proud n00b

What happens when the Mafia goes home?

novovos — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:40:00 -0800

I have just been following a Twitter conversation by two of my friends - Semil Shah & Jason Putorti…

@semil …and don’t forget when Facebook vesting cliff hits. Explosion of new companies and talent on the market.

@putorti yep, w/ Quora, Path, Asana + all the angels/VCs already in place, that mafia will just grow & grow in power.

In Silicon Valley, there are mafias- the early employees from successful companies (ex. Paypal, Google, & Facebook) that became incredibly wealthy. These are some of the most respected and intelligent people in the valley. Many remain in the area to start their own venture, become a VC, or advisor to other startups.

However there have to be some that took their money, left the valley, and went home (ex. China & India). Are there any Americans that have left the valley to return to middle America?

What happened when they took their new found wealth, knowledge, and experience, and applied it to their homelands? Did they succeed? Fail?

With the norm in Silicon Valley being so radically different from the rest of the world, I am just wondering if there are stories of this business culture taking root elsewhere. In small pockets around the world. Places that aren’t consumed with tech news & vesting schedules.

If you know of any, please let me know! Email or Twitter

How to learn absolutely anything

novovos — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:04:56 -0800

1. Find a tutorial

2. Do everything in the tutorial. Don’t just watch or read. Do.

3. Go back to step 1

Video

novovos — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:06:41 -0800

2 Inspirational Links

novovos — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:04:42 -0800

Evolution of Louis CK

14 years ago: the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic

I did a #juicefast. The results & why I'll do it again.

novovos — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:53:17 -0800

Two weeks ago I watched Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. The gist is an overweight guy juiced himself back to health after an extensive juicefast. While I was not overweight (210 lbs), I have gained a few pounds since my rowing days when I was 195lbs. My goal was to go for an entire week - but after 3 days I decided to stop.

From my crew days -

More recently after filling out a bit-

An overview of my fast was : drink lots of water, and drank a juice for each meal. I didn’t really follow any recipes on the juices - just mixed what I had in the fridge.

Carrots
Green & red apples
Celery
Kale
Spinach
Parsley
Pear
Lemon
Ginger

Saturday, Day 0: For dinner, I made a test juice to eat with a normal meal. Shockingly, the juices taste much better than I thought. The idea they taste like ‘grass’ or ‘disgusting’ is just wrong. After that drink, I knew this was doable.

Sunday, Day 1: Starting Weight: 210lbs.

This was my hardest day. In the afternoon I was hungry, but I was in for the long haul.

Monday, Day 2: Dropped 4 lbs. Weight: 206lbs.

In reading about fasts, it seems people get headaches, a lack of energy, or dizziness. I didn’t get any of these. I did find it harder to focus though. Mentally I felt distracted. At night, this was really bad - it was impossible to fall asleep. I also started getting the sore throat & odd feeling on my tongue. This seem like normal symptoms - but they are unpleasant.

Tuesday, Day 3: Dropped another 3.4 lbs. Weight: 202.6lbs.

Physically I felt great. Lighter, more alert, generally just more healthy. However I also began to get concerned about the amount of weight loss. Most articles I read about juice fasting had people losing that amount of weight over their entire fast- I lost over 7lbs in 2 days. I was staying hydrated so it is a bit tough to believe all of that was water weight. Because you aren’t consuming salt, you should drop a lot of water weight. How much- I have no idea. 7lbs of water seems like A LOT to me. If you know more about this, please leave a comment.

I continued the fast for Tuesday’s Breakfast & Lunch but stopped at that. Final weight: 203.4lbs.

Lessons

As far as fasting is concerned - I now know you will lose a good amount of water weight. How much, I’m not sure, but I do want to look into this further to better understand where the weight loss is coming from. At my pace, I was going to lose about 10+ lbs in 3 days. Even when I was wrestling (maintained weight of 160lbs throughout 4 years of high school), I wouldn’t cut weight that much, that fast. On the surface, it seems very unhealthy - but I could be wrong. Maybe I should have drank more juice throughout the day?

For my first meal Tuesday night, I went back to my old ways. Mainly it was to test how I would feel vs the juice diet. I was shocked how quickly my body had adjusted to the juice, and how bad I felt after eating the usual. For that meal, I had leftover celery plus mushroom ravioli, cheese pizza, and red wine. I told you I went back to the usual…

Quickly I learned, I eat/ate way too much sodium. As I write this post nearly 12+ hours later, I can still taste the sodium in my mouth. It is kind of disgusting. That is the first thing I will be changing - eating less salt. It isn’t necessary.

