melvinraj

[melvinraj]

Conversations With A Digital Artist

Hello everybody👋, welcome to Stories With Melvin Raj. In today's episode, I had a conversation with my friend Anmol Anand , who is a Digital Artist and an Animator. To give you people some context, Anmol was my classmate during college. So, I have been following his work since college. He started with photography (Travel, photo manipulation) and now he is making an entire music video for artists. I feel he has a story to tell. The story of how a computer science graduate landed in the field of Animation. This conversation is about his pivot and his learnings, some discussions about the work he already put out, and more..... Before we even get started, here are a few things to keep in mind: ⚡ These conversations might be a bit intermediate and if you feel you didn't understand parts of them, I recommend reading about them online since this conversation was to understand how one can get started with Digital art and animation and a few discussions around the topic. You can listen to the entire conversation in a podcast here below: Conversation with a digital artist and an animator - Anmol Anand | RSS.com We all must know that Digital art is an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process (Source ). This field requires a lot of creative thinking and observation. So, our conversation revolves around the aspect of how one can get started, some of the discussions about his work, and a few tips for freelancing your digital art skills. Me: How did you stumble upon digital art and animation as a career option? Anmol: This started when I was in college as I joined one of the college club workshops and there we had a session on poster making since I used to watch and practice a few photo manipulation and photoshop things. I made a poster and that led me to an opportunity to make posters for then-upcoming fests. That is how I got started in designing and making art digitally. After college, I quit my job where I was doing other things and started working as a freelance digital artist and animator. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anmol Anand | Visual Artist (@flamboyant_skull) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anmol Anand | Visual Artist (@flamboyant_skull) Me: How different was the change from photo manipulation and photo editor to digital art and animation? Anmol:  This change is because a lot of people are there in the segment. There are a lot of opportunities in the space but it sort of naturally takes you to different spaces like animation, stop motion, and more...That is how I stumbled and tried different sectors. Such sectors introduced me to illustration and animating it frame by frame. Me: Is the reel you recently put out where two people stand on a cliff and then it goes into this illustrative world made to learn animation? Anmol: Yes, that was me, learning the animation and now I am seeing all the different aspects that I could have done better. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anmol Anand | Visual Artist (@flamboyant_skull) Me: I liked the Kursam series and how did you approach the models for the series? Anmol: How to ask for the collabortion 0:00 /2:11 1× I look for references and have an idea of what my post is going to be about. After that, I look for the people who do modeling or people who do self-portraits because it is a hard thing to self-portrait. Then I explain my idea and after that, it is pretty much the models who take the part and do their part of the job splendidly. In times of covid, the only option was to explain them in calls, but they did an amazing job. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anmol Anand | Visual Artist (@flamboyant_skull) Me: How can one get started with digital painting? Anmol: First thing I would ask is to learn to observe. We are in a world where we consume almost anything for a minute. So, observing will be the first thing. Next, understanding colors and composition. 👀 If you like to have the article understanding colors and composition, I might get a curated list in the form of a pdf in this week's newsletter. Sign up for my newsletter to get it in your inbox. For 3d and animation, I would recommend starting with these channels: Ducky3d - for 3d art Tiptut - For motion design and animations using different software Me: What software do you use to create the art and 3d arts. Anmol: The one I would use regularly is Blender Photoshop Other softwares, I would mention are Maya, Cinema 4d, Houdini, and Spline, and there are a lot of other softwares but all serve a different purpose. I feel blender is the best way to get started. Why Blender? 0:00 /0:43 1× The curve of learning 0:00 /0:32 1× The funny thing  I realized is photographers make everything in the frame perfect to make it picture-perfect but for the artist who makes it in a simulated environment, they need to make it as real as possible with texturing, lighting, and more... View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anmol Anand | Visual Artist (@flamboyant_skull) Using assets to make what you have in mind 0:00 /1:09 1× Me: Okay, while freelancing art projects, I listen to many stories where the artists are not paid for the work. So, what are your good practices that may help others? Anmol: Better freelance practices 0:00 /1:17 1× The utmost crucial thing in freelancing is the contract. Make your contract learn from the internet to make one and list every possible scenario and write the phrase "Art is subjective to the matter of interest and in case the output is not according to your request, you are still viable to pay me". If they are not signing the contracts, you already know that this deal is sketchy and run as far as possible. Rest all you can figure out while you are working. Me: That's a really good practice. In the same segment, how do you think beginners can get started in artwork and freelancing. Anmol: Do the 30-day challenge. Do something for 30 days trying different styles, unique compositions, and more. this 30-day challenge will help you see your artwork improve. Practice it every day. Discipline. As much as creativity helps with art, discipline helps you put out work consistently. There will be days when you are feeling extremely creative and bring out the best artwork, but in the days of a slump, the art stops. This doesn't happen in the discipline, because the process of learning will take care of the output. Never limit yourself. 3 things for beginners 0:00 /2:53 1× Me: These are amazing points. So, speaking of art the recent boom is the NFT arts and the entire space. What is your take on it? Anmol: Take on NFT. 0:00 /4:55 1× Me: I agree with what you are saying. that is something I always think about. Okay, have you tried making an NFT? If not when can I see you? Anmol: Right now the gas prices are high😅. (Check here to understand gas prices ). I have tried multiple times to post my art as NFTs, but not right now. Maybe sometime in the future. Me: Where can people reach you on social media. I mean on which social media are you most active? Anmol: I am active on Instagram and my handle is @flamboyant_skull . That was the conversation I had with my friend Anmol Anand. I hope this conversation gave some idea of how digital artists get started, how to get started on 3d art, and more... I wanted to have this conversation because I love doing digital art. I feel it gives the freedom that normal art on canvas does, but that's my take on it. I have been watching Anmol's work since college and he has done a lot of things in his journey so far. Please check out his Instagram and if you are keen on his work, make sure to follow him. @flamboyant_skull The most important takeaways from this conversation I had were: There is no such thing as Original. Everything that is coming up is a remix or remake of the older things that existed.  (This is also a phrase from the book Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon .) Observational skills matter a lot, you need to be willing to look for resources, inspirations, assets, and much more before you start making art. While freelancing, contracts are everything. As an artist, the work you do is your sole income, so you need to be sure to have a contract to be on the safer side. Practice every day. (Almost suitable for any field of work). Lastly, Never Limit yourself. Keep exploring. The other resources Anmol has added in the conversation are listed below: Ducky3d - for 3d art Tiptut - For motion design and animations using different software The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard E. Williams The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris The Freelance Manifesto by Joey Korenman The hardware that I recommend to get started is anything with a good graphics card as the animation and art software requires rendering and I will suggest one laptop that you can look for and one article that will help you. Asus Nitro 5 - price: 1,09,900/- (INR) Building the best PC for 3D Animation [2022 Guide] You can check out the audio format of the entire conversation in your select platform from below: Listen on Spotify Listen on Google Podcasts Listen on Amazon Music Listen on RSS.com Thank you for taking your time out to read and listen to our conversation. Do share with others who might be interested in this field and help this conversation find the right people. Cheers! ☕ Sign up for my newsletter - Weekly Brew to get 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and a few personal thoughts along with updates on my articles every Saturday. Join me by filling out the form below and I will see you in your inbox this coming Saturday! Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

Why Are We Here, If Not To Tell Stories...

