Hard Things about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Book Summary: Hard Things about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

The book is Ben Horowitz’s memoir with a particular focus on his company Opsware and the lessons he learned there.

Learning casual swimming

I am not a swimming trainer. I am neither a professional swimmer either. But I have felt that at least for casual swimming, there is a huge gap in teaching swimming. The traditional method focuses more on peddling than making a person comfortable with the water. Here is a better way to learn swimming. When in water, always inhale from the mouth and exhale through the nose It does not matter whether you are swimming or not. Just following these fixes a lot of issues. If you inhaled water in, you can swallow/spit it out from the mouth. And since the nose is only used for exhalation, the chance of water going in is low. As soon as water enters the nose, people become uncomfortable, their reflex actions go into the motion, and they stop in the middle of the water. Get comfortable with water Go to the deep side, hold the ladder and slowly go into the water. Open your eyes. Slowly release the breath from the nose. The standard pool water, being slightly heavier than the human body, will push you up. As you repeat this motion, again and again, you will become more comfortable having your head on the surface and below the surface of the water. Try floating Don’t move legs, don’t move hands, just float with your face facing downwards. If you have become comfortable with the water, this won’t be hard. Just learn to enjoy this floating. Try swinging your legs Now, since you can float, try moving your legs from the hip, no motion of the knee, just at the hip joint. Later start swinging the ankle joint as well for faster movements. Try moving your arms Now, move the arms, one following the other, cutting straight into the water, in front of your head, and pushing water backwards. Learn to breathe while swimming Breath out from the nose while your head is in the water. Breath in from the mouth, after pulling your head out of the water from the side. That’s it. That’s all you need to become a casual swimmer. ...

US-Canada border

A day at Point Roberts

Point Roberts is a weird place. 5 sq. Miles (12 sq. km) U.S. exclave connected to British Columbia, Canada. As a part of the Treaty of Oregon, 1846, the territory jointly controlled by the British and the U.S. was handed over to the U.S. It later became the Washington state. The area should have been part of British Columbia, but the dividing line was chosen incorrectly due to a geographical mistake. ...

Speedup vs Slow-down

Speedup vs Slow-down

If you are driving at a speed of 60 mph (or kmph, it won’t matter) from one city to another and return at 40 mph, then what would be your average speed?

September 12, 2016 · 2 min      Misc
Application Not Responding (ANR)

Demystifying Android rendering: Jank and ANR

Almost everyone developing an Android app has seen something like this in their device logs. Bash 1 I/Choreographer(1200): Skipped 60 frames! The application may be doing too much work on its main thread. On most devices, the Android platform tries to render a new frame every 16 milliseconds (60 fps). The rendering requires that whatever work is happening on the UI thread should finish in that timeframe. Any unit of work (== Runnable) scheduled on the UI thread has to fit in that. When the work takes longer, then frames are skipped. One skipped frame is 16 ms of the hung screen. The UI looks janky and unresponsive and if the user interacts with the screen and the application does not respond in time ( 5 seconds) then Application Not Responding (ANR) shows up. ...

Built-in "Developer options" in Android

Android has a few good settings built right into the platform for debugging under a hidden “Developer Options” menu. You can turn them on via Settings -> About Phone -> Build Number (tap 7 times). The steps will be similar but might vary a bit across OEMs. In older versions of Android, this used to be an explicit option under the Settings tab. I find the following options to be useful for the development ...

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Book summary: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

The book consists of the learnings which the author had while working on his startup IMVU. The book focuses on the concept of validated learning and the build-measure-learn feedback loop. It tries to bring in a systematic approach to measuring the progress of a startup. A startup has a true north, its vision. It employs a strategy that includes a business model, a product roadmap, and a view of partners, competitors, and customers. The product is the result of the strategy. Products constantly change ( engine tuning). Strategy changes occasionally ( pivot). Vision rarely changes. In general management, failure to deliver results is caused by failure to plan or failure to execute. Both are frowned upon. But in the modern economy, both are useful tools for testing new ideas. ...

Chicago Bean

Chicago in 2 Days

Day 1 We started our trips with Willis (Sears) Tower at 9 AM, the 40$ on the spot ticket was worth it, the tower provides some really beautiful views of Chicago. We spent about two hours there. From there, we continued our journey to Art Institute of Chicago. At 23$ the price felt slightly steep but if you are into arts, I would recommend 1-2 hours here as well. ...

The Android-Chrome merger saga

Articles with the following titles would be considered a joke “BMW is planning to merge its series i5 cars and Motorrad bikes” “P&G is planning to merge tissue paper and toilet paper” “Arm and Hammer is working on merging face wash, body soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, and dish cleaner” Not that these combinations can’t be made or have never been made but consumers would just not buy them. They are usually inferior or more convoluted, or even worse, both. ...

USS Constitution

Boston in 2 Days

We traveled there in the month of October and the weather was really nice and cool at that time. Day 1 At 10AM, we started with a 30-minute guided tour called Decisive day, it’s a nice introduction to the struggle of American colonies against the British rulers. More so for the foreigners like us. From there we continued onto another hour long tour called Freedom Trail: Meetings, Mobs & Martyrs which talks about how individuals took sides in the revolution. We were running out of time, so, we had to skip the other Freedom Trail tour, but I would highly recommend doing both. All these tours are limited in capacity, therefore, show up well in advance to collect the free entry tickets. ...