Category: How To

  • Adding my podcast to the millions out there today

    Adding my podcast to the millions out there today

    Here are all the links for  your consumption (next you know the drill like, share, subscribe)

    YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkUh-KUiNVmW9GyGISDxZP5AonIfqLwXE (All (and only) 6 episodes are available already. Tudum!)

    On Audio Only Platforms, each episode will be released on Thursday Morning. 1st one is already out:

    Tools Used

    • Canva for all the cover art and animations
    • Microsoft Clipchamp for stitching videos and audio
    • Zoom to record video interviews
    • Spotify for Podcasters as the Podcasting Platform
    • YouTube for hosting and sharing

    Special Thanks to my Toastmasters Club Folks for allowing me to do this

    More thanks to these people for inspiring me to do this project

  • Do what you can!

    Do what you can!

    I always used to wonder how would people who lived in history felt when they had to undergo some calamity. Natural disasters, Wars, Revolutions, and whatnot. Well, we got the opportunity to face a pandemic during our lifetime as well. Pretty depressing couple of weeks, aren’t they. I just hope and wish that the crisis ends soon and whoever is becoming part of the stats, becomes part of those 98-99 percentage who survive with mild symptoms.

    But as I write this, the city I am in, Bengaluru, is breaking records every day. As I recall, in the first week of March 2021, the number of daily cases was around 200-300. Today, it has crossed 20,000. I don’t know about others and don’t have to wait for the government, I have imposed a lockdown on myself and won’t be venturing out for anything at all till better air prevails. I am privileged to do that, fortunately. But sitting at home makes one feel extremely anxious when notification after notification just piles up the frustration and feeling of helplessness. What can I do with my limited resources and a family to take care of? Mind you I have seen what a family goes through when they fall prey to the virus. The amount of panic and frantic calls one makes to arrange a bed is suffocating figuratively, to say the least. Even right now, I have already had plenty of news after news of friends, colleagues, and relatives testing positive and nobody can help, to be frank.

    Last year, people donated money to PM Cares wholeheartedly when hospitals in India could manage and avert the crisis to a certain extent. Since then, from the government’s side, what could or could not be done is all evident. People in power or with influence and governments who could do things didn’t do or delayed in doing, without any shame or remorse is also known. I would wait for the blame game for some other time but here are some resources I found which can help NOW. I am not a huge influencer or anything but can certainly help in my own limited way by sharing some genuine links which can be of some help.

    Hospital Data

    https://covid-19-hospital-data.el.r.appspot.com/

    Meals

    https://covidmealsforindia.com/

    Donation Links

    https://donate.indiacovidresources.in/

    If you want to donate from out of India:

    For friends who stay outside India: 

    Through Cryptocurrency?

    Telegram Group for Information:

    Telegram group – https://t.me/joinchat/NPW-kgUldiAzMzQ1

    Whatsapp https://chat.whatsapp.com/B4fvtqb1K0pLumoXFsdNrN

    I can also do this minor thing, although again, I am not a pro artist, and neither this blog has a great reach but SEO works:

    If you make a donation of Rs. 1000 or above, please share the receipt with me (https://abhinavbhatt.com/contact/ / http://twitter.com/abhinavbhatt01) and I can send you any one of the high-resolution soft copy minimal movie posters I made a few years ago. (please adjust with this for now)

    https://minimalmovieposters.in/tagged/abhinav_bhatt

  • Social Media ID Portability, a thought

    We already have MNP or mobile number portability in India. That is, the ability to keep the same phone number but freely moving across different Service Providers. That helps us to choose the best plan for ourselves and keeps the Service Provider companies’ exorbitant price hikes in-check. We also have multiple Cloud Services providers, Data Storage providers, Banks, and so forth where we can change our service providers to choose what suits us.

    apps blur button close up
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    I was listening to this podcast by Guy Kawasaki where he was interviewing Dr. Sinan Aral, who is an MIT Professor and has written a book called: The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health–and How We Must Adapt.