Hey, y'all! How are you doing? I feel I haven't written any personal post in a while and thought why not write one when I sat down to write today. This coming June will be technically my second year writing online and I honestly can say that I am still getting started. What I mean is it took me two years to figure out what goes where and how to be efficient. There is a saying - You are what you consume. If this is true, then the books, articles, and videos I watched only made me realize one thing that is to tell your story. Now, by your story, I don't mean the epic saga of how you reached a top position when you were in the absolute lows or vice versa. You can share your story of that one night when you were not feeling sleepy and everybody in your home was fast asleep and you snuck out to go on a little bike ride and click some pictures around the city. While you were aimlessly roaming around you felt unexplainable happiness. It felt as if being outside with your thoughts and clicking pictures is what makes you happy. Stories that are actually a daily activity to you will be something filled with hope and joy for others.  What are we doing by forgetting that we are here to tell our stories and share them with others? I am a personal believer in being a documentarian . A role, description I took from the book Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon . In my experience, it's in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. seeing people do amazing things but not sharing them online is almost as if you making a delicious meal and eating it by yourself without sharing. That is all I am here to say today. Tell stories, write about how you feel, make art that brings you peace, dance to the songs that make you feel like a star, and sing those songs out loud. After all, it is in those moments that life unknowing finds its meaning. Thank you for reading. ☕ I share 1 article, 1 tweet, and 1 video along with a few personal thoughts bundled as an e-mail every Saturday called Weekly Brew. Join for free by filling out the form below to start receiving. P.S: I recently started another segment on this website where I share audio format conversations with people who work on different interests they have which we have a conversation about.  For the first episode, I had a conversation with my friend who was buying and selling NFTs, looking for good NFT projects, and more. You can read and listen to the conversation we had below. Understanding NFTs | Melvin Raj This is a conversation with my friend who has been active in the NFT space for more than a year and I interview him to understand NFTs. Melvin Raj Melvin Raj Understanding NFTs | RSS.com Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

Understanding NFTs

Hello everyone👋, last week I got on a call with my friend who has been active in the NFT space for more than a year. He has been finding good projects to invest money into and turn that into profits. I am not saying I understand every bit of the concepts there are about NFT, which is why I have asked my friend to shed some light on how he got started and what was his learnings and hopefully you and I learn something from this conversation. 🚨 In order to understand what I am talking about or where to find all the resources that are mentioned in the talk I recommend you continue reading and in the end, I provide all the resources that I have found on NFTs as a single downloadable pdf for you to access and learn at the end of this post. First things first, a warning ⚡ These conversations might be a bit intermediate and if you feel you didn't understand I recommend reading about them online. Since this conversation was to understand the research and how to find good NFT projects and then deciding whether to hold or sell. 🛑 Anything mentioned here in this article is not a bit of financial advice. it is for learning purposes. let us understand what does an NFT means. What is NFT 0:00 /1:32 1× Okay to decode this let us understand individual letters first. The letter 'NF' Stands for 'Non-Fungible ' which means not changeable, or not replaceable. 'T' stands for a token , which is a cryptographic asset on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. So, combined they form an NFT, A non-fungible token is a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain , a form of digital ledger , that can be sold and traded. Types of NFT data units may be associated with digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. (Source: Wikipedia ). Now, You must have understood what an NFT is (to an extent) and you understood the ability to monetize digital assets you create. This is all good and dandy but, how do you know that the files can't be just saved on the local computer and they get to use it. Well, that is a good question and there is an ongoing debate that in the future you will need to buy and how the asset to use it and also the save to device will be replaced but for now, I am afraid that is a possibility and there is no regulation that I know of that can stop people from downloading. However, the uniqueness is not the image it is the token provided for the image. To my understanding, it is something like this - Let us say you purchased a toy, the toy is of the creator but you purchased a toy and he provided you the bill with a unique number. Now, the NFT is the bill number of the toy you purchased. If say someone actually makes another copy of the specific toy you still have the receipt. You will be able to verify with the creator that yes your Toy is unique indeed. I know this example is kinda small but you get the gist. Now, Where do we find NFTs to buy or sell? There are a lot of places to buy and sell NFTs but the most common one for Ethereum is the Opensea and Foundation app . In order to understand, here is a transcription and captions from the Interview. Me: Why do you stick to Ethereum and not other cryptocurrencies on NFT marketplaces? Friend: Because the chances of Ethereum projects being a scam are low and I had my share of experiences where I lost a lot of money in the Solana NFT projects. It is a personal choice to stick to Ethereum, but feel free to navigate your own way.   Me: What do you mean by Whitelist? Friend: Whitelist is a way to get early access to purchase the NFTs at a lower amount. It is then up to you to either hold it or sell it in the marketplace. There is no particular rule saying you must not sell, so most people get a whitelist, sell it and make money. Me: What do you have to do for getting a whitelist in a project? Friend: In order to get the whitelist, you need to be active on the project's Discord server. You need to keep providing inputs by either making fan-arts, helping others or just generally showing enthusiasm about the project and they will be getting back to you and your role will change. The founders of the project will have a conversation and add you to the whitelist. Me: How much time do you spend on discord to get a whitelist? Discord contribution 0:00 /1:16 1× I have been continuously engaged on the Artificial Intelligence club project's Discord server for 4 days. It took 4 days of active engagement from my end i.e. talking with founders, engaging in the general chat with people, making and appreciating fan arts of the project to be whitelisted. So, it is a lot of work. Me: How do you find good projects? What to look for in research 0:00 /1:13 1× You need to verify if the team is doxxed i.e. the founders and team involved must be revealing their identity of sorts to be a good project(not a good project, but a start.) Next thing is to look for the roadmap and it must be showing all the steps in detail. Finally, you need to see the engagement of people on social media around the project. Me: How do you not fall into scams and what is the safe way to secure the NFTs? Hardwallet 0:00 /0:59 1× To avoid scams,  the best thing to do is Doing your own research Not investing all your money. Verifying if it is a good project. Lastly, Not clicking any link to get hold of the NFT(Trust the official links for the most part.) In the wallet safety part, the wallet chrome extension give is a soft wallet that can be accessed using a password and if you forget your password you use a seed phrase which is like the backbone of your account. If anyone got hold of it, they can take away your money. The seed phrase is the actual key to your account. In order to secure the assets(NFTS) and your cryptocurrencies in your wallet, Try purchasing a hard wallet, which looks like a Pendrive and you can approve the transactions from there only. So, it is kinda like an MFA that asks for OTP to sign in but for wallets, you manually approve if you need that transaction to happen. The hard wallets can be found here Ledger Nano S Hardware Wallet Ledger Nano X Hardware Wallet Check out all the other products from here I asked if he can summarize the entire thing into 3-5 points for people to understand, Be active in discord. Try to get a whitelist as it is always good to be early in the project to either hold or sell on your own accord. Never click anonymous links and try to find the official links which will always be available on the Discord channel. Finally, what do you think of the future of NFTs? Friend: I think it is very early and there is a lot of scope for NFTs as a utility. It gave way to a lot of artists to survive and it will be impacting major sectors soon but for now, it is art, music, and games.     That was the conversation with my friend and if you have any questions you can reach out to him directly on Instagram Twitter I know the NFT space can sound exciting and looks like a profit market, but in reality, it is very volatile and you will have to be extremely confident in the project. As for my friend, he got started with the money he saved and that should be the case with all of the people who are interested in starting. So, here are my takeaways from the conversation Invest with what you can afford to lose. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Do your own research. In order to get a whitelist, you need to be active on Discord There is a lot more chance of getting scammed. If possible buy a hard wallet to store the NFTs It is extremely hard to get into the whitelist. If you want to have the chance of either making money from NFTs or being so early in the project, Whitelist is the key. This is something I have always wanted to know, so I got in touch with my friend and had some things clarified. There are a lot of improvements and discoveries to be made in this space and being open and anonymous is beneficial but makes it even harder to detect scams. That was it. Thank you for reading. I hope you learned something about NFT here and if you want to get started, please do your research. You can listen to the entire conversation we had about NFTs in audio format here: Understanding NFTs | RSS.com You can get the resources to learn more about NFTs where I shared 20 article links that I have found online while learning. Resources About NFTs The curated articles list to learn more about NFT's Resources_About_NFTs_.pdf 57 KB download-circle ☕ I share 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video worth watching bundled as an e-mail every Saturday called Weekly Brew. Join below to start receiving the content I enjoy. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

It's been 2 years...