Also, how much food is enough to make you full? After Day 1, I really never felt hungry. That surprised me. Last night during my gorge fest, it became obvious the body needs much less than I ate. I hit the full wall, but kept going. Why, I’m not sure. When I was rowing, I couldn’t eat enough. I would eat more food than most people eat in 2 days, but I was also burning it off with our multiple practices a day. Those days are behind me so recognizing ” What is Full?” is a new mission.

Overall Thoughts

As far as juicing, I am definitely going to keep it up. It is a great way to get veggies & fruits into your diet quickly and easily. I am still trying to figure out how to juice leafy greens, but apart from that, it really is nice. Before I do another juice fast, I will do more research on it and the effects on your body. I wasn’t prepared for that much weight loss that quickly. However I do feel great, and it was an interesting body hack/experiment.

Editing online courses like modern browser development

novovos — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:10:00 -0700

After watching the first videos released for Stanford’s AI Course, it is clear the course is still quite rough. Traditional problems both in Academia & online courses are pervasive throughout the short clips. However by just following modern browser development, like Google Chrome’s release strategy, I think the AI course can remedy most of these issues.

Here are the problems as I see them :

Some people will think a non-native English speaker is hard to understand
The video quality & editing wasn’t very sharp
The experience wasn’t fluid - ex. the quizzes did not auto-progress after the right answers were submitted

These are bugs that are definitely easy to overcome - and that is where the 100k+ students can help. We should be able to help contribute towards the content - like browser testers already do with Chrome. Instead of releasing one final version of the course, Stanford should release the unedited video & let the community help test & polish it.

Following the Google Chrome analogy:

Canary - the unedited film
Dev - A crowd-sourced, edited version (better audio?)
Beta - A bit of polish, editing, and effects added
Stable - Final version intended for public consumption

This would alleviate much of the burden from Stanford on editing the course material while also producing a more polished end-result.

What do you guys think?

How to use Git branching

novovos — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:31:58 -0700

How to use Git branching:

For the last few months, I have been pushing code to github just hacking on the master branch, and committing changes as I get them done. The problem with this is your code is cluttered with unfinished features and basically a mess (even for a solo developer). As I move everything to EC2, this will be the process I adopt moving forward.

Why do tickets to tech company conferences cost so much? (f8 - $400, WWDC- $1,599)

novovos — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:30:56 -0700

F8 was just announced, and the tickets are priced at $400 a pop. I don’t know about you guys, but for an individual developer (who would love to go), $400 is crazy money. Why do tech company conferences cost so much?!?

Facebook is charging the people who expand their ecosystem to attend an event which will result in Facebook growing further. This doesn’t make sense to me. I understand they want to cover their costs, but I have personally spent more than $400 of my time digging through their documentation & hacking on their APIs.

Tech events like this should be free. Facebook should want every developer to come to f8 for networking, learning more about the platform, and getting developers’ creative juices flowing. By charging so much, you limit who attends, and therefore directly hinder Facebook’s potential growth as a platform.

Yes this is a bit of ranting and raving, but I think the high costs of these events is a real problem. These events should be free for the people who create more value for these companies. Why don’t they understand that and reciprocate the favor? (Apple I’m also looking at you.)

Google+ Study Hall #idea

novovos — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:20:08 -0700

Recently I became interested in Google+ Hangouts as a platform - tons of uses for a group video chat. Tonight, I had one idea that seems really easy & useful for procrastinators.

Google+ Hangout Study Hall.

Join the group, put your audio on mute, and learn whatever you need to learn. Maybe someone else in the room can help out when you have a question - but the core is to get people together at a set time, for a set period of time, to just learn. People do this for their fitness so why shouldn’t we do it for self-learning?

If you are interested in finding a few hours a week for a hangout, just leave a comment. Maybe people aren’t that interested - but I think the peer pressure created by a Google+ Hangout could be effective in getting people to finally learn that thing you’ve put off for years or months.

What do you guys think?

How to install the Facebook Like Button

novovos — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:46:00 -0700

Instead of pointing the like button at your domain, point it to your Facebook Page.

With Housefed, I set up the Like Button to http://housefed.com. The problem this presents is your Facebook page will then have a different number of likes from your website. Therefore your social credibility within Facebook is different than your website.

