Sounds funny but bear with me.

I used to talk to people about what I was going to do. I'd describe the plan, get nods, walk away feeling like I had moved forward. I had not moved forward. The talking just gave me a fake hit of accomplishment. There's a scientific term for this somewhere, I'm too lazy to look it up.

So now if I want to do something, I just start it. Treat it as an experiment. Doesn't matter if it flops.

Most recent example. I have been wanting to start a hacker house style thing in Hyderabad, where people show up, build for a few hours, and demo what they've been working on. This used to be a recurring thing in Bangalore that I really liked. I thought about it for months.

Finally just put a date down and did it.

First edition, 5 people came. Was actually fun. Friends helped a bit on distribution, that was my main blocker.

Currently writing this from edition 2. There are 10 people in the room around me right now.

There's this thing going around Twitter recently : a moving man always meets his match. I think that's what's happening. The first edition I had a distribution problem. The second edition I have a filtering problem (many registrations, gotta pick the right people). I'll take that trade every day.

From now on I'm gonna treat everything like this. Experiments. Probably gonna fail. Doing it anyway.

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Some things on my mind right now. Not gonna think about them. Just gonna do them ✅

Now, some updates since my last blog where I almost questioned Bill Gates about some spicy stuff 👀 (clickbait).

EIGEN

Saw a video that's been stuck in my head. The algorithm pushed something genuinely worth it.

It was about Eigen skills and the Lindy index.

Eigen skills are the core, invariant skills that stay valuable across changing technologies. One skill, like writing, produces a hundred others downstream. Get good at writing and you get better at thinking, at selling, at coding, at almost everything.

Lindy means a thing has already stood the test of time. The longer it has been around, the longer it's probably gonna stick around.

So the move is to learn the ones that are both. The skills that already won.

PREREQUISITES

Have been trying to understand OAuth 2.0 for a while. Watched maybe 5 videos. None of them stuck. Was getting frustrated.

This time I asked AI to find me a video that actually starts from the prerequisites and builds up. It gave me this one. 20 minutes, clicked. Gold.

If you're struggling at anything, it's probably because you're unaware of the prerequisites.

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CAREER COACH

Had a few career coaching sessions recently. Won't dump everything here, but the meta-process was actually more useful to me than any single piece of advice. Sharing in case it's useful to anyone reading.

• Session 1. Pure thought dump. Just say everything you're thinking about, no structure.

• Before session 2. He asked me to evaluate my own thinking and my own answers from session 1. Basically meta-thinking on what I had said. Very powerful exercise btw, would recommend trying it solo if you don't have a coach.

• Before session 3. He asked me to pick which aspects of my life I actually want to track and improve, vs which ones are just for fun. And for the ones I want to improve, define a very specific A → B for the next 3 months. Measurable.

Example I gave him: I want to go from 25% body fat to 20% body fat in 3 months. That kind of specific.

REST OF THE WEEK

• Went to Bangalore for an event a close friend was hosting. It blew up on Twitter, was wild to watch.

• Built a small site to track my GitHub commits. Subdomain hosted, like everything else now.

  

• Played some tennis

  

SWEET SPOT

To be clear, the opposite of overthinking isn’t no-thinking either.

The sweet spot lives somewhere between planning and doing. Talk forever and never ship, that’s one failure mode. Do random stuff with no plan, that’s the other.

I’m not telling you to live reactively. Live proactively. Plan, then go. Beats both “looking back and feeling good about what you said you’d do” and “looking back and feeling good about whatever happened.”

Find your sweet spot. Hopefully not so sweet it rots your teeth.

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I have asked this question to myself a lot of times.

Lucky to have some good people who keep reminding me — “Bahut din hogye, next blog kab aayega tera?” (translation: it’s been a while, when is your next blog coming?)

My answer is usually along the lines of:

Soon, probably next week, I have some notes ready, just need to publish

The recent answer I gave was kinda relieving though. I said:

There’s actual research on this : Nobel winners’ productivity drops after they win.

They publish less, get cited less, and do less original work. Some economists called the paper “Resting on Their Laureates.” You could always

counter-argue that they have already achieved what they wanted to, but I would ask you to be quiet so I can make my point :P

They’re THE MAN / THE WOMAN of their fields. They cannot just experiment and produce something fun or foolish. But I don’t know — isn’t that the point? Trying out things, being foolish, and then finding the one you like being foolish enough about, and pursuing it further.

Maybe I also forgot to be foolish about my blogs.

It’s time to say hi. What’s up?

Here are some updates.

Work

Now that code is getting shipped at the speed of light, how do we make sure there are no regressions?

The utopian way would be to write tests for everything — unit tests, integration tests, E2E tests. But doing those may slow us down. So this is supposed to be a signal-based agent which checks the logs, traces, and tool calls

to verify if everything went right.

Will be putting more updates about it.

Personal Work

WORKOUTS

I just completed 51 tracked workouts 💪🏼.

I usually go to the gym with 2 colleagues at MS. One has been training for a while, so he sent me 3 workouts on WhatsApp and I wanted to add them to the Hevy app.

For context: Hevy is an extremely well-made workout tracking app.

So instead of doing it manually, I thought — Hevy must have an API and some tools I can play with. After spending some time with Claude and iterating on designs, I came up with this: workouts.ritavdas.com.

Have been hosting everything to my subdomain lately. It is so simple. When you deploy your web app on Vercel and point it to your custom domain, Vercel automatically integrates with Cloudflare, adds the details there, and ina minute your subdomain is hosted.

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AI VIDEO

Worked on making longform Video Avatars for a while : I saw a instagram account called yungmon, it had 2.5 million followers. What the account did was, it produced long form videos of a monk giving life advise, those looked very natural. Dug deep and found it was AI. I thought let’s try to recreate and spent some time doing the same, found out there were very less models which are doing videos >30s. The best model in this scenarios was veed/fabric-1.0. It gave the user a lot of control. I could generate the audio and give it to the model and it would generate great videos for me. This is one video I created, can generate a much better voice.

Miscellaneous

Lots of things, obviously, because it’s been a while. So to summarize them:

1. Moved to Hyderabad late November to join Microsoft in December

2. Went to Golden Temple, Amritsar

for my bday : the place was gorgeous and for the first time in my life I had food from a langar, the organization of the whole thing was just flawless, hundreds of people serving food to everyone, there’s a foot operated device giving you water, you have to palm your hands. The food was delicious. The cleaning station was a very structured pipeline, one 4 people handling plates, 2 clearing the dishes and then it goes to the cleaning station

3. Had loads of fun at a friend’s wedding : the cycle has started, one down, many more to go 🤣. The 3 days there were amazing, we all even learnt a choreography and performed on stage 🕺🏼

4. Asked a question to Bill Gates (almost). Went back home to Noida for a while and coincidentally, that week Mr Gates were coming to Microsoft Noida office, I filled a form and luckily, was one of the 8 people selected to ask him a question. The moment came but then at the end they had to cut down the questions to save time :). Atleast I got a good seat in front.
   

5. Explored Coorg and completed the highest trek in Karnataka (14KM) : Was in Bangalore for 3.5 years, but I decided to go to Coorg when I shifted farther away, smart me :). Nonetheless, rented a scooty, booked a nice airbnb, played Carrom after a long time because the place had a huge board

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6. Had a fun Holi after a long time (wanna play Holi with water next)

7. Made butter prawns 🦐 : Found out it’s pretty simple, you get some prawns, cover them with butter and fry them for some time, you kaboom, you get these

BONUS

If you made it to the end, I am writing this for you, here’s a conversation I was having with Claude and it asked me who am I actually writing for ? Is it to generally bring new subscribers or is it like a postcard to your friends/well wishers.

You can see above what I answered :).

Let me know in the comments, if you liked, disliked or have any suggestions in the blog format. Go stretch your back now fellas.

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Left my company on July 4th. Independence Day if you’re from the states.