Hey friends, It was 2 years ago today that one of the most cherished moments of my life came to an end. It was the perfect mixture of a good place, good friends and amazing growth, and a lot of realizations about myself that made it an unforgettable memory. I have written about it way earlier and it was more of a starting phase of my writings and couldn't express myself well. So, here I am again trying to make it better than before. You can check out the first part about our road travel called The 1000km Ride where the entire trip from Our home to Mysore Internship(which I drove completely) was 1000kms. The 1000km Ride | Melvin Raj In here, You can find about the trip that was around 1700 km and we made all this happen in 5-6 days Melvin Raj Melvin Raj Before Joining: So, as far as I can recollect, January 20, 2020, was the internship start date and my family planned a road trip where at the end of 19th they leave me at Mysore to settle in, and the rest of the family returned home. As a family that was our first road trip. We planned to travel across Madikeri, Chikmagalur, and finally Mysore as our touring places and each for 2 days. This plan was decided in a week's plan. On the travel start day, we were excited traveling by car, having our best times by roads, watching windmills from far away from being on the road eating food from restaurants that aesthetically were okay but the food was delicious. We first traveled to Chikmagalur, booked a room, and after dinner roamed around the local streets to find a different vibe altogether which was nice. There was some kind of innocence, you can say that place which maybe because we are new to that place. The next day we went to the Hirekolale Lake which is this lake in between mountains with a small hut-type architecture that extends on the waterside where people can walk up to. Hirekolale Lake | Picture by Melvin Raj The next day we moved to Coorg, Madikeri early in the morning and the road trip which we had on that day was quite surreal. We started around 4 am and after traveling for 20km or so we witnessed a full foggy road, no sign of another car coming by just us 4 in our car, music playing from the music system and the road with visibility until a few feet everything else was fog. We halted for safety reasons and were just amazed to see it for the first time. You see all of our trips were in and around southern states and one that is outer of the four was Goa, where foggy roads were never seen, it was amazing for us. Foggy Roads Somewhere Between Chikmagalur and Madikeri | Pictures by Melvin Raj By the time we reached Mysore, we were exhausted and it was two days before my joining. We went around Mysore, visited the Mysore Palace, ate mouth-watering food from a restaurant about which we sometimes fondly talk about how amazing the food was that day. Then we went to one of the malls in Mysore, watched a movie, visited a few local stores, Mom purchased a Saree from there as a souvenir from the Trip. The next day was my Joining, we woke up, had our breakfast, moved, I got in, checked in to my room, came back to bid goodbye to my parents and brother. Then began some of my most amazing days. I was determined to be fit, work hard, and be friendly to people around me. This was not a thing I wanted to do but take action immediately. I went the first day to the (I can't remember the word for it), so let me circle back. The first few days they were explaining how everything is supposed to be and a few rules and regulations..... Induction.... yes, the word was Induction where they brief about the entire training/internship. Okay. Now, on the first day of class, I was excited to be there, mainly because I wanted to be enjoying myself while learning, making friends. I have written about it in my earlier post Talks, Rides, And A Whole Lot Of Memories . you can read more about it here. Talks, Rides And A Whole Lot Of Memories | Melvin Raj In here, I describe my days spent while interning for Infosys, Mysore has been. That place brings back happy thoughts always Melvin Raj Melvin Raj After Joining: You see in my college days, All I ever did was play games, and spend time with only a single group of people who were my roommates. First-year of college, we used to play a mobile game called Mini Militia and Clash Of Clans. In a friends group, there is always one guy who introduces such games and gets everyone hooked not by telling but by him constantly being in that game will give you the FOMO, I guess. So, every day after dinner at around 7:30 -8 pm, my roommates and a bunch of other friends from around used to gather in our room 423 and played for 3-4 hours. It was a wonderful experience we had together. Then in the second year, we went to a snooker club near our college and I was instantly hooked to the game. It was the game of brains and a little bit of logic. I enjoy such games that ask us to be present and think. I loved the sound of the Cue ball hitting other snooker balls. I was so invested in the game, I used to go play in the local tournaments. I was a regular at the club and also used to give decent competition to some people who used to play amazing. And from the third year, I must say I got hooked to the Online game called Counter-Strike Global offensive. This was the time when I moved into a house with my friends and started playing long hours, going to gaming cafes, playing one single match of a tournament, and lost so horribly because others were so good and I was a substitute. Even though I know I wasn't good I played so much I eventually became a pretty good player. Although I didn't get to interact with most of the people from my class, travel, or even do something like writing which I always wanted to, I enjoyed that part of my college days to the fullest doing things I liked and found interesting. Coming to the Internship, I was told the laptop couldn't be allowed, so I took/ found new things to do. First was I saw the running track and decided I want to run a full 5 laps one day in my time here, then, made friends because it was the second opportunity to be in a place like a college where you can learn and get paid😛. The final goal was to click good pictures to have. I took pictures from people to buildings, to empty roads, to falling leaves from a tree, to running waters from a stream, and lastly dancing videos from the dance party type thing we had the day before our first test. I failed the exam the next day but it was worth it. As far as friends go, I met some of the most amazing people who were all coming from different cultures, traditions, lots of stories to tell and I was just there to listen. We used to gather at a spot during coffee breaks with a cappuccino from the coffee machine and talk about how similar or different colleges were, how things were in their places, movies, series, memes, jokes, and a lot more. Although the break was 10 mins, everybody who wanted would come, talk around and leave without being on the phone. You can see the images and a few of my friends from the internship in the pictures from the post below: Talks, Rides And A Whole Lot Of Memories | Melvin Raj In here, I describe my days spent while interning for Infosys, Mysore has been. That place brings back happy thoughts always Melvin Raj Melvin Raj With regards to fitness, as I said, I decided to jog around the race track for 5 laps continuously and every weekday I used to wake up early morning, go to the track, and just walk for an hour. In the beginning, I didn't want to overdo it and then stop so, I took it slow. I ran half-track once at the beginning of the walk and once at the end, the rest of the time I was walking. After a week, I was running a whole lap at the starting and end of the morning routine and in between walks. Slowly day by day, I went from doing half a lap to 3 laps without any problem and the level of satisfaction I got was indescribable.  I was more active in classes, more active on the weekends to go out and travel and I was sleeping like a baby. After that, the news of Covid was spreading and with the factor of how infectious and how to treat it is unknown, the Government imposed a lockdown. Soon, our 4-month training cut short to 2 and half months. Everybody was leaving and somehow, my bus returned because the border was closed between states. This led me to stay on the campus for the next two months just enjoying being with a few of my old friends who couldn't go back to their hometown and also a few new friends whom I met after we came to know we are going to be here for a while. This period had me playing Pubg(mobile). Oh lot of memories attached to this game, evening walks with friends, playing badminton, sitting on the food court floors playing ludo. Walking at night. Seeing sunrises at the morning and sunsets in the evening. This phase was both amazing and scary but you know, it was one of my best days. I talked a lot with friends and family over the phone, played, had lots of chai and coffee. Waited to eat chicken for 45 days(I didn't eat any non-veg for 45 days, and I love non-veg. It was hard for me😅). I have written about it in detail in my previous article The Pause . You can read more about it here. The Pause | Melvin Raj This post is about the time I have spend my lockdown in the Infosys, Mysore. This is the last post of the infy - diaries series. Melvin Raj Melvin Raj All in all, I wanted to remember the feelings, the friendships, the memories attached to this date, and everything two years ago. So, I wrote a bit more today. The friendships might be a bit different today due to work, our present situations but few of us still talk to each other and these are profound moments of the last two years. The whole experience I had will always stay and people reading this who were part of my journey during that time will always stay here in a written format, for you to cherish with me. I hope we get to have more such experiences in the future, not exactly like these but even more different but worth writing and talking about. Grateful to be part of such an amazing experience - The Place Where We Hung Out During Coffee breaks Thank you for reading. ☕ Join the weekly brew newsletter where I share 1 article, 1 tweet, and 1 video along with a few personal thoughts bundled as a mail every Saturday. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

