The power of 1.5x

 Since I have joined my new company, my day consists of listening to a lot of recorded meetings that have happened overnight in North America (while I am fast asleep). A trick that I learnt when I started listening to podcasts a few months ago is - speed up the recording! Human beings take a lot of pauses, think and speak slow most of the times!

Our brains can comprehend other people speaking at 1.5x their normal speeds without much trouble (Yeah you have to focus better, but anyway, you are expected to focus in meetings!). The advantage is - I can save 20 minutes in a 60 minute recorded meeting (that's 33% saving of time) without any loss in the content or comprehension!

 

Now this trick only works if the speaker speaks at "normal" human talking speeds. It does not work in a multi-party meeting where some people tend to speak real fast. So if you have multiple people speaking at different speeds in a meeting, this may not work for you (unless everyone speaks at the same pace).

Anyway, now I have gotten so addicted to this trick that

1. I prefer recorded meetings to live meetings cause I don't have to participate, and I can listen to the content at "my pace"
2. I have gotten used to listening to a lot of people at 1.5x their normal talking speeds, so when I indeed have a live meeting with them, they sound super slow to me!

Voiced post

Hello people! So I decided to type this blog by using my voice.This is the first time I am using the voice typing feature in Google Docs. It's amazing to see how smart Google has become at voice recognition. 

I decided to let the blog be written without me correcting any word that Google has written. And if I have to really correct one, I would let you know that that particular word has been corrected by me manually.

I find that Google has not made a single mistake so far and can recognize my voice flawlessly. I always thought that speech recognition would be an extremely difficult task for computers to do because of all the accents that it has to address and correct for. But it looks like that does not seem to be an issue anymore. Everyday I keep getting amazed by the level of progress that we are doing as a society. It's scary to imagine the future.

I'm still struggling with punctuations. So I had to press the enter key and start new paragraphs. As I'm voicing these two paragraphs above I realized that it's a lot more easier to talk than to write. So maybe in the future the "writer's block" may be a thing of history. I can also imagine that if documents  start writing the way they do right now with my voice we could actually write a lot more as well as a lot faster than we do right now, and entire conversations could be just written down this way without someone having to actually write them down manually. So writers would just have to proofread what was automatically typed by the computer already. That's it from me folks, it's actually a weird feeling to talk to the computer and see it write down as you speak to it.

This section was written:
 
After I voice typed the section above, I realized that Google gets my punctutations incorrectly. So I had to paragarph and put periods and also put quotes for the "writer's block" above. The rest of the speech is as it is - verbatim - perfect. If you want to try it out for yourself, I would recommend you open a Google Doc in Chrome or Edge browser and try this function.

Mac for the win!

 After having used Windows for all my working life, my new company forced me to switch to a Mac. I was terrified, unhappy and was not sure I would be able to cope with the switch. The first week was a nightmare, cause I had to unlearn all my shortcuts.

For starters, Mac has no backspace, no Windows Key, no Home, no End, no Page-up and no Page-down. Function keys are in the fancy touch bar and there is this key called "Command" which does most of the work. The mouse scrolls in the opposite direction, the concept of Desktops is different and there is no start menu.

Anyway, I have now been using the Mac for almost 3 weeks now, and I think I am surviving. I am confused with a lot of my shortcuts, but slowly and steadily I am getting my speed and efficiency back. The best part of learning to use Mac was to just Google search things like "How to Page Down in Mac" and you would get the right answer to your question almost always.

The interesting part though is - I hardly use any desktop tools anymore. Almost all my work is done in the Google Workspace suite. Though I am very familiar with the Office 365 suite of products, I am lucky to have also used Google Workspace extensively before.

My preliminary impression of Mac is not that extraordinarily different than Windows. Build-qualitywise Macbook pro looks definitely "cooler" than my trusty old Thinkpad X1. But that may have not been a big reason for me to change (ever).

I have almost found equivalent alternatives for all software that I used on Windows. The only problem now is that when I go back to my Windows Laptop, I mistype my shortcuts!

Technology Uncle

As I sulk with the sadness of losing yet another tool in my technology arsenal, after having already spent many sad nights losing another one, I realize that my association with technology is at least two decades behind the current trend.

