Everyone is the Steve Jobs of their own startup

The best quote on Steve Jobs came from one of his biggest rivals, Bill Gates. "So many of the people who want to be like Steve have the asshole side down. What they're missing is the genius part." I wish more people realised that.

Every startup in the silicon valley thinks that they need at least one of them to be Steve Jobs. They play the the asshole, overconfident, uppity designer part to the tee, they will not even acknowledge your presence in the room, unless you have the social clout. The other one has to play the technical nerd guru. Expert in their own right, the Woz to the Jobs so to speak.

This was true 10 years ago. This is true today. The number of idiots who think being an asshole and overconfident about their little products will have them reach some sort of cult status is crazy.

The thing is, it's easy to be the asshole in the room, it's more difficult to be the genius person. Which ironically is the wrong lesson to take from Jobs' life. Steve Jobs was one of the greatest product people to exist on the planet. He knew computers from inside out. He had a vision for what he wanted computing to be, he had the knowledge, and most importantly he spent 40 years of his life doing that; but his personal life was a mess. His behaviour towards others should never be glorified. Like every other person on this planet, him being good at one thing didn't make him an expert at others. I wish more people chose to be as disciplined as him, chose to master their craft as he did. But instead, people wake up one day, and decide they'll just take all the wrong lessons from his life.

Sometimes a break is necessary

Sometimes, even if you haven't achieved anything in the day, even if there's a ton of work left, even if it feels like you've not 'earned' a break--It's necessary to take one.

Why? breaks are great to put you at ease, and offer a change of perspectives.

Love watching movies for that reason. But offlate I had become a bit sluggish with my work, and I was wondering the other day, how much of a two hour gaming session helped me mentally time things back in 2021 - 2022. It's crazy but a high pressure cricket match teaches you a lot, even if it's a game simulation.

Any how, booted up my Xbox again and had a great time playing my favourite game.

Clanker is a unique slur

In the last few weeks the Clanker a Star Wars fandom slur used against the robots in the franchise, has become popular for its derogatory nature and imminent robophobia, that will come once robots start coexisting with humans. In short, If robots become sentient, and if robophobia is rampant, and if humans want to express their hatred towards a robot, a slur they can use against them is "clanker". This is a lot of ifs.

Sadly the tech community loves making wild assumptions about the future of consumer technology. A few years ago it was the Metaverse and VR (one of the wildest theory I heard at the time was that it's gotta be successful if enough people put enough money into marketing it, we all know how that went), Right now it's robots. People look at LLMs, People look at its "human-like" capabilities, and people go "Ah! Robots are coming soon". That's not happening. Humanoid Robots with sentience are not a thing of today, they'll not be a thing for a long time (maybe ever), for the simple reason that machines can't mimic human-to-human interactions as they lack any affordance of shared context. But I digress.

You can't use a slur against inanimate objects. They don't have sentience, so they're not being insulted. So Clanker is really just a made up slur, for a made up future, it's someone's figment of imagination that people have decided to collectively play along. Or is it?

Well first, most of English is a figment of someone's imagination that people decided to collectively play along. Words have meanings because someone decided what something means, and everyone in power agreed. Slurs are no different. But this power goes further back. Robots don't have sentience unless we don't collectively start thinking and acting towards them as humans. Sentience is as much about a person's feelings towards the bot as it is about the bot's feelings towards the person. If a person strongly feels something about a bot, that feeling is just as valid to the person as it is about any other sentient being. So if they feel extreme hatred towards the bot, it's a real feeling, that should not be ignored. And if that feeling manifests in a slur, the differences between that and a slur against a human are smaller than you think.

Both slurs are about a person's feelings towards something or someone. Slurs are problematic because they're a symbol of extreme hatred. They're more about the person giving them than the person on the receiving end. They're a mirror to a person's feelings. So is Clanker problematic? It's a reflection of a person's extreme hatred towards a technology.