Steal Like An Artist

It is a book written by Austin Kleon on 28th February 2012. It's been 10 years since the book has been published and I first heard about this book last year in lockdown from Ali Abdaal's channel. I was waiting to read the book for a year (It took a year because I was not reading a lot and was always pushing back the books to read). Finally, last month I ordered the book and read it. That is only after listening to the Audio trilogy of Steal Like An Artist first. I loved the book so much, I ordered it to read in paperback because Austin Kleon , is a writer who draws and the paperback has some of his work printed and I wanted to have those to refer to in the future. How did Austin get the inspiration for the book? I would say read the blog post for the 10th anniversary of the book, where he writes how he got started in writing the book and how a speak at a university turned into a book within months. The book that changed my life Looking back at 10 years of Steal Like an Artist Austin Kleon Austin Kleon What is the Book about?   This book is about how to be creative and have something in your life that gives you happiness. This book will show you how to be stealing ideas and adding your ideas. If you ever thought of starting something be it as a hobby. Read this book before starting to have a proper way to have longer hobbies. The ideas shared in the book apply to anyone who is trying to have some creative aspect added to their personal and professional life. Book Notes and Summaries: The book starts with these lines - For Boom — whenever Boom gets here Not a lot of people know this but this is for his son (Owen) whom Austin and his wife were expecting. loved the first line so automatically I loved the entire book itself. Steal Like An Artist: All creative work builds on something that has been made before. Nothing in the world is completely original. Good artists understand that nothing comes from nowhere. They practice every day taking inspiration from things they are fond of or from work they appreciate and build upon those things. Every new idea is a mashup of one or more previous ideas. Always remember that 1 +1 = 3 in the creative world. I broke it down as 1 for the other idea, 2 for your ideas, and three for people who might understand the new thing differently (we can call it 'unknown'). Save your thefts for later - You need to have lots of little pieces of work from others that you can share. This comes in handy when you want to make a point or when you feel uninspired to look up and re-write them in your way. Don't Wait Until You Know Who You Are To Get Started: Fake it 'til you make it - this phrase can be read in two ways: Pretend to be something you are not until you are; or Pretend to be making something until you make something. This reminds me of the saying - Be a warrior in a garden not the gardener in a war.   Write The Book You Want To Read: The rule is simple - Write about things you want to read, do the art you want to see, build products you want to use, and finally, do the work you want to see done. Use Your Hands: You need to find a way to bring your body to move. Take a walk , start moving, get your hands dirty with paint, and have two desks to be as far from screens as possible when you don't feel like doing. The computer is really good for editing and typing faster but it also has the option to hit the delete key whenever you make a mistake. Let the mistakes happen, you will observe yourselves change and make it right the next time. Use your hands. Side Projects And Hobbies Are Important: Practice productive procrastination - meaning doing things that you can pick up as a hobby to procrastinate. Intentionally take time to be bored. Some of the best work comes from being bored. The Secret: Do Good Work And Share It With People - You have t enjoy your obscurity. Once you start gaining the attention of people you can't experiment a lot. There may be a few downsides. So, enjoy the obscurity and people are generally too busy and they don't care about your work unless it's good. You will get there, but in the meantime try out different things, experiment, start multiple projects and stick to what works. Geography Is No Longer Our Master: If you feel you are not in the world you live in, you can build your world where you are. Surround yourself with books and music you love. Build cool things that you like, tape them up on a wall, make your paradise. Surround yourself with interesting people from all fields of work. You will realize how connected everything is. You can share your identified points with the world. You need to find a place that feeds you  — creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally. Be Nice:   The World Is A Small Town - You need to be nice to people around you. If you like their work, be appreciative and show your support however small the effort might seem. Don't feed on the negative things. The most important thing is you show appreciation without any expectation in return. It may be online or offline. Write fan letters. It may not be an email, but it can be Dm's on Instagram or Twitter. Write a blog about the things you learned from them and link to them. Make a video solving a problem they have and maybe they will see but the important thing is to make them. Lastly, get comfortable with being misunderstood or ignored. The cheeky little trick is to be too busy doing your work to care. Be Boring: It's The Only Way To Get Work Done. Take care of yourself. The whole image of leaving the job to pursue the life you want is being played out for too long and I see a little change where people are investing a lot more time in taking care of themselves. Building better relationships with health, money, and people. Stay out of debt. Learn about money as soon as you can. Live within your means. Save as much as you can. Keep your day job until you have made enough to live off things you do what you truly love. A job can offer connection with people and a monthly stable money flow to run your family. Spent quality time with your family. Creativity Is Subtraction: Choose what to leave out. Figuring out what to leave out will get you way ahead. Placing constraints can bring you back into the creative zone. When it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom. Don't make excuses instead you can build something with what you have. Limitations can bring in better innovations you may have never thought about. Creativity is Subtraction - Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon | Summary By Melvin Raj Creativity is not the things that we choose to put in, it's the things we choose to leave out.   Where Can you Buy the Book? This book has a paperback version - here This book is also available on the audio version as a trilogy with other books from Austin Kleon. Check it out - here You can find more of the work from Austin Kleon here . I highly recommend checking out his work. He has a newsletter where every Friday since 2013🤯🤯🤯, he has been sending out 10 things worth sharing with his subscribers and I love the collection he must be having. I read more about his work online from anywhere possible and you must as well.  This summary is one of my attempts to let you know of this amazing book and the writer.   Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. New York Times bestselling author and keynote speaker about creativity in the digital age. Austin Kleon ☕ Speaking of newsletters, I share 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video worth watching bundled as a mail every Saturday called Weekly Brew. Sign up to get started.  Thank you for reading. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