The plan was to chill for a bit, then work on my startup. Star Labs and I were prototyping products, iterating on a Reddit consultant thing that eventually didn’t work out. Had a mesh of unorganized thoughts, talked to a bunch of people to organize them.

A veteran entrepreneur who recently raised 5M$ told me to always have a year’s worth of savings to have a clear mind. I had like 4 months of it but didn’t think it through well enough.

Another close friend at a party told me to just bare through it and try my hands at things as he was supposed to do the same.

After all these thoughts, advice, self introspection, I realized it’s better to gain more experience, insight and wisdom before doing this again.

The Hunt

Started job hunting after being on break for around 1.5 months. Gave some interviews, got to final rounds in some, got rejected a lot. Almost went to Indonesia 🇮🇩.

A product demo I put up on LinkedIn got me some interviews and invite to a tech party 🍕

Finally got a considerable offer in the 1st week of September and joined in the 2nd week but wasn’t having a lot of fun there so I kept interviewing.

After interviewing at almost 10 places and giving 30 interviews, I got an offer from Microsoft.

Never thought I would be going to an MNC. Had been a pure startup guy till then, even my friends would say that. Kinda content though, gave me a tag which I didn’t really have for most of my life.

The Pattern

One thing I realized through all this was all the things that I never imagined / hated happened to me.

Never wanted to work 6 days a week, life humbled me as I had to do it.

Never wanted to go away from Bangalore, happened again.

Never thought / aimed at joining an MNC, happened again (positive though).

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The Move

Now it’s a new chapter. New state, new role. Already moved my stuff from Bangalore to Hyderabad this month and I’ll probably be moving again as I found a flat.

Hyderabad is pretty nice though. Good infrastructure, traffic management, cheaper cost of living. I kinda miss the extravagant Bangalore vibe though. Too early to give a verdict. It’s been 2 weeks.

Funny how life works. You say you’ll never do something and then you end up doing exactly that. Maybe that’s the point.

M E D I A

Ever wonder how AI models like ChatGPT got so uncannily good at conversation? A huge part of their secret sauce is a process called Reinforcement Learning (RL). In one line, it’s like teaching an AI to play a video game: it gets points for good moves and loses points for bad ones, and over millions of attempts, it learns the best strategy to win.

But for that AI to find the best strategy, it has to constantly wrestle with a core dilemma: Explore vs. Exploit. Does it exploit a path where it knows it can get 10 points? Or does it explore a new, unknown tunnel that might have a 100-point jackpot... or nothing at all

And you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this. It’s because a friend brought up this exact concept recently, and it hit me.

It hit me that I'd been living mostly in 'exploit' mode. So I started to introspect: was I really making the best of things? I try to work mostly, but is that just pseudo-productivity? I realized choosing to 'explore' doesn't mean having fun 24/7. It just means being open to trying more things—like not letting an extra 5km or ₹200 stop me from a new experience of any kind.

Running the Experiments

It’s been exactly a month since I resigned from my job. The first few weeks were me going back home and exploring Varanasi with my parents, knowing about the ghats and the history of the Ram Mandir and the case of Kashi Vishwanath mandir. The boat ride there was serene. After that much needed reset, I came back to Noida with a clear goal: to analytically explore my own past programming. I gave Claude, Gemini, GPT, and Grok six months of my 2025 notes and asked them to plot the best and worst path for me. It’s a powerful practice I’d recommend to anyone trying to understand their own patterns.

Even explorations that 'fail' can have good side effects. Me and Star Labs(remember about Hemingway AI? )... we thought of an accountability product but scrapped it as it didn’t get enough traction. But the real reward wasn't the product; it was the process. Through that exploration, I learned how to use N8N pretty well, one of the most powerful automation tools out there.

My new 'explore' mindset isn't just for big projects; it's also about running small, weekly experiments. For instance, I've been using an AI calling tool Boardy which calls me every Tuesday afternoon and takes work updates from me and connects me to other people. It connected me with an Italian and a Chinese guy. Fun little accountability tool, would recommend it.

The Takeaway

I heard a quote recently regarding fitness, you can apply to anything in your life.

“If you are not trying to be fit right now, you’re making a conscious decision to never be fit in your life as responsibilities are always gonna pile up more and more.”

Yup, this is a bit of a privileged take so take it with a grain of salt. And who knows, maybe this is all just my brain's way of building a narrative to support a recent decision. A classic case of confirmation bias.

Ultimately, even with that doubt, it’s about making a conscious choice to gather new data on yourself. So, I’ll leave you with a question: where in your life could you use a little less 'exploit' and a little more 'explore'?

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Gallery

Says the one who hasn’t written a blog in half a year after writing a blog celebrating its one year anniversary.

It’s been 6 months since I updated anyone of you, if I write each and everything that happened then it would be a REALLY long blog, I don’t know if anyone would want that (even I don’t wanna type that much tbh).

Let’s just give a recap of the recent events (more like things which are in my memory).

Hemingway AI

Remember I was making an AI Scripting tool for marketers, so that they can just upload their current scripts and get another similar sounding script in like 10 minutes. We worked a lot on that. But for some reason you can say we lost momentum, everyone got busy in their own lives, one went to travel, another one was busy finding a job and I think I got lazy for a bit and by the time I got back some groove, it was too late (never say never). Still won’t say we are closing this off.

We serendipitously met some investors today and one of them urged us to push it to non-Indian audience for validation as it’s always easier to sell to anyone but Indians.

I think after half a year of inadvertently putting a pause on this, we are going to put a last stretch and market it to the right people.

Professional Life

Work is going well, can’t comment on the status of the company though, have been working on a really interesting project, you might have heard of platforms like bolt.new and lovable.dev etc. All these fancy prompt to website generators which one-shot development and have been taking the internet by storm.

After this there are platforms like rork.com and a0.dev and tempo which do the same thing but for mobile apps.

A little context about my company Apptile - we are a no-code drag and drop platform for making mobile apps, mainly targeted Shopify markets and got customers to use our app to create mobile apps after they have generated a good bunch of money on their website.

So coming back to where I was working on an interesting project. So we are making a competitor to rork and a0. A platform where you give a prompt and it converts it into a beautiful mobile app.

Our USP is that we have very good visual editing capabilities which are better than the current systems. Launch is coming soon.

Encountered a lot of things. How do platforms handle token management in each request does not cross the token threshold using mechanisms like Abstract Syntax Trees, Rolling Window Summarization, studying how GPT Engineer, Cline worked. Integrating a coding environment inside your browser.

Personal Life

• Trip to Odisha

• Attended a CAS concert which eventually got cancelled, still partied though.

• Reddit, TikTok post, participated in a windsurf hackathon where I was having a mobile apps phase, basically that phase came because I wanted to promote apps on TikTok, I have been kinda intrigued about this niche of marketing your apps on TikTok.

• Have been mildly regular to the gym and have been waking up at the same time for quite a bit now, sleep was pretty haphazard earlier

• I didn’t really know how to ride a 2 wheeler before but I have been casually riding my friend’s scooty now, also a small win.

TikTok

• Let’s talk about TikTok. TikTok is banned in India so no one even thinks of doing anything related to TikTok distribution but I was pretty interested to explore this paradigm.

• I wanted to create apps so that I can market them on TikTok and see how the game works, for this I needed an iPhone, read in a lot of places, iOS content is boosted better and a deactivated US T-Mobile SIM, also read that having a US SIM in the phone tricks it to think you are in the US. So I did all that stuff and fortunately found out that my phone thinks I am in US, also had to buy VPN.

• After that I needed a product, so I was going through Twitter/X and found a book reading product which seemed pretty marketable so I copied that, made a waitlist page at bookbopp.com and then integrated Umami analytics.

