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Shaping the Future: My Hopes and Dreams for My Children

I believe every parent has their own hopes for what their children might become, often shaped by personal experiences or insecurities. For instance, a janitor may wish for his child to achieve the success of his boss, and so on. My aspirations for my children stem from my own life and career experiences. There were many things I wanted to pursue but couldn’t, for various reasons. Over the years, I’ve suggested career paths to others based on their talents, and some have succeeded to the extent I anticipated. This gives me confidence in my ability to foresee what might be best for someone. For a long time, I’ve had ideas about my children’s future, and I want to put them in writing to see how things unfold. In short, I have a positive view of the freelance economy and royalty-based work. Royalty-based careers are a dream for many—creating something once and earning from it for a lifetime. I see similarities between Pillai and Heleena in how quickly they pick up new things. Pillai is a n...
Recent posts

Blogging Divides Family

 I was surprised to find out that Heleena reads my blog and took one of my posts personally—thinking it was about her. To be honest, she never crossed my mind when I wrote that piece. However, convincing her of that has been tough. She tends to hold a grudge for a couple of months and waits for the right moment to give back to me! Disclosure: The following ChatGPT prompt is used in this blog post: Please fix the language of the below text and highlight the changes in bold:

Teachers' Kids: The Topper Syndrome

Tao Te Ching Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

Prediction: Expensify will crash through its insane question-based hiring process

 I have huge respect for  David Barrett for his technical background. But, his company, Expensify is following a modern  psychometric test called a  question-based hiring process . The company claims to look for candidates with 'Talent, Ambition, and Humility'. The psychometric test was a fad in India about 20-years ago and the companies that followed the hiring approaches are no more and some have changed the approaches to survive. I just thought of blogging my thoughts here to see how Expensify evolves.

Amazon India Prime Offer - A scam or a bug?

TLDR; Amazon.in shows and sends me a Prime offer that I can't avail (it leads to an error message) I have escalated this issue to Amazon India through various means, but the team wants screenshots (even after sharing them through Twitter) and so here's the post explaining that... 1. Amazon India sends me an email: Your Prime membership ends soon - Renew early to lock in old price of ₹999 1499 for another year of Prime. The newsletter comes like this: Rajesh, Renew Prime early and save ₹500 Your Prime membership ends soon Renew today Expiring soon DON'T GO A DAY WITHOUT PRIME! Your Prime membership ends soon - Renew early to lock in old price of ₹999 1499 for another year of Prime. Continue enjoying uninterrupted Prime benefits. Renew today Kindly ignore if you have already availed this offer. Please note that pro...

Spotify's Greenroom Vs. Clubhouse - Missing Text Chat and Other Impacts

We have Clubhouse clones from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and now Spotify. Unlike others, Spotify seems to target directly into the Clubhouse audience/members. It is extremely obvious inside Clubhouse as you can find many spammy clubs and rooms created to attract the Clubhouse users. Greenroom Vs. Clubhouse I was stumbled upon one such room Clubhouse influencers are jumping off to Greenroom? - All things Hollywood . Few takeaways from the room are: Text chat is not available in Clubhouse, whereas it is available in Greenroom. This is the most talked-about USP. The recording feature is not available in Clubhouse and the same is available in Greenroom. Spotify has opened up a creator fund for Greenroom creators in the USA. However, I think, there are better indirect monetization options available for Clubhouse users. Stream's chat component & million-dollar opportunity? As I tweeted , Clubhouse can quickly bring the text chat feature by using Stream's chat component . If they...

Valen Smith, the English teacher videos are missing!

I vaguely remembered that sometimes around 2009, engVid on YouTube was very popular. I especially liked a teacher by name Valen Smith's videos. She was not only beautiful but also very good at explaining the English usage. I also vaguely remembered to check her channel ValenESL around 2015. But, not sure what happened to her or engVid, all her videos are sadly gone. I have also noted that many people on Twitter were asking the same. Not sure what happened. Some people seem to have reuploaded her videos and YouTube continuously removing them with a note "This video contains content from LearnVid, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." Strangely though, on Facebook, some people have managed to create a fake account using her old channel name ValenESL.

RIP: MOOC materials; the coronavirus effect

Coronavirus (Covid 19 caused by SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and lockdown disrupted lives and market in a completely unexpected manner. One market that seen a spike during lockdown is MOOC and online education. What I realized of late is that many of these MOOC materials are not suitable for remote viewing. I have taken a couple of courses in random pseudonyms in Coursera and also another one in my real name in PadhAI conducted by IIT faculties. Most of these materials were recorded in a way as if they teach in physical classrooms. Because of that reason, they're very tiring to watch; they lack some basic video editing. Compare that to animated education videos posted to YouTube. One exception to this MOOC material is MIT 6.S191: Introduction to Deep Learning (I'm yet to watch them all though) Classical teaching jobs are in danger These days schools are starting up online classes that follow materials similar to these MOOCs. Students are finding hard to follow them as they're...