4 Lessons That Differ In Real Life From School

Hey friends, There are many things you might have heard in school that just stuck with you for a long time. Well, I too heard and once I came out of school and college, I started to notice things very differently. Here are 4 main differences I found between what was taught in school and what happens in real life. 1. Don't judge a book by its cover: We are told don't judge a book by its cover. It is true to some extent but having a decent cover is necessary.  Most people don't judge by the cover but we are definitely interested in a book that has a beautifully designed cover sometimes. At the current speed of our lives, we can put up a little extra effort to have a decent cover(Neither the top-notch hip-fashion nor the boxers on shirts kinda attire.). Be it professionally how you present yourself, personally how you share ideas with the world - pack them in a decent cover. 2. The more you add to your writing, the better you are at the topic: This is what the essay competitions, long-form answers, and even the presentations in school have taught us. I remember I got fewer marks once because I didn't describe it enough and the reason I got decent marks, good enough to pass was that I wrote about topics related to and I have listened to in the class half-hearted. So, writing a lot may benefit in school/college but the online and real-world doesn't have time to read unless you have proven them once that you write well. Writing online and once out of college life has taught me one thing.  Keep it simple . Although sometimes you may need to fill spaces to make your point, it must be simple. 3. The more you work hard, the more you will succeed: I am sure most of us have been in this place where parents, teachers, and every other person who has an opinion tells this. I am not against hard work, but in the future, we are going into, hard work is not sufficient. We must be fluid like water. Adapt to any situation. How to do that? I don't know.  I am still learning. One thing I can tell for sure that will speed the process is to be open about conversations, opportunities, ideas, and changes. 4. This may be a personal view, but being told to be nice all the time: You can't always be nice and you shouldn't expect from others as well. Oftentimes, we have moments where we can't say anything and the only option is to be nice and move away. However, there are times when we mind our business but someone comes in to ruin our mood. It is okay to let them know you are not okay with him disturbing in whatever slang you and the person often interact with. Holding things to yourself, not letting others know how you feel, and not speaking up when needed will all be considered nice if you think it is the right thing but it isn't. Know when to speak up. In conclusion, all I want to address with this article is don't be so hard by what you believed in childhood(school/college) times. Things change, adapt accordingly, and act. I noticed these a long time ago but written it down recently because I recently have heard someone say "Don't judge a book by its cover" and it resurfaced kind of. I wrote this article to tell you and myself one thing that is - Learn and unlearn We need to constantly be learning things and unlearning things that aren't relevant anymore. I suppose we can at least try. Just like Austin Kleon says in his book "Steal Like An Artist" Garbage In, Garbage Out. What are some of the school and college learnings that you had to unlearn in real life?   ☕ Sign up for my newsletter where I curate 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and a few personal thoughts every Saturday. Join others who are receiving them every Saturday. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

Look Around, Share, Repeat

Hey friends, do you know how much can a life change just by looking around? One example from the top of my head must be Michael Burry who looked through Default Rates in the housing loans and betted against them because he looked through financial documents of thousands of Subprime Mortgage Bonds. To understand what I mean, just watch the movie "The Big Short" (It's on Netflix). Another such example I can give is again a movie reference but it's "Moneyball", again the more you look around the more you will find things to do. From Artists to writers to data analysts, everybody has to look around for resources to make something. You might think it is weird and maybe wrong to be looking around and then creating something. Here is something you can think about. You are a mixture of your parents, and maybe your ancestors. You are still unique in a lot of ways. That uniqueness you have is not new but a combination of already existing DNAs of your parents. (Reference of this idea is from the book: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon .)   These examples didn't convince you to look around here are some of the stories from articles that I have come across. The best bourbon Story - Story of how Japan has the best Bourbon even though bourbon is an American drink. The story of how A newspaper mention of a Starbucks opening in Moscow led an investor to a big success. Want to drink the best American Bourbon - Visit Japan: Smithsonian Magazine published an article in 2014 "How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better " - In the article, they mention how Japan is mastering every forgotten idea and making them impeccable. Tom Downey, the writer of the article - mentions how he went to Osaka and headed to Rogin's Tavern, a bourbon bar contended by his friend that it is the best Bourbon he ever tasted. He reached the place, saw nearly every bottle is bourbon, though there is a smattering of rye and sour mash. He sees bottles from the 1800s next to obscure export bottlings of Jim Beam next to standard-issue Jack Daniel’s. Later an elderly man by the name of Seiichiro Tatsumi, dressed in a bartender's attire comes close and asks shall we taste bourbon from 1904(🤯).  After tasting it, Tom had the first thought was to ask Tatsumi how did he find these. This is what Tatsumi replied - “I tasted my first bourbon in the basement bar of the Rihga Royal Hotel, a famous old place in Osaka,” Tatsumi says. “Then I spent years reading everything I could about bourbon at the American cultural center. I sent letters to Kentucky and Tennessee trying to set up visits to the distilleries. I even asked for help at the American consulate. And then I finally got to visit in 1984. I fell in love with America then. I’ve been back a hundred times since. I now own a house in Lexington, and I’ve even been named a colonel in Kentucky.” I (Tom) ask him how he found all these old bottles of bourbon. “I drive across America, only on the back roads and especially at night, when you can see the lit-up liquor-store signs in the distance,” he says. “I stop at every place I pass, and I don’t just look on the shelves: I ask the clerk to comb the cellar and check the storeroom for anything old. I can’t tell you how many cases of ancient bottles I’ve found that way. I’ll try any bourbon once, and if I like it I buy more.” This way Seiichiro bought home a collection of bourbons and mastered the art of bourbons with its antique bottles and the taste itself. Bourbon is not the only one Japanese have imitated and perfected. Japanese are known for their focused mastery. They will make observations from the world and improve it for the better. Do read more examples from this article to know more about how the Japanese are masters at improving things for the better just by observing. Short Story About Sam Zell Sam Zell, a billionaire investor who reads newspapers just to search for things that don't make sense. Sam once saw that a Starbucks had opened in Mongolia. he was curious and he flew to Mongolia to see for himself, to his surprise he saw Starbucks open next to mines, which hinted at China's construction boom, and by the time he returned from Mongolia, Sam had a distinct and clear picture of the future of the Chinese economy. Why? - Just because the news didn't make sense and Sam was looking around. The point of this article is to help you understand how important it is to be aware of the environment and looking around can be a great way to start. Bored of writing the same things, look around and listen to people, their interests might intrigue you and you can write about them. I will be honest for a second here, I have been stuck in a place for a long time and honestly, the pandemic has done the same for almost everyone. So, the only place I seek inspirations, ideas, and stories to build upon is from the Internet. So, I naturally observed and read about how journalists find stories, how they research and back up with proven facts. I know it is a lot to process. In conclusion, all I want to share with you is, it is not that hard to get started on sharing your work. Start creating by taking inspiration and don't be afraid to tag the main sources. You must look around, then learn from it, and then repeat the cycle all over just like the water, you must be pretty fluid to adapt. If you are looking to start out in any hobby or interest start looking around. Most people think they need to be original, they think nobody will read their idea, and stop them from making it. This article addresses those people who need that push to start looking around. If nothing works out, you will have the experience of learning something on the side. Start creating and sharing. ☕ I curate 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and a few personal thoughts and send them as a newsletter called 'Weekly Brew ' every Saturday. Join in to get yours. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