• I posted around 6 random TikToks and 3 of them reached >= 1000 views, with one crossing 2K views. Doing this made me realize it’s pretty easy to get views on TikTok. Now my main focus here was to get some signups for my product but then that front didn’t work out very well, maybe cause my videos were not really optimized for that. Then I went on a thinking spiral if I really want some signups for my app or just wanna figure out TikTok virality and I figured out it was the latter.

• I will experiment with it more.

• I was pretty active on documenting my progress on Reddit also this time.

  

June 2025

Let’s come to the present time now. The initial team of Star Labs (Tushar, Sudip) with whom I created Hemingway.ink, we met after a long time, discussed deeply what were the issues which were responsible for Hemingway for not going the way we wanted. Those mainly revolved around alignment, motivation, prioritization.

This happened yesterday at a cafe where we serendipitously met a bunch of investors, sad part is we didn’t really have a product to pitch this time, but it was fun understanding their POV. A CEO of a wealth management fund told how he’s helping a person who made hybrid vegetables get connected to a VC and then how he’s acquiring another startup and how their Founder’s Office is making a product with 40 people which helps other family funds smartly see their assets and liabilities in one place.

We as a team are still brainstorming the idea, but we don’t wanna get stuck at an idea loop, so we are also making a product as of now for hiring. This is for a hackathon, we won this hackathon by the way last year.

It’s funny that my last blog had this hackathon and my new blog after six months also contains this.

That’s a lot of info.
Ciao.

PS – have been using a tool called Boardy AI, which calls me and I can talk to it regarding career advice and then it scrapes my LinkedIn and connects me to relevant people. Try it out.

Personal

• I was supposed to go for Hatha Yoga by Cult but as I arrived late and the gym was attached to the center, I serendipitously went to the gym after a long time. Sore muscles the next day lol.

• Gave my 2-wheeler driving test this Friday and the results are yet to come, I hope I've passed 😭👏🏽.

• My rent agreement is coming to an end so had to aggressively property hunt during the weekend. Finding a flat is always so hard uh.

• We played Poker this week and wohoo I made 5x times the money I started with, not to ignore the fact I also lost 7x when I played on Diwali, we're learning slowly.

• Recently I've been playing a board game called 'Blood on the Clocktower' and if you've played Mafia it's a much-advanced version of Mafia, if you haven't then god bless you. Was hanging out with one of the guys after the game ended and turns out he used to be a professional UX researcher for investor pitch decks, now I am gonna review every pitch deck from him 😂.

  

  

Hemingway AI

• Made another product demo for Hemingway AI.

• We made an AI scriptwriter for short-form content for Growthx, and now we have integrated Rowan Cheung's reels, so even his short-form script style can be emulated now.

• Getting transcripts of the Instagram reels was a struggle as Instagram does not provide an API which you can directly download the reel transcripts from.

• So I made a tool for downloading transcripts of any Instagram reel, check the blog → Instagram Reel Transcription.

• While working with Claude's projects, the user has to always drag and drop their files to provide Claude context. This is a time-taking process if there are a lot of nested folders in your repository, so I made a tool that gives all the files of the repository instantly in a folder which you can then drag and drop. Wrote a blog on how it’s useful to you → Claude Blog

Professional

• Needed to port forward an https URL to my localhost server for a task. I tried using a bunch of tools like ngrok and localtunnel, but the issue there is the user always has to click on the 'visit site' button when they open the URL from a new IP address. I did not want to do that, so after a lot of head-banging and trial and error, I found out the same feature of port forwarding could be implemented on Cloudflare without the 'visit site' button-clicking stuff. Cloudflare rocks

[hi. play above track as you read this]

This is not gonna be a regular blog about my week like the other ones. 

It's the first anniversary of this blog (it was 8th October, but let's pretend it's today), so let's recap how it started and what all things have happened since then.

How It All Started

• It all began when I went to Buildspace Dubai to showcase my project Getfriendly (which has been paused for quite a long time now, but it's dear to me, so someday I'll pick it up unless someone solves the problem).

• At the conference, Farza (CEO of Buildspace) mentioned that he maintained a blog for 3 years straight, where he regularly published his learnings and life experiences.

• Eventually, that blog led to an investment because it showed his credibility and growth.

• I thought that was so cool, not just because he got an investment, but because he could look back on any part of his life.

• I decided to start my blog.

• To be more transparent this wasn’t my first writing stint, wrote around 12 technical articles before starting this

  

Highlights of the Year

• Career growth: I worked at a company building an awesome Android app and learned Android development myself.

• Personal projects: I have tried multiple projects of my own, including Investment Advisor, AI Influencer, Conversational Catalyst, and now Scriptwriter (which is going well).

• Fitness journey: I was pretty regular at Muay Thai but had to sadly stop because of location issues. So, I started swimming.

• Travel adventures: I went on multiple trips, with Thailand being the most significant and Coldplay being the highlight. I also went to Mumbai to see off a friend and attended another's wedding in Hyderabad.

• Health and wellness: I started getting more considerate about my health and got multiple checkups done. I think my Vitamin D levels must be good by now, and I'm gonna try some Magnesium next.

• Entertainment: I watched so many dope shows, and we had such a lit New Year's party, especially because some people can't contain their booze! 🥴

• Lifestyle changes: I bought a Kindle and moved away from self-help to fiction books.

• Fun memories: Went to watch the movie Inside Out 2 with friends where we all dressed up as characters from the movie.

Challenges and Lessons

• Balancing blogging with other commitments was a challenge, and I left blogging for some time due to random lazy reasons. However, I've learned the importance of consistency and hope to keep up the tempo

• Most of the Original Bangalore Gang is gone, but change is the only constant in life; we gotta stay strong (yo, it rhymed!).

Looking Forward

• In the coming year, I plan to continue to grow in my career, explore new projects, and share my experiences through this blog.

• If you've come this far, do engage with the blog and let me know what you like/dislike about the format and what can be improved. Ice cream on me for everyone who engages! 😜 Also, feel free to share your own memorable experiences from the past year or your goals for the coming year in the comments below.

If you've made it to the end of this rambling odyssey, you're either deeply invested or incredibly bored at work - either way, I'll take it! What resonated with you? What would you like to read more about? Drop a comment with your thoughts and your own year's highlights - think of it as leaving your mark on this little corner of the internet. Here's to making the rest of 2024 count🌟

PS - Shoutout to Sarthak for carefully reviewing these blogs like a pro and feel free to check where this journey started from, it’s linked below

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BONUS MEDIA

Personal

• Mom got promoted, let's go!

• The week started on a dramatic note: I went to the hospital because I was having chest pain and got scared, though it turned out to be just some digestive issue 🤭

• Dropped Claude for this month and went back to GPT+ to try out all the new changes. The canvas feature is so smooth, though I prefer Claude's yellowish theme, which feels way warmer, and its responses are also shorter compared to the new 01-mini. Going to stick with GPT for a month and decide.

• Explored a cool new cafe-cum-BMW bike showroom called Maverick (not the Logan Paul one). Also, a friend introduced me to Natural's pan ice cream, and it tasted superb. I want to try their Sitaphal flavor next.

  Thanks for reading Daily Labour and Rewards! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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• Watched a whole series in one sitting after ages, and it was a special one. It was "Mr. McMahon," the story of WWE's owner and how this whole business was built. It was special to me because I watched WWE and played its games throughout my childhood. Overall, it was a good watch. The owner had some unresolved daddy issues that influenced much of his life and business acumen. He always said, "Just business, nothing personal."

• Another friend of mine is leaving the city. It makes me wonder how I was supposed to start the "bye-bye Bangalore" train last year, but now I'm the one saying goodbye to my 5th friend who's moving out of the city. Kinda sad, but we gotta adapt. More deets in the next one. Parting gift below.

Project

• ScriptWriter: Take data of an organization that is active on social media and provide them with new scripts.

• Created a RAG from my 15 blogs and gave it a draft of my current week to see what it generates. Sent it to 3 of my friends—2 out of 3 were convinced it was written by me, and 1 thought I modified my writing style. So, after this success indicator, I started working on it more.

