup and TextMate installed so I thought I was good to go, but not yet!

We setup the Campfire account to share some git code through it. The whole project is (privately, of course) hosted on GitHub so Philipe had to setup a separate clone of the system for me, to play around. I forked it and pulled it to my system. At the beginning there were some errors because I hadn’t got PostgreSQL installed, but we fixed those issues quickly until my first official assignment began: Create a password confirmation field. Now what I had to do was create a form similar to the profile but as a password field. Philipe quickly showed what can I find where and I tried to follow. The cool thing about HAML / SASS is that it is quite readable, even if you don’t have that much HTML/CSS experience. So I managed to do just that and then we talked about whether or not a current password field should be there as well. We quickly glanced into devise and found that you could use the current password as :current_password in Rails (gotta love the Gem Ecosystem!). After testing its functionality, I was ready to commit. I used a really cool tool (GitX) which shows me graphically what commit was done by who. The app also tracks file which have been changed, so commiting is as easy as 1-2-3. I have to say it felt really good to make my first commit, even when it was something small like this.

After discussing what I could do next, Philipe showed me a cool task. “Share Answer” – a functionality similar to “Share Question” but with focus on the answer. Now that was a little more difficult than I thought. Wiring it into the view was really easy, but afterwards it was time to get my hands dirty with some real Ruby code. At the beginning Philipe showed me the exact functionality of the method and I tried to understand how it worked. It took me a little time but I got the Twitter feature working quicker than the Facebook feature (mostly because it has more parameters). We had lunch later than I expected but it was cool because we’re both working on some code, “wired in” as you may say.

Lunch was finished and we were back to hack some code. The Facebook functionality had to be thought through before we could built it, because it was a little more complex than the Twitter share function (I love that kinda stuff!). After an hour or 1.5 hours I modified the Facebook functionality, now it was time to write some tests for it. Oh boy, that was harder than I thought! But writing tests assures you that you make that function more or less bulletproof and ready to be tested in the wild, so I had to get my mind straight on the testing matter. It took me longer than I expected (until 5.10pm to be precise), but I did it (with Philipe’s help of course!). Saved everything, checked twice on GitX and made my third commit before leaving for the train back to Basel. Three commits on my first day? Hell yeah!

All in all, it was a really cool first day and I’m pumped to do some more work. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some work from home as well, until next friday! Philipe is a really cool guy and I have much respect for him. He not only has all the necessary skills to teach me a lot, he’s also very calm and patient with me although I make the same mistake like a thousand times or so. Philip Reichen, the CEO, skyped me later during the day to ask me how my first day went and told me that my little tip about a TNW blogger (heard on Mixergy) paid off (follow me on Twitter for details soon!). I’m really excited and pumped to be part of such a cool team.