What Is The Diderot Effect And How It Works

Hey friends, today I wanted to share something that I came across while learning about different effects that humans tend to often fall into to make ourselves feel better but in return will be harmful in the long run. What is the Diderot Effect? The Diderot effect is a social phenomenon related to consumer goods. It is based on two ideas. The first idea is that goods purchased by consumers will align with their sense of identity, and, as a result, will complement one another. The second idea states that the introduction of a new possession that deviates from the consumer's current complimentary goods can result in a process of spiraling consumption. The term was coined by anthropologist and scholar of consumption patterns Grant McCracken in 1988 and is named after the French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), who first described the effect in an essay. The term has become common in discussions of sustainable consumption and green consumerism, in regard to the process whereby a purchase or gift creates dissatisfaction with existing possessions and the environment, provoking a potentially spiraling pattern of consumption with negative environmental, psychological, and social impacts. (Source: Wikipedia ) Suppose you are buying yourself a shirt, then you may get in the stroll for wanting the jeans to match it and then maybe a nice jacket on top and finally nice shoes, socks and so on... You see buying the shirt is not bad. It's the idea of wanting other things to match with the shirt and feeling the compulsive need to upgrade every aspect of the apparel is the bad thing. Why does it happen? Life has a natural tendency to become filled with more. We are rarely looking to downgrade, simplify, eliminate, to reduce. Our natural inclination is always to accumulate, to add, to upgrade, and to build upon. (Source: James Clear Article ) It is a natural thing to want more things once we move forward in life but not having the consequences in our head will only be a spiral for us and it happens in mostly all parts of our lives. We, start with one thing and then match everything according to it. Here is an example, I did which just spiraled me to buy more. You know the game World Series Of Poker. I used to be good and played it for hours. So, Once I started using money in that game and within a week I spent over 2000. That is when I realized it was not worth it and uninstalled it. I agree 2000/- is not a lot of money but to me at that time was huge as I was a college student. So, unknowingly we all do the same thing and keep going in a spiral to match with be it our identity, our status, our environment. Where does the Diderot effect take place? This effect has an origin from one of the writings of the famous French Philosopher Denis Diderot who is famous for writing the French Encyclopedia. When the Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him for £1000 GBP, which is approximately $50,000 USD in 2015 dollars. Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare. This Diderot effect was formed from a story from when Diderot was 52 years old. His daughter was about to be married, but he could not afford to provide a dowry. When the Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him for £1000 GBP, which is approximately $50,000 USD in 2015 dollars. Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare. This Diderot effect was formed from a story from when Diderot was 52 years old. His daughter was about to be married, but he could not afford to provide a dowry. Shortly after this lucky sale, Diderot acquired a new scarlet robe. That's when everything went wrong. Diderot’s scarlet robe was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by the rest of his common possessions. In his words, there was “no more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty” between his robe and the rest of his items. The philosopher soon felt the urge to buy some new things to match the beauty of his robe. He replaced everything in his room to match with the robe and that is when he started to notice how everything actually too much money which he unintentionally started. Here is the french essay in English translation if you are interested.  Look at the title which already shows he is talking about the mistakes he made and we must watch out as well. Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown, or A warning to those who have more taste than fortune Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown by Denis Diderot 1769 Denis Diderot These reactive purchases have become known as the Diderot Effect. These reactive purchases have become known as the Diderot Effect. What you can do about it? We can't completely ignore every want we have and live our lives. We have to be constantly thinking, reflecting, and rethinking about the choice we are about to make to buy a certain thing. Nowadays, everything is available in abundance, the least you can do is choose wisely. A few things I have read and are absolutely easy steps are: Think about it before buying anything: There are many things in the world that we might seem interesting but evaluating what is absolutely necessary will improve our chances of not falling into the trap. The idea that "things are not what they seem" Before making a judgment based on how others are living, take a moment to reflect on whether you can handle the amount of work, fame, and embarrassment the work might cause or take effect. We are humans, after all, we can't be cautious about everything, which takes the momentary pleasure and comfort out but being cautious of things can take a significant amount of your time is not a bad thing. Taking a week before buying something Taking a week before deciding to mean once you decided to buy it, intentionally wait a week and it will be amazing and practical if it is a month. Personal story, I bought a digital pad, that allows me to sketch and paint on my mobile using a pen, I thought it can replace the need for my iPad, where I can type, paint, and also use it for research purposes as an extra screen. I waited a week but still ended up not using it only after a few months as it was tiring. So, I would recommend taking a month before you buy and actually deciding to buy it. Maintain a limit on how much you spend This is to be the best case to overcome buying but it's so hard. Living on a limit. We believe Yolo(You Only Live Once) and take a jump but often times we don't need Yolo motive for everything. I would suggest maintaining your spending so, really you can track how much you have and how much you can willingly buy is a huge step in the right direction. There is an entire book talking about the relationship between humans and money. I have written a summary about it and the book is called "The Psychology Of Money ". I highly recommend this book to understand money and how it works: The Psychology Of Money - Book Summary | Melvin Raj An essential read for anyone interested in being better with money. Melvin Raj Melvin Raj In conclusion, the Diderot effect is a common problem, and you should know how to deal with it. I know you may think this philosopher is a stupid man but hey, everybody goes through that stage where money is not an issue and we can afford anything we want. Knowing what to do in those situations is all his essay was and the mistakes he made that we can avoid. So, the key takeaways would be: Think before buying The idea of if they bought it so should I. Set a time before buying and actually buying Set spending limits each month and spend based on it. ☕ Sign up for Weekly Brew where I send out 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and a few personal thoughts every Saturday. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

5 posts! 

Many more to go! 

[melvinraj]

Be The Bridge!

Hey friends, today I would want to expand on the topic of how you and I can be someone who can build a bridge between the ever-advancing technology and our regular social norm. There is a huge gap between Advanced Technology and social norms, I mean think about the current situation, we know something is up in social media. Everywhere it is all about the Web3, Cryptocurrency, and everything in between but it took 11 years (approx.) to make that transition. Bitcoin, which some predict will become the most important technology(Not the bitcoin itself but the underlying technology) of the 21st century. However, bitcoin is combined results of cryptographic advancements made in the 1970s, with digital cash research from the 1980s, cypherpunk philosophy from the 1990s, with digital cash experiments from the 2000s, which Satoshi Nakomoto cited in the Bitcoin white paper .​ It took lateral thinking and the deliberate effort to educate people on the technology that led to such humungous growth. many people at the time were thinking of such a world where there are no middlemen but it was Satoshi who ignited by bridging a combination of ideas and bringing people to his side. The other thing that fascinates me was the Graduate part and leveraging the internet to showcase your skills is a sure shot way to impress the peers you are working for or applying to. That is sole because they can see the work you put in rather than the total mugging up to pass the generic exam sort of knowledge. Honestly, this will be a revolutionary advancement if access to proper education will give to our generation. There are lots of problems people face every day and if you manage to solve one, you hit the jackpot! There was a steep decrease in the number of students dropping out from graduate colleges this year which indicates 2 things, One is a good thing and the other is a bad thing. The good thing is they have the internet that they can leverage to be better than most of the people running the rat race. The bad thing is the education system still believes that students don't know what they are doing. There are a lot of opportunities that are just available online and you can learn and maybe bring a few people along with you by sharing. Be that bridge between you and a few others who are willing to learn or explore.   In conclusion, here are a few things that you can take as an introspection from above: Don't be afraid to do things that you are afraid to do. Leverage the internet to create your own job( which I know sounds crazy but, it is possible). How to do it? - I don't know clearly but for starters - start sharing what you are interested in and be consistent about it. There are many artists, creators, authors, and more who took the leap and went all in - from being in a totally different field and being successful . If you think you are alone, you are mistaken and your ideas are actually worth listening to. If you think you will make a change in your particular interest in one day, don't start. As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day stands true for every activity we do. Every aspect of your life from education, career, relationships takes years to establish and prosper. If you are told otherwise, they are wrong. Just accept it as soon as possible. Just start doing. We are told that failing in something is such a wrong thing but as you get to your work you fail every day to keep up with the standards and you will be thinking if only I mastered failing. This point can be a whole blog post for another day but the point is to start trying out different things: If you are not interested after trying or you will have a feeling of not to do it, Then you can just drop it pick another thing you are interested in. Fail quickly by doing many things to realize where you want to succeed . Lastly, If you are unsure of anything, just pick a topic and start sharing it with others either by writing, talking, or recording yourself doing it. it will in the long run help you and serve you as a skill to offer to people. I hope you start soon and work for the rest of the time on things you like. Be that bridge between people and ideas as people are multipotentialite and it is to some extent true. Who knows people might follow your ideas just because they are curious even. Bring those ideas closer to them by sharing them. Be that Bridge . Thank you for reading. ☕ Sign up to weekly brew as I share 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and a few personal thoughts bundled in a newsletter. Sign up now. Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