• Learned about chunking techniques and embeddings. The semantic space and how embeddings are compared is still a black box, but we'll get there.

• Was using Postgres locally, but I've now moved it to Supabase.

• The current results are okay, but Claude Opus really makes a dent in your pockets.

• Using an RAG isn't exactly the correct way this should be done, so I've been looking into ways to fine-tune a model. I'll be diving deeper into this in the coming week.

• Currently just learning how different things can be implemented. Most things are easier than they seem—they only feel daunting until they've been tried.

• I was feeling a little unmotivated on Saturday to work on the main project, so I made a simple iOS to-do app. I don't know much about Swift, just wanted to bring some entropy.

Professional

• Big change on this front: I used to work in the enterprise team, where my main goal was to complete tasks for different enterprises that bought our plans. But now, I'll be solely working on the highest-paying client. I was onboarded to the team recently—let's see how this goes.

• Am I excited? Definitely. Am I scared? Eh, slightly.

Current week Stats

• Socially 10

• Personal Work 5.5

• Professional 8

Personal

• Last time, I did 500m in an hour

• Getting better (still trying to increase the

  frequency)

  

• Went for a swim at Friday, the place was closed, got disappointed for a second but then one closed door opens many other doors lol.

• Went to meet up an old friend, and explored some famous places in Bangalore namely Filter Coffee and had the famous Death By Chocolate ice-cream from Cornerhouse ( not really DBC but a less sugary version lol) and he showed me his bike skills.

  

• Had a small get-together at another friend's house on Saturday, had to some effort to get some stuff 😂.

• Colleague rotted my ear by suggesting the movie 'Kill'. Worth the ear-rot, good action movie.

Project

• Stopped work on conversational catalyst

• Made a small chatbot project using Vercel's guide to checkout the capability of Vercel.

• It calls a function to know if personal informational related information has been shared, then checks the DB whenever some related question is asked.

• We’re gonna pick up something else now, this was a small experiment, onto a little more serious stuff now.

• Tried this new product by Google called - notebooklm . it generated a 6 minute podcast based on my blogs and it’s awesome

Professional

• Was moved to a urgent task from a huge client (hint, founder was extremely controversial while alive)

• Worked like 2 whole nights to set up the payment process with Apple Developer APIs, man they are documented so bad.

• Unfortunately, the client said bye-bye so the project never saw the light :||| .

• Used Dingboard to make a meme for my colleague, that was fun lol.

• Loving the current book I'm reading, not only because it has an interesting story but also because the author randomly starts talking to the reader (4th wall break) in the middle and explains why he titled all the chapters as prime numbers and how you can sell the CIA a 100+ digit prime number for 100K USD.

• I went to eat at Rajdhani, Indiranagar for a colleague's birthday. It had the best veg food I've had in a long time. While leaving, we ended up executing a failed prank - lmao, that was fun!

  

• The Wok Pops, HSR has amazing udon noodles; momos were mid.

• Noticed improvement in swimming. I was always a decent underwater swimmer but was disappointed last week as I couldn't hold my breath for a 25m stretch. Did it this week, getting back into the groove. Did around half a km of swimming the next day.

• Tried booking tickets for Coldplay, though I've already attended once, was doing it for a friend. Conclusion to the whole experience: it was a massive waste of my 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon. BMS is a horrible platform for these things.

  

• Went to surprise a friend as I hadn't met her for a long time, got surprised by her not being there. Doing surprises no more 😂

• Progress on Conversation Catalyst

  • Prompt chaining: Initially we had a huge-ass prompt being fed to 4o, irrespective of the situation chosen by the user.

  • Implemented prompt chaining and team-mate made several instructional prompts. Results and speed have become better.

  • Couldn't focus on implementation of RAG this week because there were a lot of UI bugs, and we were focusing on making it launch-ready, so that was prioritized.

  • Apart from this, we were brainstorming on a lot of other things.

  

  ---

• Office Tales

  • Colleague wanted to look for a synthesizer, so we went to this place which had the most exquisite pianos I've ever seen. These were worth 30-40 Lakhs. I got a little happy when I saw Steinway and Sons because it reminded me of Your Lie in April - still the saddest anime ever.

    

  • Work was around 8/10 also this week, manageable hectic. Worked on around 5-8 different subtasks, the main one being integrating an add_free_product feature using Shopify APIs in our app.

  • Most interesting event happened today: a colleague resigned, and it was the talk of the town, gossip maxx.

  • Office had a TGIF event; basically, we get some free booze and do random stuff in the office on some Friday. We played some beer pong, lol.

PS - Not a fan of clicking pictures, every once in a while I remember I gotta click some for these blogs.

• Exercised 100% more than last week, that’s crazy right! (Last week I exercised once 🤭 ) 

• Pro tip - avoid paying one year's worth of society maintenance charges at once, doesn’t release endorphins for sure.

• The project I was working on with some friends of mine, let’s call it Conversation Catalyst.

  • The problem I got stuck at - A person uploads an image of a conversation, the task was to correctly identify the text in the image and also to correctly identify which text belongs to which person (assuming 2 people are talking, texts would belong to Person A and Person B). I got stuck at the latter part of person identification.

  • Later I realized that I tried to overengineer the solution by using OCR to retrieve the text and a lot of failed different methods to identify the people.

  • Simple solution - ditch the OCR, feed the image to gpt-4o, problem solved.

  • This week we’re mostly going to implement prompt chaining and implement RAG (which I learned in depth what it actually meant today) to improve the results.

• Completed this amazing book called The Alchemist, here are some beautiful quotes from the book (one is the title)

  • Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.

  • Every blessing ignored becomes a curse

  • People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.

  • Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream. That's the point at which most people give up. It's the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.

• Started reading this one now, it’s a murder mystery where the author keeps breaking the fourth wall, enthralling start

  

  Thanks for reading Daily Labour and Rewards! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

• Professional Work’s been 8.5/10 hectic

  • Spent a bunch of time trying to run the iOS Simulator on my connected device only to realize I was entering the wrong password and needed to give Xcode complete file access to the device, Xcode can be a nightmare sometimes man.

  • Got assigned the project for a super rich client, they sell travel luggage for crazy prices in Canada. Added a Spotify embed feature as POC apart from their premium-looking app which our designer created and a bunch of random things I am not going to go into.

PS - This pizza was amazing, no wonder the place needs a one month pre-booking

Interesting Content Consumed

Drink more water, see ya amigos !

• Apologies for the sudden disappearance. After working on an investing idea during the initial start of Buildspace (end of June), we decided we couldn't monetize it and stopped.

• July & August: Didn't work on any personal projects (occupied with office work, but who isn't?). Lost momentum and realized I was stuck in an ideation-without-execution loop. Even the blogs stopped. (My last blog was in May's first week. Why didn't I post after that? Let me make some excuses...)

• Here I am, publishing again after 4 months and 4 days.

• What brought me back? Another realization: consistently documenting and writing makes me more productive, which gives me more content for the vlog. It's a circular dependency.

• I enjoy writing and realized some people actually waited for these blogs. Gotta be honest, that feels a little good.

• 69% of the year is over. Doubling down for the remaining 31% – it'll decide some big things.

• I am pretty sure I am missing a lot of things here, but bear with me

  ---

Quick Updates

• Work's been super hectic. Just hit 5 months at the office. Finally updated LinkedIn after leaving my last job. Had a potluck at office for Ganesh Chaturthi, I bought some parathas and the event was amazing, loved it.

• Working on a project with friends – one I randomly met at a board games house-party, and his colleague. Serendipity?

• The project: image-to-text conversion for conversations. Planning a whole set of tools around it. Had our first in-person meet today – went well.

• Reading "The Alchemist" – wonderful book. First fiction in years since "A Thousand Splendid Suns" (which I didn't enjoy much, contrary to popular opinion. Maybe because I rushed it?). Kindle's great, by the way.

