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The ultimate guide for native Hindi speakers to learn Gurmukhi (Punjabi) script

Madrid, originally Myrit, was set up by Moors in about 700 AD, to fight against the Catholic Spanish stronghold of Toledo which used to be the old capital of the Castile kingdom. Public transport is good, get a Metro card with ten tickets, and it can even be shared simultaneously. Beware of pickpockets. Credit card acceptance is high, but not 100%. Churros + hot chocolate are famous in Madrid. The city has pedestrianized itself over time, so the city center is entirely car-free. Day 1 Start your day with a walking tour. I would recommend history-focused Sandeman’s walking tour and tourism-focused Rick Steve’s self-guided audio tour . After the tour, check out Puerta Del Sol, the Sun Gate. There are quite a few small interesting spots here, for example, the bear climbing the tree which is on the city’s Coat of Arms, and the 0 KM sign. ...

Update: As of April 2020, I have switched over to GitHub Actions . Travis CI has become buggy and flaky over time and I got tired of trying to keep the builds green. My GitHub action scripts can be seen here . Just like many software engineers, I maintain my config files for GNU/Linux and Mac OS in a git repository . Given that, I wrote a fair bit of them in interpreted code, notably, Bash, it is a bit hard to ensure that it is bug-free. The other problem I face is that packages on homebrew, the Mac OS package manager becomes obsolete and gets deleted from time to time. I added CI testing on Travis CI to prevent these breakages and to ensure that my dotfiles are always in good shape for installation. The great thing about Travis CI is that it is entirely free for open-source repositories even for testing on Mac OS containers.

Car insurance in the United States is a system that more or less works well. You call up insurance agents representing different insurance companies with similar policies but varying quality of service. Then you buy it based on how much insurance premium they charge and how good/bad quality of service you are willing to accept. If you have an expensive car or you are a reckless driver, you end up paying more. The less you use your insurance, the lower your premium becomes over time.

Rome has a rich history pertinent to western civilization. There are three different aspects of roaming in Rome, namely, architecture, history, and religion (Catholic - Christians). I was profoundly interested in history and to some extent, in architecture, and that influenced my itinerary. Day 1 - walks Start with a walking tour and after walking tour use Rick Steve’s free audio tour to wander in the heart of Rome, primarily, Trevi Fountain , Pantheon, and Spanish steps. Then use Rick Steve’s Jewish Ghettos walk to do a self-guided tour of Jewish ghettos. ...

Money serves three purpose - unit of accounting, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. Cryptocurrencies have been compared to Programmable Money . Anything programmable requires an experimentation platform for iterations and improvement. Bitcoin seems to have won the “store of value” battle. Ethereum has the developer mindshare and is the preferred experimentation platform. Multiple cryptocurrencies are still fighting the battle to be the medium of exchange. The amusing part is that every cryptocurrency startup envies Ethereum’s developer ecosystem and is trying to attract developers. But there isn’t any real value capture being the experimentation platform. A successful product has a high chance of leaving Ethereum and migrating users to its chain. The real battle, I believe, remains in becoming the medium of exchange, being the programmable Visa & Mastercard equivalent. ...

A day in Venice Compared to Prague , Rome , Vienna , and Split , Venice is a tourist trap. The city is made up of a collection of 100+ islands. Bridges connect most of them, and you can walk throughout the city. All the public transport is using water buses called Vaporetto . A single trip costs 8 Euros. If you are planning to use Vaporetto, buy a 24-hour pass worth 20 Euro which covers unlimited trips on Vaporetto. ...

Update: As of Mar 2022, I recommend everyone to use GitHub Actions I maintain a somewhat popular Android developer tool ( adb-enhanced ). The tool is written in Python, supporting both Python 2 and 3. Testing the tool requires both Python runtime as well a running Android emulator. I, initially, used Travis CI for setting up continuous testing of this tool. Later, I felt that Travis CI was too slow and when I came across Circle CI, I decided to give it a try. As of now, both Travis and Circle CI are used for testing. Here is what I learned from my experience.

Croatia is a Balkan country south of Austria. It’s a small country of 4 million inhabitants and cities with medieval architecture. Games of Thrones was shot here. Basics The currency is Croatian Kuna (HRK), which is about 1/7th of a US Dollar. One can use a Schengen visa to enter Croatia. Public toilets are expensive. Almost all restaurants provide free access. Tap water is drinkable. Public transports between cities and even to the islands are pretty good. Use www.azk.hr for finding and booking local buses. Most people speak English in tourist cities. Useful phrases The language seems to be harder than the German language ...

Software Engineers peak early in their career and especially in places in the San Francisco Bay area, New York, and Seattle attain accredited investor status early on in their career. Hearing stories of Jason Calacanis and Chris Sacca , many consider trying their hands-on angel investing in startups. If you are considering it, here are my few suggestions for that. Should you do it Angel investing, just like many other exotic ventures such as buying arts and vintage coins, is optional. It is much more safe to make money by investing in publicly listed companies. So, don’t do it for money. Find a better reason to do it. For me, the opportunity to connect with other entrepreneurs makes it worthwhile. ...