So while everyone is tiktok-ing and instagram-ming, I am still blogging. While everyone uses iPads, tablets, wearables and mobile devices, I am still most comfortable with a desktop. While everyone else is spotify-ing, I am still stuck to my rusty old radio.

If there is one lesson to be learnt from all this sadness and feeling of betrayal - I think it is that I need to upgrade things that I rely on; faster. Not only will it not lead to sulking, but also it will make me the cool uncle that I have always aspired to be.

Email Subscriptions and RSS Feeds

Google has done it again. They have killed one more of their properties just like that. It is Feedburner this time and it affects everyone who subscribes to this blog either via email or through RSS feeds.

I have manually migrated my RSS Feeds and my Email subscribers to follow.it. However just like all IT migrations I am sure there are glitches. So if for some reason you stop getting emails or RSS Feeds from my blog, or better yet, you take the effort to re-subscribe now (by clicking here) that would save me a lot of heartache!

Thank you for patiently reading my rants all this while and I hope you continue to do so 😊

Philanthropy and the wisdom of Bill Gates

Growing up (especially during my Engineering days and the early part of my career), I was a big believer in the Open Source Software philosophy. In the late 90s and early 2000s the biggest perceived enemy of Open Source was Microsoft and by association Bill Gates. I was not very fond of him as a starry eyed under-graduate student.

Post my MBA, I wanted to work for an Open Source software company and change the world. Given the circumstances, that never happened and I went into (or rather continued) in commercial closed-source software.

Anyway, over the last decade, I have been passively following (online), listening and reading about Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and my opinion about him has changed leaps and bounds. I have come to respect and admire him for the work he is doing globally on things that most Governments and Corporations are turning a blind eye towards. I feel like, he stepped away from the corporate world at the right time, and decided to change the world.

He has shot to prominence in this pandemic. One of the reasons being - his ominous TED talk in April 2015 where he spoke about such a pandemic coming in our lifetime and the deadly consequences of it.

Flash forward to 2020, with all the negativity and uncertainty around us it's refreshing to hear Bill Gates' views on the potentially positive outcomes we might have "after" this pandemic, on the world order.

If we stop being so toxic with each other on social media and so divisive about all our ideas (us vs. them thinking) we can sit back and look at the last 100 years of human progress and see that humanity has stepped up to any challenge always and worked to solve it together. For e.g. we have not had a catastrophic world war after 1945, we managed to not annihilate the planet through a nuclear war, we almost eradicated a lot of common diseases and infant mortality has been all time low. Now, if we put all our creative brains together and work towards solving problems of today - climate change, COVID-19 etc. we can leave this world a better place for future generations.

Auto Switch-off Internet

If you are having broadband internet at home, there is a high chance that you never ever switch off your router. Which means your Wi-Fi signal is always available. Besides reducing the life of your equipment and wasting electricity, I am not sure whether it is an ideal condition to leave your internet running all the while 24x7. So if you are someone who is worried about it like me, here is a simple solution:

There are these cheap mechanical power timer outlets that are available that can be programmed to switch off for specific hours everyday (they are simple 24 hour timers and you can program them to switch off power to any appliance that is connected to them for designated hours). I have mine set to switch off my TV and Router every night from 11 PM to 7 AM. The advantage? Not only do I save electricity, but it forces me to go off to sleep at a fixed hour every night (TV and Internet are the biggest time wasters anyway), even if I am in the middle of a Netflix drama or surfing aimlessly some random YouTube videos.

I would highly recommend you buy these. Or if you have the budget, you can buy the electronic ones that can be programmed to follow a weekly schedule (Mon-Sun, 24 hours - so you could set it to switch off on weekday afternoons when you are not at home and change the hours for weekends - if you wanna binge watch Friday nights). Eco-friendly and help you to be disciplined!

Sit/stand desks

I love sit/stand desks. So much so that we have 2 at home. When we furnished our home first, I bought the mechanical variety that needs me to physically bring it up. Later after a few months in an IT show we saw an electronic one with 4 programmable pre-sets that can store (Up + Down) heights for 2 people. I went against my minimalism principles and ended up doing an impulse purchase. We have had this desk for 2+ years and I love it. I don't regret my decision to buy, and now in this global work from home experiment, I am so glad that I bought it. With my cheapskate ergonomics, its a nice setup for me.