• Learning to ride a bike (late bloomer). Taking the test this month. Wish me luck!

• Lost some weight and appetite due to illness last month. Exercise took a backseat. Prioritizing exercise and a bit of weight gain this month. Played badminton today, breaking the no-exercise streak.

  

  ---

Interesting Content Consumed

AI search Engine for research papers.

Currently watching this as I write ^^ and that's all. See you next week. Ciao!

Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams.

Working on my product, GetFriendly, which fosters connections among people with shared interests.

My journey with this project has taken me to Buildspace and even Dubai, where I showcased it amidst a lot of fun (detailed in earlier blogs).

Aside from this, I do a lot of random shit, which I cover below. Dive into the read and enjoy (or not, but give it a like anyway 👓).

Personal

• Rarely watch basketball games live, but the LA Lakers are my favorite team, so I watched Game 6 against Denver. I was a little sad when they lost such a close game. Not the best start to a Tuesday morning.

• Read about back-of-the-envelope estimation here: https://bytebytego.com/courses/system-design-interview/back-of-the-envelope-estimation.

• Learned a new board game this Friday called Azul; it’s a very aesthetic-looking game and also fun to play. It was a close game between all the players, but I won by about 2 points 🤓.

  

• Finally ordered a Kindle from Amazon. Had been postponing it because I already owned a small tablet. What changed my perception was when a friend of mine from the Navy came to stay at my place and showed me his Kindle. After comparing it with my tablet, I realized the difference was huge; that was the moment.

• Received my first salary after joining the new company, and, my God, the tax was substantial! I hadn’t paid much heed to taxes before because they weren’t that significant.

  • Spent the whole night researching which tax-saving tools could be implemented.

  • Differences between the old tax regime and the new tax regime, including all the deductions that can be made.

  • Only to finally find out that nothing much can be done about it.

  • The good thing is that I won’t be in the delusion of what my next month’s salary will be. I know how much and why some deductions will be made, though it’s still saddening.

GetFriendly

• Instead of building a product that is thought to be the correct solution for the people, thought of asking people first about their problems.

• Prepared a set of questions to go and ask people living in hostels so that an understanding of what problems they face in developing friendships can be gained; some questions have been listed below:

  • Can you share with me some challenges you face or have faced when trying to make new friends?

  • What makes these situations difficult for you?

  • If you could imagine a perfect service to help you meet new friends, what would it look like?

• Called up someone who has a lot of experience in building products and had a talk with him about the approach and thoughts; some key takeaways from the conversation were:

  • In trying to solve a social problem, the main barrier is that it should have a lot of people to help those people connect with others like a multiplayer game.

  • For it to be used by a lot of people, it has to go viral in some way.

  • Have a concrete thesis about the mission, for example, for a screen time app their thesis was - “You cannot block people from using apps, you can only nudge them the correct way or redirect them to somewhere.”

  • Talked about some small ideas which can be implemented.

• Won’t say I agree with all the points above. Going to study what’s the problem with current apps like Meetup and why similar apps might have failed.

Work

1. The client we are working for is known as the Bisleri of UAE.

2. Completed some feature requests and bugs.

3. Now working on converting several parts of the app into Arabic.

4. Partied with my work colleague for the first time, went to Biergarten in Koramangala; the food and drinks were average. Everyone wanted to eat something sweet, so we went to Magnolia’s to eat their famous Tres Leches dessert but alas, it was closed. We then went to Natural’s, which was also closed; finally, we ended up at Polar Bear, which was almost closed. Fun first party overall.

5. On Friday, our office started a new event called “TGIF.” They basically got a bunch of beers and snacks, and we played a drinking game.

6. So, we played a game called S&C - a person says a word, and the next person says a related word which should not start with S or C and should not be a proper noun. The one who didn’t follow this rule had to drink.

   

Meet the Grahams

• I am not a big follower of rap, but the battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar is bonkers, literally mind-freaking.

• If you don’t know, I’ll tell you a brief summary: they are the biggest rappers of this generation.

  • Drake and Kendrick have not liked each other for about a decade, mainly because Kendrick harboured negative feelings toward Drake for some reason.

  • Drake and J. Cole made a song called “First Person Shooter” which they claimed to be the “big three,” which Kendrick did not appreciate.

  • Kendrick retaliated in the track “Like That,” asserting that he is the big three.

  • Drake responded with a diss track called "Pushups" and then an AI track titled "Taylor Made Freestyle," dissing Kendrick, The Weeknd, Future, Metro Boomin, etc.

  • Kendrick then obliterated him with several tracks like "Euphoria" and "6:16 in LA."

  • Drake released a track called “Family Matters,” targeting Kendrick’s family.

  • Anticipating this, Kendrick had already prepared a track that destroyed Drake’s family, titled “Meet the Grahams,” which was diabolical.

  • Someone said this about Kendrick’s songs: “Over a decade of the purest, most refined hatred, fermenting in the cool darkness like an aged wine. Preserved for the day of reckoning. Now we taste.

• Complete timeline: https://meteamedia.org/25943/entertainment/the-complete-timeline-of-drake-and-kendricks-overwhelming-feud/

Content Consumed

Chamath Palihapitiya

Deep Dive: Moore's Law and Next Steps for Silicon

Since the invention of the first silicon transistor in 1954, we have seen an exponential increase in the power of computers, in-line with a famous prediction called ‘Moore’s Law’. Moore’s Law predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double approximately every two years, driving the development of increasingly powerful computers. As we developed new methods to print smaller and smaller transistors, this relationship held true, and we can now print integrated circuits with billions of transistors that power leading-edge machines like the new Macbook Pro…

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2 years ago · 54 likes · 1 comment · Chamath Palihapitiya

Lenny's Newsletter

How Perplexity builds product

👋 Hey, Lenny here! Welcome to this month’s ✨ free edition ✨ of Lenny’s Newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed this month…

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2 years ago · 151 likes · 3 comments · Lenny Rachitsky

Sunday Morning Markets

What Moved The Markets This Week 📈

Sunday Morning Markets Trading Week 17, covering Monday, Apr 22 through Friday, Apr 26. Your weekly financial markets update, in less than 5 minutes…

Read more

2 years ago · 11 likes · Alpha Vantage

Interesting Products

Shows Watching

• Neon Genesis Evangelion - On Episode 10, It’s getting a little funny now, but I am waiting for the sad part

• Modern Family.

Word of the week

Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams.

Working on my product, GetFriendly, which fosters connections among people with shared interests.

My journey with this project has taken me to Buildspace and even Dubai, where I showcased it amidst a lot of fun (detailed in earlier blogs).

Aside from this, I do a lot of random shit, which I cover below. Dive into the read and enjoy (or not, but give it a like anyway 👓).

Personal

• Had a habit of getting confused between a lot of things that I wanted to do and usually ended up doing something partially a lot of the time.

• Have picked up two things I want to focus on primarily.

  • System Design - Always wanted to know more about how large-scale systems are built, which carry billions of operations, in a way, my current work will soon require me to have a good understanding of these topics, so I have all the more reason to do it also.

    • Bought the Byte-Byte Go membership and read their first blog, starting from how a single web server is set up, to a CDN, Load Balancers, Datacenters, and GeoDNS. It was explained very clearly.

    • https://bytebytego.com/courses/system-design-interview/scale-from-zero-to-millions-of-users

    • Read about the scaling of Memcache at Facebook, understood about 75% of the content they talked about, figuring out the remaining 25%.

  • GetFriendly - Has been on my mind for a long time, and I have been passively working on it. Making that active.

• Went to a board games event hosted by a friend of mine, and everybody had so much fun there

• The event was supposed to be from 7-11, nobody wanted to go home so we all paid some fine to stay extra and ended up playing a variety of games till 4 AM.