Perusing books

A recent habit that I developed is walking up to the nearby book store, and perusing through different covers and books. Why? It offers great creative inspiration to look at so many different art styles and designs together. It's even more fun if you're looking at it with a friend, so you can share notes too! :)

The correct way of storing strawberries

Discovered this recently. But the best way to store strawberries so that they don't go bad is to keep them dry, in a container that's lined with a paper towel, in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator (aka Chiller drawer?). Been eating these strawberries for 7 days. They haven't gone bad yet. Luckily!

Alternatively you can also share some with your neighbours. ;)

"You're incredibly talented"

I have heard this phrase so often now, it's stopped making sense to me. I don't know what talents I possess that I have been rejected by every company I applied to as a Product Designer / Prototyper. Some days are more difficult than others. :/

Movie Recommendation: Coolie

I don't think I have seen a lot of Rajnikanth movies, So I don't know what's a quintessential "Rajni" Movie. But if it's anything like Coolie, I can understand the craze. Coolie is a thoroughly entertaining watch. The story's no citizen cane, it has its fair share of plot-holes and unwanted twist; but its the actors and a fluid screenplay that keep the movie engaging. The film seldom skips a beat.

I particularly enjoyed Soubin Shahir's performance, along with ofcourse Rajnikanth who at this point just exhumes screen-precense (and why wouldn't he, it's his 171th movie) the guy has his is own aura.

Anirudh Ravichander has perfected the art of giving music to the Lokesh and Atlee genre of movies. The music is cut from the same cloth as Jawaan, and Vikram, and Leo but it's still got fresh elements. Particularly enjoyed Mobsta, Powerhouse, I am the Danger, and Coolie Disco. Great songs.

I don't know what's much to say about this movie, apart from the fact that it's hella fun to watch. If you're having a bad week like me, Coolie's the perfect stress buster, filled with old-school ethical heroes who take the people first approach, so their victories feel personal.


Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5 stars for the movie, and an extra 0.5 for the soundtrack)

Tariff and Taarif have the same word root.

My latest discovery is that the hindi/urdu word Taarif -- which means praise has the same root word as Tariff - which is taxes.

Tariff (English) -- Taxes: Arabic (taʿrīf “notification, definition, schedule”) → Italian (tariffa) → French (tariffe / tarif) → English (tariff)

Taarif (Hindi / Urdu) -- Praise: Arabic (taʿrīf “notification, making known” → “commendation”) → Persian (taʿrīf “praise, commendation”) → Hindi/Urdu (tārīf “praise, compliment”)
Two words that sound similar, have similar roots, but have such different meanings. Words and how they travel is fascinating.

You're missing out if you don't try Shojin Ryori food

Love Cha-Ya in SF. Love the concept behind Shojin Ryori, the Japanese traditional Vegan food. Moreover it's the balance of flavors that blows me away everytime. Nothing is too spicy, too salty, too sweet or tooo sour. It's all perfectly balanced food that's light on the stomach and satisfying to eat. I'd eat it any day.

Coolie is all entertainment

Proper review tomorrow, but Coolie is complete entertainment. Banger soundtrack, Rajnikanth pulling off things only he can pull off, Soubin Shahir in sublime form and a movie that's just thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. I loved every bit of it, especially the back story.

Two similar Stairways

Is it just me or does the Doe Library Main Stacks' stairway looks similar to the Vatican's stairway. I wonder if that was the inspiration?

The Doe Library Stairway


The Vatican Stairway

Discovering a new artist while walking in SF

Was walking in SF the other day, and discovered this really interesting and colorful mural on the wall of the San Francisco Proper Hotel. A couple of google searches later, I discover that this is a mural called "Untitled" by an artist named Alicia McCarthy.

McCarthy's work is inspiring, and the fact that she decided to donote half the fee to charity is pretty commendable too. I loved reading about the Tenderloin Murals.

Coffee and Croissants

Vegan Coffee and Half a Croissant on a table in evening sun light.