The advantage of having a desk like this is - I can occasionally stand-up and continue working and then when I feel tired, I can bring it down and sit. I have a daily 15 minute stand-up meeting with my team everyday morning (and I love to take it literally "standing" with my coffee!). If you have been sitting on the fence about having a sit/stand desk, I will implore you to seriously consider buying it!

We have been working from home for more than a month now, and as of today, it looks like we will work for at least a month more. So, it's better we get used to this new way of working and not yearn for going back to office any time soon!

Hydration packs

I have never been that into physical fitness. Growing up, I was more of the stay at home - study and read books kind of guy - that occasionally played some badminton and table tennis and hardly ever engaged in team sports. I was a disaster in the favorite Indian team sport - Cricket, and I was even worst in Football. I hardly scraped through my physical training exams, and I generally belonged to the geek category.

Unfortunately, this ritual of me growing up - now sourly shows as I age (not so gracefully!). I picked up occasional physical fitness more seriously in my 30s. While I yearn to be more disciplined so that I age gracefully, that determination is fairly lacking.

Anyway, since you have already experienced my love for water containers before here and here, I thought I add to this list another of my hydration gear that I purchased a few months ago - A hydration pack. Now hydration packs for me have always been that "serious" fitness gear that endurance athletes use. It's like stuff that I see on TV and then see my fit friends carry it around. Never in my life I ever thought I needed one till until recently when I started doing short hikes (read - few hours).

If you go on the trail for anything in excess of 3 hours, then carrying hydration in this part of the world is essential. I used to carry bottles before, but you realize that it's inconvenient because it's bulky and heavy. Also with the necessity of carrying mobile phones, house keys, and money almost everywhere, the need for a small pack that I could keep on my back along with some water in it grew. And so I invested in a hydration pack.

Treks have been much pleasant now. I don't have any particular pack to recommend, just the fact that having a hydration pack on your back, makes life just so much more easier. And the best part is - you can drink water from a tube whenever you want, and as you start to tire and drink more water the weight on your back correspondingly decreases.

If you are into casual hiking or trekking or trail running and are sitting on the fence thinking about whether to invest in this piece of hydration equipment - I would whole-heartedly recommend - go for it! And if you are a serious mountaineer, don't smirk. This is for newbies like me.

Almighty Guarantee

So I have had an Osprey day-pack. It's awesome. Period. Can't ask more from a backpack. It has been with us everywhere we have ever been solo or together. So since we bought the bag, it has been to more places than we individually have ever been. It's been 5+ years now of owning the bag, and trust me when I tell you it has been through a lot of abuse. Two instances of crazy abuse are:

1. Once I managed to melt an entire bar of a Macadamia nut milk chocolate inside the bag. It was a sticky gooey mess with ants partying, but I washed it and the bag turned out to look brand new
2. We took it into the sulfur fumed crater of the Ijen mountain and covered ourselves and the bag with crazy sulfur fumes. I threw away my clothes and my shoes, but the Osprey survived and after washing a few times it even lost its pungent sulfur smell

Ijen Crater within the Sulfur Fumes

Naturally after using it for so long I was expecting something to give way. A month ago the "zipper holders" broke. I was thinking now it's time for the backpack to retire. However Osprey gives this "almighty guarantee" which sort of says that Osprey would fix any backpack however old it is for a defect. I was skeptical at first, cause zipper holders are made of plastic and these things eventually do wear out even if there is no defect.

So I was pleasantly surprised that Osprey, replaced all 3 of my zip holders for free no questions asked. Now I have a worn-out Osprey with new zip loops ready for my next adventure! Another reason why my next backpack would again be an Osprey.

Real-time Translation

In my line of work, I present to random people of random nationalities all the while. Sometimes they understand me and my Maharashtrian accent, sometimes they don't. And that to me (and I believe also to them) is perfectly fine. I have been in many presentations where I have had blank stares from people mainly because of language problems, and I leave it at that and move on.