  

Work

• So this week when everyone was getting their appraisal/promotion. (I wasn’t involved in the process, cause I joined this month)

• I was listening to the discussions and feedback people got, to analyze what is appreciated in the company and what isn’t.

• These are some things I noticed

• Being a hard worker isn’t enough, have to be socially active and if you’re managing people you’re valued more than the individual contributor.

• You have to be very, very good at maintaining client expectations.

• If there are any blockers, the first priority is to raise them to the concerned people, else the timelines could get messed up and client would have an unpleasant experience.

Perfect Days

• I watched a movie called Perfect Days.

• I randomly stumbled upon a post on Twitter talking about this movie, and then someone commented about its website being amazing.

• I checked out the website out of curiosity, and it was mind-blowing.

• This movie was about the life of a janitor in Japan who lived a very simple and content life.

• You see every day on social media about the hustle culture, having multiple passive incomes, and doing a lot of things to keep you productive.

• This was the other face of that coin.

• Waking up in the morning, looking up into the sky, buying a cold coffee can, going to work in your vehicle, doing a dedicated job (even though no one supervised or checked how he cleaned the toilets).

• Clicking pictures of the trees on your lunch break and then developing them on the weekends.

• Coming back from work, taking a bath, sitting in your regular restaurant, and having your favourite snack while watching something on the TV and talking to the people whom you know there.

• Going back home and reading a book before you doze off.

• It also has some plot points showing him very subtly thinking about his life choices.

• If you like slow movies that make you think about aspects of your life or existence, give it a try.

• It was also nominated for the Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.

Content Consumed

Lenny's Newsletter

How to make an impact in your first 90 days

👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. P.S. Check out my PM recruiting service (helping you hire Sr. PMs and VPs…

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2 years ago · 181 likes · 1 comment · Kyle Poyar

Interesting Products

Shows Watching

• Neon Genesis Evangelion - On Episode 7, slowly getting more interesting

• Modern Family - Resumed it again from S6.

PS - Remember the person I donated money to in my last blog? That was a scam.

Subscribe now

Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams.

Working on my product , GetFriendly, which fosters connections among people with shared interests.

My journey with this project has taken me to Buildspace and even Dubai, where I showcased it amidst a lot of fun (detailed in earlier blogs).

Aside from this, I do a lot of random shit, which I cover below. Dive into the read and enjoy (or not, but give it a like anyway 😂).

Personal

• I started reading again; I was planning to buy a Kindle but have a small, Kindle-sized Lenovo tab. Would get a Kindle if I feel that is not enough.

• I often read books randomly, currently alternating between these three: The Almanac of Naval Ravikant, $100 Startup, and The Airbnb Story.

• Really liked this video inspired by the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, important in this world of rapid changes

• Meta came out with its new Llama 3 model; I was trying it out and found a very useful tool called LM Studio, which makes it super easy to test open-source models.

  

Work

• Was allocated my first major project at work. Collaborating with three other people working on the same project; cool people.

• There’s a tradition that the new joiners have to "show their talent" every Friday.

• I play a game called worldle.teuteuf.fr., where the objective is to identify a displayed country using hints and guessing different countries. Having played it for a while, I've become quite familiar with the world map.

• I thought I would do something similar at the talent show.

• Things didn’t work out as expected because when I made guesses, someone had to tell me the distance and direction I was away from the target country, which is a lot of work for the audience who just want simple entertainment.

• Always think of the audience first when delivering something.

• Recorded a video playing the game to show you how it works.

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GetFriendly

• The Buildspace S5 form is out.

• The form asks a very peculiar question - describe your life in 10 - 15 bullet points.

• Filling out this form was a rather humbling experience; it made me realize it’s time to lock in because I haven’t achieved anything substantial yet.

• Would start working on GetFriendly again; but from a different approach this time, from a long-term perspective instead of a side project like last time.

• The work was stopped GetFriendly because I thought we needed to make it so that it could be used all over India; for that, we would require manpower, so we dropped that concept and started focusing on other things, which got me off the path.

• This time going to focus on doing things that don’t scale at first this time, targeting a smaller set of people; let’s see how it pans out.

Yulu Man

• A board games event occurs every Friday in a cafe in Koramangala, Bangalore.

• I find playing board games a highly engaging and enjoyable experience, as they require strategic thinking and effective communication, particularly in strategy games.

• I played Catan this week; it’s the best board game I’ve ever played. One game lasted for around 1.5 hours. You can try the game at colonist.io

  

• My new office is nearer to this place, and I had some time, so I started walking towards the cafe, talking to a friend with my office bag.

• While I was walking, I was stopped by a random man, who would be around my age; he was asking for something. There's a common scam in Bangalore where individuals approach you, ask if you speak Hindi, and then request money. They claim to be stranded due to an employer abandoning them last minute, often accompanied by a fake family to garner sympathy. Having learned from a friend who was scammed a year ago, I now give them a brief listen—no more than three seconds—before moving on.

• I almost walked away from this man, but his story seemed somewhat credible. He claimed he had come from another city for a delivery job, and his first paycheck would arrive at the end of the month. He needed to recharge his electric bike to make nine more deliveries before 11 PM to earn a bonus, even showing me his e-bike rental receipts.

• The man and his story seemed pretty genuine, so I gave him some money to recharge it.

• I don’t know if he was genuine or a scam, but he didn’t require a lot of money, so actually, it was okay.

• After I walked away, it made me realize again, that a lot of people have to do so many things just to sustain their living; I’m usually a grateful person, but things like these make it more evident.

• My 2 cents from this are to be grateful, and if you want to scam, make it a believable story; don’t try to be extra.

Leave a comment

Content Consumed

Sunday Morning Markets

What Moved The Markets This Week 📈

Sunday Morning Markets Trading Week 15, covering Monday, Apr 8 through Friday, Apr 12. Your weekly financial markets update, in less than 5 minutes…

Read more

2 years ago · 11 likes · Alpha Vantage

Interesting Products

Shows I started

• Neon Genesis Evangelion - it’s a classic, complex anime.

Word of the Week

Deferred - put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone

Usage - He deferred his decision until the next meeting.

Sam Altman talking about the deferred life plan - watch 26:00 - 27:00

Sorry for the absence 🙏🏼

Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams. I need to come up with an updated introduction.

Thailand Trip

• It was a ten-day trip (I know, sounds like a long time but didn’t feel like that).

• Our schedule was packed from 7 AM until night almost every day, felt like we were working for an over-demanding boss but the catch here is we also loved the job!

• Best memories of Thailand:  

  • Coldplay concert: what you see on social media about their concerts is absolutely true; it was worth the hype and I hope everyone (be it a fan or not) gets to attend a concert like that, Chris Martin’s dancing like a child, performing on the piano, randomly selecting people from the crowd and making original songs out of their t-shirt quote (a guy was wearing a Post Malone t-shirt and he made fun of him in a very melodious manner), then they even did an alien theme song which is hard to explain but the visuals were crazy.

  • Wat Pho temple: aka the Temple of Reclining Buddha, had a massive (guess what?) statue of the Reclining Buddha which was 46m (the length of a football field around 100m), the temple was built around the status cause there’s no way they could fit it through the doors.

    

  • The hotels and food are extremely affordable by the way, we stayed in 4/5 star kinda places at the cost of 2-star hotels in India.

  • One thing that pleasantly surprised me was the relaxed security measures, even at the airports. You can enter the premises without showing your boarding pass or ID until you need to get your tickets, where IDs and passes are required. This made the entry process feel very welcoming and straightforward.

  • You must have heard about the politeness of people in Japan, but never knew that people in Thailand would be similar, everyone was super welcoming, and never made it feel like we were outsiders.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

    For example - we went to a packed restaurant after visiting the temples, the server was pretty busy with everyone, but one of my friends was struggling with a hot beverage, the server noticed that on his own and brought two extra cups so that she could lift it, sounds like a small thing but as I said the place was fully packed and we didn’t even try to call him, this wasn’t a fluke had 2-3 moments like this later in the trip. The people are hospitable.