To kill two birds with one stone- put a Fb Like Button to your Facebook Page on your site. When your users click it, it will give you the social credibility you want on your site, and, at the same time, your Fb Page.

My mistake cost me over 230 Facebook Likes - from 243 to my URL, down to 7 for my Fb Page. Hopefully this will help others avoid my mistake!

1 year since I quit my job to learn how to code

novovos — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:17:00 -0700

It has been 1 year since I left my job to learn how to code full-time. While I loved every minute of it, here is a final post on the transition, the lessons I’ve learned & the risks I took to get it done. (Note- I do not recommend everyone to go a year without health insurance. Just throwing that out upfront. If I didn’t, my mother would kill me.)

Do you have enough $ saved?

Upfront, I think the financial risk was the biggest hurdle. In total, I’ve spent $15- 20k (rent, food, & taxes being the largest expenses). If you have enough money for a barebones existence then you are honesty set. This does exclude health insurance - which I haven’t had in a year. The cost was just too much to fit in with my meager budget. Other things I went without - new clothes, nice meals out, basically all discretionary spending. “2 Buck Chuck” was honestly my biggest gift to myself.

*One point, because of how little money I made last year, I didn’t think I would have to pay taxes. I was wrong. Check your tax situation upfront to know whether or not you will be on the hook.

*Second point, I didn’t try and get any unemployment benefits. There are people much worse off than me so I risked draining my savings since the worst thing that could happen would be to find a job (more on that below).

Force yourself to act.

Like most people, I can get into lazy spells where I just want to veg & relax. The blog forced me to get up and act. Some people say, ‘If you say what you will do before you do it, then you are less likely to act.’ I’m on the opposite side of that argument. I think - the more vocal you are with your actions, the more likely you are to act because you do not want to look like ‘the boy who cried wolf.’ Say what you want to accomplish, and go do it.

Blog your struggles. Don’t be afraid to look stupid.

When I started proudn00b, I thought someone may find it and want to lend a helping hand - I didn’t realize so many people would want to help. Everyone starts somewhere - so I think that is why people are so receptive to openly acknowledging your roadbumps. If you are thinking about learning a new skill, definitely blog about it.

*Thank you to Hacker News for all of the help & support.

Everything you will need is free & online.

There are free resources for learning absolutely anything. The first place I would turn to if you are interested in learning Python, Learn Python the Hard Way. As you get going, then turn to Google App Engine (GAE) to launch, free little sites without having to worry about a server. With my roommate, we built Dotty-dots on GAE which has had hundreds of thousands of visitors, and we have yet to have to pay a penny. Finally use Stackoverflow. Post your problems on there - it is truly an amazing resource. Have a question on anything related to to code? As long as you properly word & describe your problem, you will get an answer in less than a day.

Nothing beats local support

While the blog & online resrouces were incredibly beneficial - nothing beats emailing or iming two of my friends (Jon & Mark) who already knew Python and could point me in the right direction. Every week I get emails from people who are thinking about learning how to code. My biggest piece of advice - learn the language your friends know. If you know someone that knows Ruby, learn Ruby. If a friend knows PHP, pick PHP. You’ll want someone to bounce questions off of that person when you’ve extinguished all other options.

A new network of friends

One unexpected result was that I also got a whole new group of friends. 90% of the people I currently chat/ tweet/ email with, are people I have met in the last year. That has been the biggest benefit to this experience - those relationships. One interesting quote I heard over the last year - “you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” Just think about that as you evaluate your current stage in life, and what you want to become.

Results - Pretty good Django developer -Python, HTML & CSS. n00b JS.

I don’t know what I don’t know.

This is the biggest hurdle I am facing right now. I do not know what ‘bad habits’ I have. I’d akin this to watching your roommate cook - you know it will taste good, but the kitchen is a mess. Until I get a job/internship/coding opportunity in a progressional setting, I won’t know what exactly I am doing right or wrong.

It is tough to find a job with 1 year of experience.

In the last few months, I have applied to at least ten places as I evaluated my next steps. I was able to get 4 phone interviews, 3 coding challenges, and 0 offers. This goes back to the point above - I have a good understanding of how to code, what goes into a website, and the logic involved. Regardless of how successful I have been at building a community around proudn00b, press, and a bit of internet notoriety, at the end of the day, companies want someone who can write good code. Most likely, an internship is the route to take- get some experience and find out exactly what I don’t know.

Housefed - the big success.