So last week, I had to present in several different meetings in Shenzhen (China) to quite a few Chinese people. I was expecting to have a mute meeting where I blabber, they partially understand me, and then we part ways happily and may be go out for a dinner where they talk in their language and I sit and enjoy my food.

However, to my pleasant surprise, I noticed that they had arranged for "real-time translators" in the room. These translators were 2 women who took turns (every few minutes) to translate me, in near real-time, to Mandarin as I spoke. All participants were wearing these nifty Bluetooth ear-pieces (including me) and whatever I said in English would be translated to them in Mandarin. Also, whatever they asked back in Mandarin would instantly be translated to English into my ear. I was amazed that - not only could they translate all the technical terms like Balance Sheet/ Consolidation/ Journals/ Notes to Accounts/ Schedules etc. but they also understood the context of the situation that I was talking about.

Later during the break, I chatted with them a bit and understood that they were translators specializing in "Financial and Performance Management Software". This brings me to the fact that whenever I see foreign leaders with different languages talking to each other on TV, I always wondered what they were actually talking about. However, after experiencing real-time translation myself, I can safely assume there are translators out there specializing in "diplomacy, politics and foreign affairs"!

Productivity Hack - Bluetooth Hands-free Headsets

One of the necessary evils of my job is - I need to still talk and present to a lot of people!

On an ordinary day, I get calls on WhatsApp, Skype for Business, WebEx, Zoom, Skype, Hangout old-fashioned phone calls (yeah they still exist!) etc. Not only do I have casual conversations (personal and business) but also I need to do a lot of "virtual" presentations in which the people on the other side sometimes are in another continent and timezone. The other pain of having so many channels for communication is that - I need to keep switching between my mobile phone and my laptop and it's stressful and messy.

A year ago, tired of all this mess, I decided to give Bluetooth headsets one more try! This is even after having a bad experience of breaking or losing at least 5 Bluetooth headsets before. Anyway, this time I researched long and hard and zeroed in on the Jabra Evolve 65

The Jabra Evolve 65 by no means is the best or the highest end Bluetooth headset that you can get. But within my budget and after researching my needs, I felt this was the right fit. So what exactly was I looking for in my headset?

1. Connect to a phone and laptop at the same time
2. Mute and control volumes off the headset
3. Talk with a lot of background noise so that the listener on the other end can still clearly hear me (boom mic with a capability to cancel other noises)
4. Listen to music when I am working so that background chatter doesn't affect me (stereo headset not mono)

It's been more than 10 months I have been using it day-in and day-out continuously and I am very impressed by it. Not only has it taken away the pain of communicating through so many apps, on 2 devices, but it also gave me the wireless freedom and the ability to roam around while talking or presenting. The added benefit is - I can listen to music to focus on my work (yeah we have an "open" office - which means there is a constant background chatter that I need to tune out if I have to get serious work done!). And the mic can cancel background noises so well that I am able to even take calls in crowded places like the MRT

Anti-social Media

Sometime almost a year ago, I felt depressed, demotivated and very sad with where my life was headed. I decided that Social Media was turning me dumber, and I was wasting a lot of time on things that didn't matter to me.

I deleted my Twitter and Facebook account in one shot and got rid of the social media addiction that I had developed. Now I no longer get to see my friend's babies, their travel routines, and how much fun they are having. My real-life friends are still in touch with me, and then I occasionally reach out to distant people whom I miss.

Deleting Facebook was the best thing I could have done to my time. I magically garnered at least 1 hour of time on weekdays and a solid 3+ on weekends. I never ran out of data on my phone, other than that one time I had to tether for work related stuff. That, along with the fact that I didn't have to be jealous of anyone else's awesome life, really helped.

Over the years I have realized that I can't wane myself away from stupid addictions unless I really discipline myself by taking extreme steps. This doesn't mean that I don't waste time anymore. It's just that my new time drain is Reddit.

Smart Consumerism

So 4 years ago I bought a Samsung Smart TV. It is an internet connected TV that lets me do other things on the TV beyond just watching cable. Now my favorite activity on the internet that I love to do on the television is - watch YouTube.

I believe I watched more YouTube on my TV than I watched cable television. Then all of a sudden on 30th June 2017, YouTube stopped working on my TV. I searched around on the internet a bit and realized that YouTube decided to move to a new platform (HTML5) and the older apps are no longer supported. Samsung has gone silent on this issue, but it is anybody's guess that they won't go update their old TVs.