  • ATV Ride - Rode an ATV for 2 hours straight on a hilly road (kinda off-roading) and at full pace (kinda risky, the tour guide told us not to overspeed) but that was a hell of a ride. It was somewhere in Koh Samui and post that we visited a cafe with a breathtaking view.

  • Scuba Diving - Initially we thought we wouldn’t be able to do it because of time constraints, we asked at a lot of places, all denied but one (Koh Tao Scuba Club) finally agreed to start the Scuba in the morning around (7 AM, usually it’s a bit later), we choose our gear → went for Scuba, the place was empty except for some foreigners snorkelling there. They even gave us a pretty cool shirt that said - “Date a scuba diver because they go deeper”.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

    We had to clear some basic tests before the instructor could take us for the serious dive, all the tests were pretty easy, but one was a bit tricky where we had to touch the top corners of our googles using our 2 fingers and blow hard through our nose, this is done to clear any water which accumulates in our glasses, one of my friends failed this test almost 20 times, the instructor almost didn’t clear her for the main dive but she cleared at the end, it was absolutely hilarious.

    • We all then went for the second dive (the main one), the instructor was pretty content with me cause I am an okay swimmer, while the other divers were being instructed on underwater navigation by their guide, I was chilling and making poses for the videographer 😛

  • Koh Tao Airport - The Koh Tao airport was different from the usual airports, akin to the other airports no security before entering, this was a completely open airport, one could run anywhere around the airport and maybe even go directly to the runway cause it was wide open.

    Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

    One thing I’ve noticed in Thailand is the women's workforce is relatively huge, I’ve seen more women working in airports, stores, and outlets than men in general which is very cool, to say the least. Below is the plane that we travelled on.

    

  • Ramen - Tried the Ramen at a cute place, it was delicious and the broth was just wow.

    

  • Elephant Sanctuary at Chiang Mai - Took a lot of time to reach there from our hotel but this place had a whole vibe and no it wasn’t a zoo. We fed the elephants, rubbed their trunks, and watched them play in the mud with other elephants while we threw a minuscule amount of water at them to help them bath, they even gave us a change of clothing for the whole process.

  • If I were to visit again I would spend more time in the “3 Kohs” - Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. The low footfall of people and ample amount of things to do there.

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• Things not to do

  • Do not go out in the ripe afternoon to visit the temples, you will burn.

  • Do not book your domestic flights at the last moment, you will be looted/doomed.

  • Avoid Phuket and the scammy phi-phi island tour packages, they aren’t up to the mark, better spend the time somewhere else (should’ve gone to Krabi instead).

  • Do not take an e-sim immediately after you go out from the airport, instead take a physical sim, they have much better plans, half of my trip was sharing my hotspot because others took the inferior e-sim plan.

Job Switch

• Turned the page of my chapter at Regain. It was time for a fresh start and new adventures, so I decided to move on and resigned.  

• Didn’t go back home for a long time because I was an idiot, so went home in March after 6 months.

• Catching up with old friends always feels good, read this somewhere “There is something about an accumulation of experiences that can not be replaced”.

• Went clubbing with some friends, and the clubbing scene in Bangalore and Delhi is extremely contrasting, It dies in Bangalore here at 1 AM, while In Delhi we started clubbing at 2. It reminded me again why people say nightlife in Bangalore is underwhelming.

• Came back to Bangalore, updated my resume, gave some interviews, and am happy to have found another job—yay!

  

• My first week at the job was pretty chill, spent the first day setting up the Mac with all the tools and extensions that I have been using, felt great coming back to Arc browser again.

• The work culture felt like I was back in college again, mostly young college grads so didn’t take much time to mix up with them.

• Will be letting you know more about the company and the work in the coming weeks.

• In between all this ruckus, went on a short one-day trip to Mysore with friends, actually we just wanted to do “a chai trip to Bangalore Airport”, it’s one of the things people do here in Bangalore, a 3-hour trip transformed into a 24-hour one before we knew it.

That’s it for now, keeping this one short, see ya next week ^👋🏼

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Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams.

As a developer at BetterApp (Work Section), we're crafting Regain, a product designed to combat the dullness of mindless social media.

I'm also devoted to my project, GetFriendly, which fosters connections among people with shared interests.

My journey with this project has taken me to Buildspace and even Dubai, where I showcased it amidst a lot of fun (detailed in earlier blogs).

Aside from this, I do a lot of random shit, which I cover below. Dive into the read and enjoy (or not, but give it a like anyway 😂).

Personal

• Had a pretty fun start to the year, had a big party

• The best thing about parties, I feel, is when other people get drunk. Telling them what they did afterwards and seeing their funny reactions is always a treat.

• My best friend from the US came to visit, and we engaged in various activities such as attending a board games event, go-karting, and enjoying a trampoline park. Originally, we planned to visit an adventure camp, but we adapted our plans after everyone fell ill.

• I bought a small whiteboard to write things out. I had one at home and thought, why not get one here too?

• I finally got access to my Vauld account (was a famous platform to invest in crypto, back in early 2022), but gladly didn’t buy a lot of crypto from that platform

• After much procrastination, I finally underwent some health tests. The reports appear to be fine, but I still need to have them reviewed by a doctor.

• Got a new pair of earphones which fit my ear (so glad) 

• Finally posted some pictures on Instagram after like a whole year, feel pretty unmotivated when it comes to Insta, but I will try to post a little more this year 🤞🏽

• Arc is an amazing browser but it has terrible sync, lost a lot of my bookmarks, pretty infuriating 

• Create a private subreddit with my friend where we will be sharing insightful stuff, just created it because we were tired of forwarding content to each one of our friends individually 

Work

• Continued the work on notification batching, a lot of things have been added to the feature

• Was mainly in charge of taking care of the setup screen of the feature where the user

  • It sets up the time to receive notifications

  • Select the apps to schedule 

  • Gives the required permissions

• What is notification batching?

  • Let’s say you receive 300 notifications each day

  • When you’re working, each time a new notification comes, it results in the breaking of your workflow

  • With notification batching, instead of this happening the whole day, you’ll get bothered only 4 times in a day

  • We’re testing the final version, you can expect it to be on the Regain app this week ✌

    

GetFriendly

• Currently on pause for now

• Will reveal the reason in a later issue

Year In Review

• While planning to set my New Year goals, I came across an interesting tweet.

• Spent around 2 hours on it, writing things down, and showing you the reality, if you have time, try it out

• One more thing that I read was, “Out of all the things you want to achieve this year, circle out only one that can revolutionize your life”, gonna try this one out too, have linked the video below where I saw this.

Shows / Movies I Watched

• The Terminal - It’s about a man who becomes an invalid citizen and spends months in an airport terminal starring Tom Hanks. Would recommend

• Forest Gump (I know I am a bit late to this) - It was as good as I expected it to be

• An Action Hero - Entertaining movie by Ayushmann Khurana (on Netflix)

• Dunki - Watch this on OTT maybe, that’s all I will say

• My Hero Academia - It’s back with a new season

Content consumed

https://twitter.com/thedefiedge/status/1741406297294336420 - emphasizes the importance of annual planning, and sharing battle-tested frameworks for personal and crypto growth.

https://twitter.com/Mankaran32/status/1657723885435994115 - Mankaran32 showcased his Redmi Note 9 Pro running FlowPilot, an open-source advanced driving assist system built on OpenPilot, controlling his Alto K10 on Indian roads.

Interesting products

• https://movie-web.app - I use this every day.
  Watch your favourite shows and movies with this open-source streaming app.

Word of the week

Dissension - disagreement or conflict within a group, often resulting in tension or discord

Usage: The proposal caused dissension among the committee members, as they could not reach a consensus on the best course of action.