    Dr. Aral suggested this strange-sounding but still worth paying attention to idea: Why can’t Social Media companies act like Social Service Provider? Each of their users (i.e. us) should be free to change the service and move over to another while taking all of their data and friend lists with them.

    For example, say I have 800 friends on Facebook (I had 1000+ but one day I cleaned it up) and say I am not on Twitter (I am but I just tweet about the weather). But I am done with Facebook’s privacy rules and constantly showing up of ads on my Timeline. So, if I want to move on to somewhere else, I have to lose all my data then and there. I would lose all my private messages, photos, comments, and so on. Instead, I should have the ability to either download everything that Facebook has recorded with my account (which is after all a unique ID). Or, I should be able to port it all to another social media website, say Twitter. Of course, each one has its own functionalities but in general, they all have Text, Photos, Replies, and private messages as their primary functionality. Moreover, I should also be able to connect to (via APIs) any user (or block them everywhere) from any other social media website.

    This idea would help regulate not only the companies who just flaunt the monopoly and power they have over people’s lives, but it would also increase accountability on part of the user. Basically, all these companies are just service providers and they should behave in such a manner. Really interesting if this happens!

    One downside from user’s perspective is that this would need a user to lose their anonymity to an extent if they show up with their real name on Facebook but you want to say whatever comes to their mind on Twitter as anonymous. But we need to choose what we find more precious, our data or our freedom of expression.

    You can listen to the full podcast here where he talks further about other things which make Social Media what a behemoth it is:

  • Why can’t Dosa be home delivered?

    Why can’t Dosa be home delivered?

    One late afternoon in Office Cafeteria, I and some of my colleagues were discussing trivial matters during snack break (mostly Dosa for me and oily deep-fried things (as if Dosa is not) for others) while sipping on coffee and tea. I got a work-related call and while I was busy talking, the hot freshly prepared Dosa cooled down, turned soft, and lost all its charm.

    One thought came into mind: So, Dosa has to be eaten immediately otherwise it just dies like a Soft-Dismissal in Cricket. Why can’t Dosa be home delivered in the 21st century? Someone might have read a Tweet about it as well which might have caused the initiation of all this conundrum.

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  • Share, if you care

    Share, if you care

    Recently, the Twitter account of India’s PM got hacked by someone who might be a Keanu Reeves fan (who isn’t?!). And, obviously, that’s not the only high profile account which has got compromised in recent history but it keeps happening once in a while. If even the most powerful person in the country is insecure online, think about yourself. Your password would be even easier to break down. It is just Password@123. Right?

    Normally, Passwords are somethings we hold very dear. We can share the most personal things with others but not passwords. Some people do share passwords at work for common systems which is highly risky in itself but they will never share passwords of their bank accounts for sure.

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  • So I recently watched: The Social Dilemma

    Most probably you will read this on your phone with numerous notifications lurking around for your attention which will prevent you from reading this completely. If you had clicked a link to reach here, the link would be from Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or some other social media site. There is nothing I can write here which can make you use social media sites less frequently. I have close to zero persuasive power to ask you to keep your phone away and do something better with your life. But, let me give another try.

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  • A Beautiful Notion

    There are more productivity apps than there are people who want to be productive. I spent a considerable amount of time this year to juggle through various such personal productivity apps. From To-Do lists, Kanban boards, calendars, habit trackers, and whatnot. Like most of the people, I wasted (read invested) more time in trying a range of things instead of working on them in a more practical sense. I also delved real deep into GTD and PARA and Zettelkasten processes and which process or combination could achieve the best results. I tried multiple ways to find out which app could do the most justice to it. Some apps can do one thing better, others can do another thing better. And as more the number of applications grows, the more the anxiety which grows with it. My search finally ended on one app: Notion. This is a Notion appreciation post. #NotPaidBlogpost

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  • “Commenting for better reach”

    “Commenting for better reach”

    I am writing from a place of privilege, providence, and a pedestal of good fortune but I just feel sad when I open LinkedIn nowadays. The feed is full of people writing about their untimely exit from their jobs due to the ongoing pandemic. I am not an expert to give any advice to people who were working till March/April but not working anymore. The times are unprecedented and until we get a fully functional vaccine, chances of normalcy are bleak. So, we must keep trying, is all I can say.