The Game You Know, The Story You Don't

Wordle Hello, people of the internet. I have two questions for you - Have you ever played Sudoku or the word puzzle or any word guessing game for that matter? Have you felt like your ideas are small and might not be a great success? If you did answer yourself yes on at least one, read along to know about a game that took the Twitter world and entire publication to buy it in close 7 terms within 4 months.   The Wordle game was recently acquired by the New York Times. I never gave any interest in the game although there were many people playing it and showcasing it on Twitter. But I saw this game gain such huge popularity within months and now I read that the game got acquired.  This got me curious. Wordle - A daily word game Guess the hidden word in 6 tries. A new puzzle is available each day. A daily word game Following my curiosity, I went to google and started to know more about the game and found a story that needs to be told. Firstly, this is what the game is: Every day, you get a secret 5-letter word to guess and you get six tries to guess it. If you get the right letter you get a green box If you get a letter right in the word, you get yellow and gray if the letter doesn't match the word. The game gained popularity because: 1.  It brought in scarcity i.e. the game can be played only once every day 2. Bought a simple game that can be played with more people. 3. People were sharing it on social media with the grid box of colors of green, yellow, and gray. 4. No advertisements 5. No capture of user data A few interesting facts I found is 1. The gameplay is similar to the two-player board game Mastermind which had a word-guessing variant and the game Bulls and Cows, with the exception that Wordle confirms the specific letters that are correct [Source: Wikipedia ] 2. The sharing option was later put in. People used to manually show the boxes. Seeing this the creator added in the share feature later (rapid feature additions that he(creator) took notice of). The feature was similar to this: 🟨🟨⬛🟨🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨🟨 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨🟨 3. Simple, elegant, and amazing enough to get others intrigued. This game had only 90 players in November 2021 whereas now there are close to 300,000 players(approx.) playing this game every day! I personally never played the game but I was seeing the tweets of people and their love for the game. It truly built a cult-like following with its simplicity. How did NYT come into the scene? The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, that dominates most of the digital and print media and news coverage. Adding to that In the digital space of NYT, there are NYT games that are puzzles for people to play. These games include spelling games, letterboxed, tiles to name a few. These games are a fun little section just like the newspaper where you had puzzles and cartoon sections.   Recently,  NYT was looking into ways to get more subscribers, this is how a company looks to move forward by acquiring customers, subscribers and onboarding them with different interests. This post from nytco.com  explain better their reason for the games section and how wordle caught their attention in a more succinct manner: New York Times Games have captivated solvers since the launch of The Crossword in 1942. Our experts create engaging word and visual games — in 2014 we introduced The Mini crossword, followed by Spelling Bee, Letter-Boxed, Tiles, and Vertex. Our games were played more than 500 million times in 2021, and in December, we reached one million Games subscriptions. As The Times looks to entertain more solvers with puzzles every day — especially during these anxious times — we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired Wordle, the stimulating and wildly popular daily word game that has become a cultural phenomenon. Wordle, which gives players six tries to guess a five-letter mystery word, will join New York Times Games’s portfolio of original, engaging puzzle games that delight and challenge solvers every day. The Times remains focused on becoming the essential subscription for every English-speaking person seeking to understand and engage with the world. New York Times Games are a key part of that strategy. Our games already provide original, high-quality content and experiences every single day. Wordle will now play a part in that daily experience, giving millions more people around the world another reason to turn to The Times to meet their daily news and life needs. With this reasoning, I believe the move from NYT to acquire Wordle is a big win. Now onto the story: Creator, Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish ) is a developer who started as an artist at Reddit. He later became one of Reddit's first product managers, serving as a product manager for the community engineering team. In this position, he created popular collaborative experimental games such as The Button in 2015 and Place in 2017. He left Reddit for almost two years to work as a software engineer at Pinterest , before returning to Reddit also as a software engineer. It is in lockdown that he built this game so that he could play it with his wife. He mentioned in an article that he built the game for his wife Palak Shah, who loves the NYT spelling bees and crosswords. Josh originally built the prototype in 2013 but didn't build it until the pandemic because a lot of his friends have shown uninterest at the time. In the pandemic, as a gesture, he thought to build this game for his wife so that she would enjoy and thus his wife officially became the first player. This game was later sent to their Whatsapp friends who were loving it since everyone was in lockdown and this game becoming more than what it was meant to be. So in October 2021, the game was made available for people to play. The name 'wordle' for the game is a play on the creator's last name Wardle and 'word'.  About the words, the initial list of all of the five-letter words in the English language — about 12,000 — contained a lot of obscure words that would have been near impossible to guess, so they decided to select 2500 words that are 2500 days of gameplay ready. Funny what a game made for his wife was actually something that NYT acquired. Imagine from loving the NYT games to being acquired by the same NYT for the game you built just with pure interest and passion. This is a story of how ideas can be simple yet brilliant. How stories can be re-told in a way people want to hear, interact, and share. There are lots of amazing stories out there for you to tell in your own way. Start looking and keep enjoying the process. I tried this game after hearing about the story and Wordle 234 X/6 🟨🟨⬛🟨🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨🟨 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨🟨 I completely forgot the rules and thought every line is a different word. Well, I'm a first-timer, cut some slack. You can try your hand at this fun game below: Wordle - A daily word game Guess the hidden word in 6 tries. A new puzzle is available each day. A daily word game Thank you for reading. ☕ Sign up for the Weekly Brew newsletter where I send a newsletter with a curated list of 1 article, 1 tweet, 1 video, and more every Saturday.  Weekly Brew

[melvinraj]

Ways To Start Writing Online

Hey friends —

Writing is a key part of our life(at least professionally), from writing minutes of meetings to preparing documents to enhance the teams work efficiency, from having to write an email to peers asking for a 2 day leave to contacting support team to get an issue resolved. Writing is needed and unfortunately those skills are not taken seriously until you are thrown in the corporate world. Learning to write(in big picture it resonates with story-telling) effectively and engage people is the underrated skill any person can showcase.

Having a place to present all your writings, the value you bring in and most importantly documenting your own journey is the best thing you can gift your future self. That is where a Blog or a Newsletter comes in.

Why you need a blog?  