In the last few months, I have built Housefed, an 1,800 person community for people to find home meals in over 35 countries around the world (an Airbnb for food). With press from Techcrunch (twice) & Forbes, it is growing quite nicely as last week I had our first home-meal at my house (photo below). It definitely blew away any expectations I had, and was incredibly fun.

As I open the site to more meals, I can’t wait to see where Housefed goes. Definitely check it out if you haven’t.

Summary

This has been the best year of my life. I finally learned a skill I have wanted to for years. While my bank account is on its last leg, I wouldn’t have changed anything. Ultimately you have one life to live - go after the things you want. Tell people what you are doing - if they do not know what you want, how can they help? However the journey is longer than you think. Be prepared mentally and financially for that fact.

As they say in Japan, “Ganbatte kudasai!”

—-

PS If anyone has a paid dev internship in the SF Bay Area? Let me know!

What's wrong with being wrong?

novovos — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 11:44:32 -0700

What's wrong with being wrong?

Housefed Blog: The web has forgotten something

novovos — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:43:49 -0700

Housefed Blog: The web has forgotten something:

housefed:

On my way to Watermelon beer on the beach (which got detoured by the freezing SF weather which changes every 1000 meters), I ran into Craig Newmark. Well I didn’t run into him - he was on the same train as me, and I saw him as he exited. In a moment of geeky excitement, I tweeted, “…

Housefed Blog: Delete your homepage

novovos — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 08:32:25 -0700

Housefed Blog: Delete your homepage:

housefed:

Traditional advice on Homepage design would be, “Have a clear message with a more than obvious call to action.” Then A/B test it till you are blue in the face. I think this is wrong. Instead of worrying about the effectiveness of your homepage, delete it, and worry about building a great…

Your Startup Sucks: How to (Fucking) Hire Developers

novovos — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:12:31 -0700

Your Startup Sucks: How to (Fucking) Hire Developers:

startupsucks:

This is a fairly coarse article. There’s a gentler version posted here.

This is a topic that has really gotten out of hand. There are all sorts weighing in these days — along with far too much jowl waggling by middle managers and idealist super hackers.

So let’s cut the shit and get…

Is your site addicting?

novovos — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:24:58 -0700

There are two sites which have gotten a lot of traction in the last few weeks: Turntable.fm & Fitocracy. Turntable.fm lets you DJ & listen to music. Fitocracy lets you log your workouts for social recognition & rewards. Both are growing like crazy, and good barometers for how quickly a smart site can grow.

Why are these sites growing so quickly?

Answer- the instant benefit seen by new users. Turntable lets you listen to good music regardless if you have friends on the site; Fitocracy gives you social incentives to get off the couch and work out. The benefit threshold (level that new users gain some benefit) is so low that it seems almost crazy no one built these services before now. Chances are people have, but not this well.

Are you blowing up?

Most sites aren’t- which is a sign to change something. You will launch - get some attention, a few signups, and then nothing. Ultimately it boils down to having the self-awareness to see your problems, and fixing them.

So what about Housefed?

Housefed (right now) isn’t addicting. Everyone listens to music. Most people want to be fit. Not everyone looks at food all day. Because I am waiting on Paypal authorization, I have time to study my results, see what needs to be improved, and fix it. Since I launched it on March 28th, the site has continuously evolved. Chances are your site should evolve too.

Conan O'Brien's 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address

novovos — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:20:28 -0700

Conan O'Brien's 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address

Housefed Blog: Launch your site too soon

novovos — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 11:40:44 -0700

Housefed Blog: Launch your site too soon:

housefed:

Housefed has been live for a little more than 2 months without the core functionality. On March 28th - with only a few days of testing, I posted ‘Review my startup: Housefed.com - Airbnb for Food’ to get feedback on the idea, and my execution so far. Because I launched it before I was…

Grabbing Facebook user's photo using Graph API

novovos — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:14:33 -0700

If you have a Facebook user’s id or username, you can actually grab their photo in 4 different sizes using the Graph API.

The url is: http://graph.facebook.com/{{username or user.id}}/picture?type={{size}}

The four sizes are : small, normal, large, and square.

Examples-

Small (33px height)- http://graph.facebook.com/emilep/picture?type=small

Normal (67px height)- http://graph.facebook.com/emilep/picture?type=normal

Large (120px height)- http://graph.facebook.com/emilep/picture?type=large

Square (50x50px)- http://graph.facebook.com/emilep/picture?type=square

Lesson One

novovos — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:13:00 -0700

OH “No one knows the best way to do anything”