The Vidit Film Archive is taking shape

I love collecting physical media. Great Indie movies or the ones produced by smaller producers, often fall through the cracks when it comes to streaming services. Plus, if you want to reference them or take notes, there's no way to screenshot and annotate them. There's no ownership of media on the internet. Physical disks, are another story all together. My personal collection that I fondly call the "Vidit Film Archive" is taking shape again after a good 20+ years of having mostly VCDs and some DVDs; I'm finally moving to better quality video.

Workflow for writing large blog posts

Follow up to previous post. Here's my workflow for writing bigger blog posts. Takes about two weeks to make them, and it's a lot of getting ideas down into something readable. So yea, when folks read my posts it means a lot.

What it takes to write a Big Blog Post

Slightly meta post today. Posts of the Day are easy. I just spend 5 minutes on them and that's it. But bigger posts, they take a lot more effort. I first do rough drafts, then I created a post outline, write down the post, then I design the graphics for each of the elements in the post, combine it together in a post, create social media assets, and then publish and share it with folks.

It's a lot of painstaking effort and usually with minuscule rewards. But I am determined to share my learnings.






The Post in Question is published on my other blog here.

TIAT Place is a fun event to attend

Attended a Creative Technologist's meetup yeesterday, it's called "TIAT place" short for the Intersection of Art and Technology. Fun event with a lot of cool design / maker-ey stuff presented. I loved how each person went through their design process in detail for projects that were side hobbies at best.

The Event happened at the Internet Archive (yes! It's a physical space), which in itself is a fun venue. The central auditorium feels more like a church(!?). I find the whole event fascinating.

Creative Technologists are a small clique in the Bay Area, they don't advertise about the events much, but once you get in, they seem generally cordial and everyone kinda knows everyone else. What's interesting though is that these people aren't really pursuing creative technology in their day jobs, which makes me wonder how many Creative Technologists are actually working as creative technologists; and why then is this such a clique. One of the most annoying habits of Silicon Valley designers is just how performative their "attitude" is. They'll intentionally be hard-to-grab attention, hyper confident in their own work, and follow a "I will only really listen to you if you're a proven designer" attitude to conversation. The nice ones happily strike up a conversation; and they're the ones staying in touch with.

Some pictures from the event:

The feeling of nothing is sufficient

In the last 8 months, job hunt has been stressful yes, but it’s the feeling of “no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it’s just not enough” that’s stuck with me and it’s soul crushing.

There's always a deadline, I am always last minute to it, because I have been doing so much else, yet at the end of the day, It seems like I am not doing enough to fulfill my goals.


P.S. Attended the second tiat place event at the Internet Archive today, and it was refreshing to go out and meet more creative technologists. But more on it later. This is foreshadowing tomorrow's post.

Movie Recommendation: Elevator Pitch by Alexx Zaki

Alexx Zaki's debut short film Elevator Pitch is a timely take on the process of job-hunting. The process is robotic, de-humanising and soul crushing. Alexx does a great job representing it in few words. The actors are terrific, they show a range of depth in such few words. Watch out for the "hip-VP", that person conveys so much in a single dialogue.

Highly recommend spending four minutes of your time on this terrific short film.

P.S. I must disclose, Alexx is one of my best friends, so I am inclined to enjoy everything they make; but even so, this is an unbiased, honest take. I have already seen this short twice.

Sunsets

Just some beautiful sunsets with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

Music I'm listening to in 2025

With good Hindi and Tamil music in short supply these days. I have shifted to listening to more Punjabi music in the last couple of years. Really enjoying the works of Sharry mann, Amrit Mann, Prabh Singh, and Zehr Vibe apart from the usual suspects.

Here's my playlist:

The Illusion of a good Pizza

Went to Doppio Zero, one of SF's only few AVPN certified Pizzerias, basically one of the few Pizzerias in SF that can claim that their Pizzas match the Italian standardization body's strict requirements for what's a True Neapolitan Pizza. I have my doubts on that.


This Pizza looks great. It looks like a true Neapolitan Pizza. The Cheese and the preparations are on point, the pizza tastes great too, the sauce is balanced (just crushed tomatoes) and flavours on point. But it's a heavy pizza, in fact too heavy for what a 12" Neapolitan Pizza should be. The after-taste is not great at all. It's not easily digestable, the crust is too doughy and not fun to eat.