    However, I do have a word or two for Freshers who had job offers but they haven’t been called to report yet, or even if they hadn’t, they were ready to enter the professional arena this year but things have gone upside down, for no fault of their own. I do have empathy with them as I was in the same boat around 2008. I don’t want to mince words but the reality is simple: this time is worse than that time. I have stated this earlier on this blog too that I had 2 Job Offers when I graduated as a Computer Science Engineer. Thanks to the 2008 recession which did all it could to crush my confidence, I had to wait 21 months to get a proper job I preferred. Again being lucky, I got back the job offer in March 2010 from the same company which had sent me a regret letter before imploding due to a financial crisis of their own in early 2009.

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  • Inbox Zero

    Inbox Zero

    Are you suffering from Anxiety because of tonnes of unread emails clogging your inbox?

    Do you spend all your day searching for emails, digging relevant information, and still end up with 10205482342 unread counts in your inbox?

    Has the bug of productivity hacks bitten you and you want to organize things better? It also could be a mild case of OCD.

    Then you are at the right place kids! Today we shall tell you about the Magical World of…

    <dramatic pause for effect>

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  • Newsletters I Follow AND YOU CAN TOO

    Newsletters I Follow AND YOU CAN TOO

    In times when our attention span is getting shorter and shorter, I fool myself by indulging in reading Newsletters once in a while which provides insight, knowledge, entertainment, and a belief that not all is going down the drain even if it appears so.

    I don’t listen to podcasts much because I am not traveling on a bus (I am aatmnirbhar) or working out (are you???) and after really trying to listen to a bunch of them, the only podcasts I could tolerate were interviews types like Tim Ferris’s. I think I am more of a video essay person (like Kurzgesagt or Nerdwriter or Vox, etc.) and I like to read more than listen.

    So like a literate person would do (i.e. share good knowledge), here’s a list of Newsletters I find interesting. This is like a blog roll but to make it more convenient, it comes to your inbox instead of you going anywhere else. You can also subscribe if you want as they are free.

    • Seth Godin – Blogging Daily since when the Internet started I think. Just read to know.
    • A Learning a Day (Rohan Rajiv) – Another daily one! Short and sometimes not so short tidbits about positive uplifting things which one wouldn’t mind at all
    • James Clear – 3 – 2 – 1 – From the author of Atomic Habits, 3 ideas, 2 quotes, 1 question. Easy peasy to make a habit!
    • Mind F*ck Monday – From the author of The Subtle Art of not giving a F*ck, newsletter which reads more like someone’s talking to you!
    • Visual Wisdom (Deepu Asok) – Ideas that are simple, yet effective, presented either visually or through Tweets.
    • Ryan Holiday – Again, life advice as if freshly brewed coffee on a calm and cozy afternoon.
    • Shu Omi – Good content collated over the Internet presented to you to make your day better.
    • New Space India – Some insights on what’s happening in Space’s Space in India.
    • The India Uncut – More popular as a podcast and just recently started (again) as a blog, this is new.

    Some defunct Newsletters but they are still a good read:

    Ok, I don’t really hate podcasts at all (I might have come off harsh on them above. <3 only). Here are some of some people I know. And once I regularly follow them, maybe podcasts would become my thing too. Check them out and if they row your boat, jump on to the bandwagon (which should be a boat):

    • Haal Chaal Theek Thaak Hai – Nuanced + Fun discussion about Indian Pop culture. Not Millenial Pop Culture but the actual culture which matters.
    • Talk Your Way Up – Podcast about speaking better and talking your way up. The name also suggests the same! It is going really good,
    • On the go Gyaan – Very new podcast by Toastmasters folks (like the above one) so all the best to them!

    Featured Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

    P.S.: You can subscribe to my blog too, only takes a kidney at a time to read.