And it dawned on me that - what used to be consumer goods with decades of life (our TV, Refrigerator, Washing Machine grew up with me), now will suddenly stop working on you, even though they are in a perfectly good condition. This my friends, is the beginning of SMART Consumerism.

While we get all gung-ho about IoT and everything getting "SMART". What we tend to forget is - these products will not be updated forever. I am sure most manufacturers will support them for 3-4 years (even if they plan to support!) and then they will expect you to trash it and buy a new one.

There goes minimalism down the drain and so does the planet. Say hello to more stuff.

Thank you Fitbit

Yeah this sounds like a commercially motivated post. And if I think hard enough, well, it is!

I have been using Fitbit(s) for over 3.5 years now. They have been practically tracking my every move ever since I bought my first one. And I am sure they are doing tonnes of longitudinal research to analyze how "people like me" live.

The innocently sounding "Every breath you take" song from Police has taken a completely different meaning these days. With everyone from Google, to the agency that shall not be named, to fitness tracking devices have been diligently "watching" us.

Anyway, the intention of this post is not to scare you. But I have been growing increasing dependent on Fitbit for my "fitness goals". The company on its end has been diligently helping me track my habits. In the recent couple of months I have had some major troubles with my devices and they have been always sweet enough to give me replacements without any complains. I believe they realize my longitudinal value as a "happy customer" as much as I rely on them for my everyday tracking!

So thank you Fitbit. You are helping me a lot.

Reddit - read better news!

Facebook is now the world's biggest media house just because of it's sheer power of distributing news across the globe than any other media company. Most of the world consumes its news (real or otherwise) from Facebook.

While I have also consumed news on Facebook, in the recent past I have actively stayed away from Facebook for a while to not let all the negativity affect me. I still use Feedly as my feed reader (after the Google Reader fiasco) to read my favorite bloggers and websites.

I have also been heavily reliant on Reddit to get my crowd-sourced news especially for the "breaking" stuff and to follow the news topics that I like. So I thought, I let you guys know about Reddit, if you have already not heard of it.

Reddit is like a community sourced news portal, where you have people voting for the articles and news that they like. Eventually the most voted news/ articles make it to the top of the front page which keeps changing all the while. Besides, Reddit also has these various "sub-reddits" where you can follow a community curated topic of your choice. So what on Reddit do I follow and I recommend?

Here are a few of my favorite sub-reddits that I recommend:

LifeProTips - Small quirky tips for managing your life
ExplainLikeImFive - Explanations on complicated topics given as if you are a 5 year old
TodayILearned - Something new to learn for the day
AskReddit - People asking questions on reddit, and getting answers!
UpliftingNews - Positive news of good things that happen in the world
History - Your daily dose of History lessons
Fitness - The name says it all
GetMotivated - If you need motivation, this is the right sub-reddit

Yahoo! Hacked

Towards the end of September, there was news that Yahoo! had a massive security breach. 500 million accounts of Yahoo users were compromised. Like always, I was hoping, I was not among the ones breached. Unfortunately, that ain't true. I got this message in my Yahoo! mailbox recently:


It further reads below:



Getting my password stolen is the least of my worries. Passwords are easy to change. And as long as you don't use your same password for different accounts, that piece of information is not much of use for the hackers (unless they physically logged into my account).

What really scares me is this - there is a database of 500 million people out there which contains our - Secret questions, Birth-dates, Telephone nos, and full legal names. That information is just enough to impersonate as me in this online world and then wreak havoc with my life. The hard part of this information is - I can't change my birth-date, my secrets and compromising this is pretty much something that can't be ever undone. The full impact of this hack will not be realized soon enough. And random identity thefts somewhere in the future will be linked to this hack.

I am assuming this is just the beginning of more ominous attacks bound to happen going forward on the internet (state-sponsored actors or not - doesn't matter!). Further investigation reveals that this might not be even the work of a state sponsored actor, and the database has already been put on sale for other people to have access to.

It's time companies are made liable for securing the information about the users that they possess. And if you can't protect it, then don't store it.