As most of you might be knowing that blogging is a way to keep log of something that you are passionate about and store it in the web(online). That is all blogging is, a place on the internet where you store all your logs(in this case writings).

You can literally start by writing about your day and it is a blog. Having such an amazing opportunity to document and reflect on certain parts of your life by writing while improving yourself is an amazing way to spend your time.

If you decide on starting a blog, you will have to start by asking yourselves these questions:

What is it that I want to write about?

How many articles on the topic can I write about?

What are the other branches of topics I can write about?

These questions will help down in narrowing the topics you want to write, but the most important thing while starting is to constantly keep on writing.

After you get an idea of what is it that you will be writing about, I would recommend starting to write down all the topics in a book and branch out the ideas for at least 30 posts in advance. This way you will not have to look for Ideas constantly and feel fatigue or a writers block in between.

Internet allows us to be connect with people everyday but creativity is serendipitous, so having the ideas listed beforehand will come in handy.

How To Start A Blog?

Blogs are just a click away on the Internet and honestly if you search for 'How to start a blog' and you will find more in-detail articles and videos explaining how to setup and everything.

I will let you know few of the options that I found which are super easy and will take only a few hours to setup your first blog.

In order to start a blog, you will be needing a platform to publish those and there are plenty of options. I previously used Blogger by Google and it is a bit outdated. For people starting out, it is amazing. Then you will be needing a domain. Domain on the internet is like the address plate outside your house. As per the map you will have longitudes and latitudes to pinpoint your location, but whenever some one asks your address you cant say the longitudes and latitudes, that is where you add a house name.

Similarly, for a webpage there is I.P address which is the longitudes and latitudes and a domain name is your house name. I chose mine to be melvinraj.com but you can name it anything you want.

At first when I started writing, I had no idea of proper domain so I wrote it under justablogbymelvin.com which is hard to tell people and I had a few problems with Blogger i.e.

No proper slug( the whole /post-link in  the website address was not friendly)

The formatting was a bit hard to do as the constraints were fixed and the design of the templates were pretty basic.

No proper place for people to Sign up or subscribe (Blogger recently removed the subscribing option)

No way to embed content on the post.

These issue were starting to trouble and bringing down the writing process as writing has more to it than writing i.e. Citing the Articles where more research is done and attaching proper image with alt text for better experience across web platforms.

So, I was looking for a better alternative and a better domain name and I found 3 places where I was confused in choosing one. The three websites I am referring to are:

Squarespace

Wix

Ghost

Squarespace

and

Wix

:

Squarespace is an online website builder which has amazing drag and drop feature. It is best for starting out but personally, I didn't like the templates there. I personally wanted something that is a little bit flexible and has the option to have fewer CTA's.

Wix is also an online website builder with amazing templates and additional options to create logos and customize the template.

Ghost

:

Ghost is a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members.

Ghost is open-source, independent, and funded 100% by its users. The pricing of the website hosting service is absolutely reasonable for people who take writing seriously and want to have a clean-looking website.

The Marketplace of ghost is amazing. This template that I am currently using, came out recently and it is really good. This is the kind of theme I was looking for, hence I ended up choosing Ghost as my host for my website.

They have a 14-day trial where you can try out and test the platform whether it is really suitable for you or not. Their support, Integrations, and ease of access dashboard are really amazing.

I would recommend people to get on these platforms and start trying out templates and then choose which one to settle for.

Note:  This article is just for people who really have an interest in starting a website for logging their interests and having an online presence. I am informing this beforehand due to the money constraint involved. You can even decide on writing online for free i.e. with the Blogger platform. It will help you figure out what is good and bad, from there you can navigate around.

I personally would recommend Ghost as you have the option to host it on your own, from your computer and you will be accountable for hosting and writing as you pay relatively less amount. There are tons of video, articles and Ghost Documentation are a great place to take knowledge on getting started. Kindly follow the steps in order to set up your first blog.

I chose ghost pro to ease my process, as a working professional and learning UX design, I can't be taking on the additional task of hosting it separately and whenever the server is down, I need to manually restart.

If people are just like me, I would advise taking the Ghost pro.

How to grow an audience?

I am writing articles online for the past 1 year and I can just inform you of the mistakes I made and now starting it all over again correcting myself to do be a better writer and grow my audience as well.

I am currently tackling these habits to grow my audience:

Write consistently

Share your content on Social Media

Reach out to other people who are writing the same topics and ask for feedback.

I have never done any of these but started doing these recently, so I would recommend you start it as soon as possible to become a better writer.

If writing on the internet is one game that you play, growing on the internet is a completely different game. I follow this simple trick by James clear in his book "Atomic Habits" -

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

If we write consistently with systems in play, the score called 'growth' will take care of itself.

You can read about the writing course I have been taking where I share notes on lessons I have learned from the 50 days of writing by David Perell.

Thank you for reading, I hope you start your writing journey and hopefully connect with me to share ideas and articles to learn. I have written a few articles on how the pandemic has affected us which you can read if interested.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.” - Stephen King

[melvinraj]

Start Walking To Clear Your Mind

Hey friends, I have been talking about writing and how it improves our thinking and speaking. But we forget to look after our physical health in the constant work environment and currently with jumbled work and home situations ever since the pandemic. Today I want to talk about the benefits of walking. I don't mean to write about it as if to teach you but I would like to share my story and then tell you the scientific backdrop of why walking is beneficial. Buckle up! In 2020, I was walking/jogging because I was on a campus that had a jogging track and every morning I used to go and start walking. No serious thought behind it but I wanted to be fit and looking at the race/jog track made me want to challenge myself to run 5 rounds of it. Obviously, I couldn't do it right at the beginning so took my time and within two months I ran 7 rounds of the track non-stop. It was one of my precious wins. Along with getting in shape, I noticed a few things that were being a bonus: The work I do (learning and actual work) started to feel exciting. The quality of sleep increased. I was more enthusiastic than ever before. There was immense satisfaction after hitting daily goals. I set the goal of improving by over a quarter lap every three days. So, by the end of 1 month, I used to run 2 whole rounds without stopping for a break. Within the second month, that increased to 7 rounds automatically.  The same routine but didn't get tired soon after two rounds hence I kept going. Every day I either jogged the same as the previous day or increased by a quarter for the first month and then in the second month, I was able to increase it by more than half. The science behind why walking creates an impact: Walking forms new synapses in the brain and they tend to form and then allow themselves to reorganize. This is something I have mentioned in one of my previous notes , the phenomenon of Neuroplasticity - which means the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections , especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. There are studies from Stanford University that say walking improves creativity . Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, Beethoven, and Morgan Housel - everybody walks. They say it is to clear their head and keep them focused which brings out exemplary performances. So, the question is needed to be asked - What does walking do to our brain?  - short answer: It begins with changes to our chemistry. This article from The New Yorker states the following message - Walking on a regular basis promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention . Keeping the studies apart, walking helps in clearing our mind. It will declutter the things that are unnecessary and once you get back to what you were doing - you will feel better. In case you are stuck with a problem - start walking. It can be just a walk around your neighborhood. As a writer, you will find better ideas and references as a result. I am writing this to be held accountable to start working out as I have become a potato. I am also writing to let you all know the upsides of working on the physical body. I obviously am not saying walking is the only exercise there is. You do what feels comfortable to you. Thank you for reading! ☕ Join the Weekly Brew, where I send out a newsletter every Saturday sharing curated content from interesting articles to Tweets to Videos and much more. Sign up below:

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