This edition covers the new features we are launching at Regain, my return to martial arts and me watching tons of movies.

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Introduction - For first-time readers

Hey, it's Ritav here, a man in his 20s living in Bangalore, sharing updates while pursuing his dreams.

As a developer at BetterApp (Work Section), we're crafting Regain, a product designed to combat the dullness of mindless social media.

I'm also devoted to my project, GetFriendly, which fosters connections among people with shared interests.

My journey with this project has taken me to Buildspace and even Dubai, where I showcased it amidst a lot of fun (detailed in earlier blogs).

Aside from this, I do a lot of random shit, which I cover below. Dive into the read and enjoy (or not, but give it a like anyway 😂).

Personal

• Watched the Sam Bahadur movie, such a great movie with excellent acting by Vicky Kaushal.

• Watched Animal, an entertaining movie overall if you don’t think much about the logic.

• Played Badminton for a long time.

• This month, our previous package for renting appliances expired, so for our new package, we finally added a couch to our collection 🛋️.

• After much searching, ordered a pair of earphones. Let’s see if this one works out.

• I am a fan of Jordan Peterson and have been following his work and teachings for quite some time. He mentions Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nietzsche a lot in his stories, so I decided to start reading one of Dostoevsky's books: Crime and Punishment.

• Would recommend this video if you want to know about Dostoevsky, who was a Russian novelist and philosopher known for his deep psychological insights into human nature and society.

Work

• There's been a flurry of activity recently.

• We're excited to roll out several new features this week.

• One notable addition is a notification alerting users of their last 10 seconds, along with an option to extend by one minute. This aims to prevent abrupt app closures during video viewing or crucial messaging.

• The second one is notification batching, where all your notifications will be stored in the app, and then you can mark those notifications as urgent/junk; otherwise, they’ll come as a batch.

  

• Notifications are very distracting and break the “flow” mode while working; this is meant to tackle that.

• We hit 1K+ downloads on the Play Store 🥰

  Thanks for reading Daily Labour and Rewards! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

GetFriendly

• Was working on the login screen.

• Kind-of understood how routing works in React Native.

  

Martial Arts

• Muay Thai used to be a part of my routine, offering both confidence and fitness benefits.

• I hadn't mentioned it in this blog previously, as I ceased practising it around the blog's inception. It didn’t seem relevant at the time.

• The initial pause was due to a job opportunity in Hyderabad, which led me to hold off on renewing my quarterly Muay Thai membership.

• However, life took a turn, and I remained in Bangalore with a new job.

• Now, after a 5-month hiatus, I’m poised to rejoin the Muay Thai classes. There's a certain excitement mixed with apprehension. I've achieved a lot in my initial 6 months of training, but it’s fine; I know I’ll get back there in a month.

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Shows I am Watching

• Modern Family: I watched it till S2 and now I have continued again.

• Jujutsu Kaisen: The Itadori and Todo vs. Mahito fight was pretty cool.

• Railway Men: There are so many hero stories that we Indians don’t know, this was one series I am glad I watched.

• Lately, I've been indulging in pre-2010s movies like 'Rock On' and 'Rockstar,' understanding their past popularity. 'Tamasha' also caught my attention for its unique perspective.

Content Consumed

• https://twitter.com/AngryTomtweets/status/1731272572308783492

  

  

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How Duolingo reignited user growth

👋 Hey, Lenny here! Welcome to this month’s ✨ free edition ✨ of Lenny’s Newsletter. Each week I humbly tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out about work. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed this month…

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3 years ago · 637 likes · 56 comments · Jorge Mazal

Interesting Products

Word of the Week

Vanity: Excessive pride in or admiration of one's appearance or achievements.

Usage: The actor's vanity was evident in his constant demand for reassurance about his performance and appearance.

Quote of the Week

PS - Merry Christmas to everyone in advance 🎅🏼

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Personal Life

• The landlords increased our rent by approximately 25%.

• The main agenda for now is to look for houses until we find a good one

• Our criteria for a good home: minimal compromise on living standards and affordability.

• House hunting is challenging; every landlord seems to prefer families as if kids are the quietest beings 🤦🏽‍♂️ (just a joke, I understand the concerns about bachelors). To reassure them, we mention, 'Sir, you can check with our previous landlord about our reliability as tenants.

• I overhauled my diet plan following a casual chat about diets with a friend – why not give it a try?

• Focusing on a protein-centric low-carb diet. I gotta say it’s going well

• My breakfast includes a fruit shake mixed with almonds, flaxseeds, and walnuts.

• I've started having yogurt after lunch (not a fan of dahi, but I'm trying to include it for its health benefits).

• Struggling with the return of two tables I purchased from Amazon; it's been almost a month. I received a refund for one, still waiting on the other.

• Was so glad I was with friends when India lost terribly in the WC final, made me semi-depressed for a while 😂. Kudos to the Indian Cricket team for the amazing World Cup campaign.

• After much deliberation and considering various factors, I've decided to stay in the same apartment – a difficult choice indeed.

• Attended a board games event this week also, Won most games I played 👀 (flexing yes)

  

Work 

• Have been engulfed in Android development.

• It’s harder than I anticipated it to be.

• I was more focused on understanding every aspect of what I was implementing before I did it

• This is not a bad approach but sometimes it can lead to analysis paralysis, like you have to stop somewhere.

• Instead just gonna understand 80% of stuff, implement it and understand while implementing.

• I am working on this Android notification feature which will most likely be deployed to prod by Monday yay

• The team has worked very hard on new and exciting features which you’re gonna see in the new update

  

GetFriendly

• Took a break from meetings and discussions this week.

• Decided to start with the technology I could deploy quickest, moving away from overanalyzing and the illusion of progress from endless consultations about the 'right' tech stack for my product

• Started experimenting with React Native + Expo.

The buds that weren’t

• Wanted to buy a new pair of earbuds for myself

• Found the perfect one, amazing Noise cancellation, battery, mic

• Was working like a charm initially 

• After some time realised my left ear was paining because of some issues with the fitting

• Changed the earbud size and wanted it to fit and work because I loved it

• But eventually had to let it go.

• Sometimes gotta give up the “seemingly” perfect things for the better

Shows I am watching

• Jujutsu Kaisen - Man they are killing my favourite characters I hate it (not really)

• Bullshit - It’s a fun reality TV show about how you can deceive someone by answering trivia questions and win money even if you’re wrong

• The Railway Men - Based on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984. Focuses on the heroic efforts of railway workers during this disaster.

• Silicon Valley - Just finished the last episode today and it was a beautiful and bittersweet ending. They changed the world but couldn’t tell anyone. I think this resonates a lot with today’s OPENAI drama which happened. In the last episode, it showed that their AI had become so advanced that it could decrypt the key which would take a billion years in like a day.

Content Consumed

https://finshots.in/archive/did-copy-paste-really-cost-tcs-200-million

https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03393

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Uber One, Snapchat+ & Walmart+: preselect annual plans

Hello Friends 👋🏾, One of the interesting thing about doing what I do, is I get to see many companies relearn the same lessons. Generally this is fun (& validating) to see. It is even more so when three of the biggest companies a learning the chops of a new industry…

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Coding VC

Betting on Deep Tech

I’ve now been a VC for almost eleven years. While most of my investing career was focused on B2B SaaS investments at Susa Ventures, two years ago I started pivoting into deep tech investing via our new fund, Humba Ventures. As I started investing in areas like robotics, energy, biotech, and defense, I tried to learn more about their historical performan…

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2 years ago · 40 likes · 3 comments · Leo Polovets

https://finshots.in/archive/can-an-ev-power-your-home/

Interesting products

Word of the week

brevity: concise and exact use of words in writing or speech.

Usage: Her speech was marked by its brevity, covering all key points in just a few sentences.

Quote of the week

Meaning: True success doesn't always come with public recognition.

PS - Apologies for skipping the past week’s edition and correct your hunched posture