Look at the gluten net, it's too dense! This isn't a great pizza at all!

How do I know this? I made a very similar mistake about a week back. The Pizza looks great. But does the Pizza have the right impact on our stomachs, maybe not.

To be fair, this is nitpicking and I am a bit of a Pizza purist here. This is a practice popular across SF, and Doppio Zero is one of the better ones. But I believe a good traditional neapolitan pizza is the one that's easy to digest, not the one that looks the part.

Go small and build communities

Philz is about to be sold to a private equity firm and this is not a one-off occurance. All popular local-coffee roasters from SF in the last two decades that raised a bunch of money, have met a similar fate. They were great, they became popular, they grew, they raised money and then couldn't grow enough so are now being sold to bigger more evil companies.

This is what I call the indie to medium sized sell-out arc. It doesn't just happen in the world of coffee, it happens everywhere there are indies. Indie software comes to mind, which has the same arc. Food is the other obvious one.


To me the problem exists with the notion of infinite growth. This very American idea of "Go Big or Go Home". What if that's not the right approach. Not everything needs to keep growing to the point where it either controls everything or sells out to someone else who does. I also hate this phrase because it's often used as a way to tell me how my own work as an indie is insignificant and will never be as big as the likes of big players. So what do we do to fight the demon of "Go Big or Go Home"?

We "Go Small and Build Communities". What does that mean. Here's my proposition:

Minimalism is anything but simple

Was at a bookstore today, and saw the book covers of some "Penguin Archive" books. They're supposed to be minimalist text based covers with just two colours (white and red) and a single font. Yet, these covers convey so much information.

Minimalism is anything but simple. These are minimalist covers for sure. Are they simple? Definitely not. Which makes me wonder about What exactly is minimalism. Is it the "absence of clutter? or the presence of only what's essential" (I'm Referencing Jony Ive's views on simplicity here). I think it's the latter.

All Dreams must end

Final evening in Berkeley today and incredibly sad to leave the city.
Berkeley was a literal dream come true. Ever since I visited the city for the first time in 2017, I have wanted to study in Berkeley. The university campus was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. So much greenery, the walkabilty of the city, the perfect weather. Everything about Berkeley was blissful. Alas, Berkeley didn't have a Masters program for Design. So for the longest time it seemed like that it would just be a dream.

Cut to 2019 November, I had just started giving a thought to pursuing my Masters. I looked at Berkeley again, no program. Sadly. I kept looking for a Masters of Design program in Berkeley every 3-4 months ever since. That's how badly I wanted to study in Berkeley; and one day it showed up. Berkeley had started a Master's of Design program, for designing emerging technologies with a focus on social good / social justice. It was the perfect fit. Exactly what I wanted to pursue. Exactly what I where I wanted to study.

So I joined the program in the Fall of 2023, and the next two years have been a literral dream come true. I had the best academic experience of my life. Wrote a thesis that was personally fulfilling. But more importantly met the kindest and most awesome people, whom I have the privilege of calling my friends.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't explaining myself. My friends understood where I was coming from, and not only that, some of them were in on those crazy ideas tooo. I blurted to a friend once "I know I am a bit crazy for thinking like this.." somehow, for some reason, they didn't think it was crazy at all. I realised I had finally met people who saw the world like I do, who were also marching towards what I aspired the world to be.

I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to spend my time in Berkeley with. But as is with all dreams in life, they must end. And so 8 months after graduation, my lease in Berkeley has finally ended, and I like my friends must disperse to other parts of the world. Will I miss Berkeley? Yes! Was it one of the best times of my life, that I will cherish forever? Yes!!

India draw the series 2-2

What an incredible series to watch. So many intense moments. Could've been 3-1 for either of the team. But just how both England and India fought for victory in this series needs to be cherished.

Today's win for India was special, when I woke up to 35 runs for victory for England yesterday, I was sure this is gonna be a cakewalk. But Siraj and Krishna, what an incredible spell this morning under pressure.

Loved watching every second of the series, no regrets of a terribly broken sleep cycle. :)

Nature

Got distracted by the nature, on my walk back home. Got some great photos.

The wicketkeeper crisis of early 2000s

After Nayan Mongia retired, the Indian cricket team was in a bit of a Wicket Keeping crisis. They played no less than 9 different wicket-keepers in a span of 5 years. Starting with MSK Prasad, Saba Karim, and ending towards the end with the more charismatic Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik (the only one in the long list that survived beyond a handful of ODI matches). But safe to say the time between the summer of 2000, and winter 2004 was a moment of crisis for the Indian team.

Here's the list: 

1. MSK Prasad (debuted after Mongia’s injury in 1999) (17 ODIs) 
2. Saba Karim (34 ODIs) 
3. Vijay Dahiya: 19 ODIs: October 2000 to April 2001 
4. Sameer Dighe: 23 ODIs: January 2000 to August 2001 
5. Deep Dasgupta: 5 ODIs: October 2001 
6. Ajay Ratra: 12 ODIs: January to July 2002 
7. Parthiv Patel: 38 ODIs and 25 Tests: Famous for being one of the youngest players in the team, debuting at 18; and sledging Steve Waugh! 
8. Rahul Dravid (kept as a part-time keeper mainly in ODIs, including the 2003 World Cup) 
9. Dinesh Karthik: Played his first ODI in the summer of 2004 followed by a test in Australia tour to India in 2004 October / November. 

Funnily I remember most of these players, Deep Dasgupta, Ajay Ratra, Vijay Dahiya and the likes. Why so? I had a knack of collecting player info when they debuted as a way of winning at Cricketer's Atlas (a game similar to Atlas that me and my brother played when we were young) and as you can see there were a lot of wicket keeper debuts when I was a tiny kid trying to beat my elder brother at a game. But I digress.

The crisis continued until MS Dhoni started playing for India. The wicketkeeper who would not only surpass his contemporaries but go onto to be the best wicketkeeper-batsman the country has ever produced, infact even more influential and successful than the stalwarts of the time, Adam Gilchrist and Mark Boucher.

This unique moment of crisis in the Indian cricket team before Dhoni arrived and changed the game forever, has some interesting parallels with the Indian team's current captain crisis. The Indian team has struggled to have a stable captain post Kohli and in the absence of Rohit Sharma for quite sometime now. In T20s we've tried it all, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill, you name it. ODIs have been stable under Rohit Sharma, but we're staring at a void in tests too. Putting faith in Subhman Gill, but also in the presence of a strong personality Gautam Gambhir as the coach, someone who's not hesitant to shake things. So will Gill be the long run captain? Hopefully. But I wouldn't be surprised if we look around for a bit, until there's someone as good as Kohli or even bigger.

Maybe it'll be a while till we find a stable team combination, and a stable captain, but I find it interesting that the crisis is in some ways similar to other crisis the team's had.

The City of Berkeley has a lot of different trash cans

My afternoon hobby today? Spot all the different kinds of trash bins installed in Berkeley. Very interesting to see all the different styles they've gone through. Arranging them in what I think is the descending order of recency (oldest first).

When the vicious cycle doesn't stop

Saw Udaan yesterday. One of the best movies to come out of India in the last 20 years. Arguably one of the best ever. It's such a deep and well meaning drama, that exposes the violence against kids in the country that's normalised in the name of "strict parenting". I thought the movie was excellent and gave it a rare five star rating on my Letterboxd.

But then I saw that the average rating of the movie was just 4.0. which made me think, that some people actually hated it? So I went and checked the reviews, and sure enough some people actually hated the movie, and why? because they sided with the parent in the film. A lot of these people would be my age, they grew up in an environment where this was the norm, and yet, somehow they're insular to the fact that this is wrong. Instead of breaking the cycle of violence, they think it's somehow "necessary". Not particularly surprising, but shameful nonetheless.