Have you read Outliers? The book by Malcolm Gladwell. It doesn’t abolish the need for Talent, but it does say that Hardwork, continously working on the fine parts of the craft and not talent is the reason people succeed in the things they do. This doesn’t mean you can have no aptitude for the craft, you have to, just as he puts IQ at a reasonable level to be smart at. But whether your IQ is 120 or 160, it’s the hardwork, dedication, discipline and the followup that puts you ahead of the pack. The secret in numbers? 10,000 hours or roughly 10 years of writing. He takes examples of himself, Bill Gates, Mozart and Tiger Woods as examples to prove his point. This gives a lot many of us hope where you think you cannot achieve, you just have to stick to it harder than most. This post also demands that the last posting I do of stuff from Gym Jones about the misconception of Talent.
Far too long have the insults been thrown. Tub of lard, the seeds were sown.
Now shall rise a new beginning. The weighty shall be taken skinning.
In there is but one trust. You aren’t a snowflake, just crumb off crust.
Work hard son, let the pain be relished. One day at a time, we fall.
- KPages, 2008
For some there is the easy way to do things. The sleight of hand when people aren’t looking to claim the trick your own. Far too long have people lived in the self delusion that great achievement comes without the necessary hours of toil. I should know, I thought there were instant ways to tune yourself up. Instant Pizza, Instant Coke, Instant food. Was I to blame? Was it the culture to hang? It’s easy to place the blame on the enviroment. It’s “safer” to direct your fingers, after all who would want to own up to the shame? That’s when Gym Jones founder Mark Twight hits you like a brick. There is no shortcut. There is no easy way. There is pain and some more. There is stripping away of the very core of your procrastination to reveal what only can make you human. Pure living, no bullshit. Here are a couple of essays taken from their page that I recommend reading to give you a jolt of reality like it did to me. There is no point fooling yourself again. 300 workout, on the myth of talent, and the why he started Gym Jones.
So I was on the lookout for buying a mousepad among other things related to gaming in india (preferably online) since I’m cool like that. Except I had no clue where to search. I remember the erstwhile V-Street operating something before and there was mention of a website called The Respawn. Both proved in sufficient in their choices and I asked a gamer friend. Lo and behold, three great websites. Ebay and Indiatimes shopping along with that terrible Rediff doesn’t make the list. These are good websites you can buy gaming stuff from or order it online.
1: Buy Gaming Stuff online - That’s really the name of the website.
2: The IT Depot - what’s with everyone putting “The” in the title?
3: Tech Shop - had the most range among the three for what I was looking for.
I’m still searching for the QCK Heavy Steel Series at a good deal. 1500 RS for a mouse pad seems a lot excessive.
I’m a huge fan of strategy. That doesn’t mean sitting behind closed doors drawing plans, it’s about smart action and fast action. The keyword being Action. I think the interest started when I got into warcraft 3. This game is hugely strategic (excepting the Nightelves ofcourse) and lies on various factors. For years in both Quake 3 and Warcraft 3, I was good at the game simply because I practiced it far more than most people. And the desire to win was greater than my fellow companions. I didn’t know there was a science behind the achievement of the top players. If you take players of various games today, you’ll see they have broken it down to a science. What differentiates the players then lies on 2 things in my opinion.
a) Intellect
b) Motor Skills.
In that order. Intellect is the primary thing that seperates idiots from the achievers. This is not limited to just one field. I believe this is pervasive over all games. Being smart, gets you better - faster. Motor skills, to a large extent, can be learnt by any idiot. How hard is it to move a mouse and press keys on keyboard after all ? But purposeful action is something that largely eludes many people getting into any game. That being said, I have immense respect for players still grinding it at the game and STILL enjoying it. That’s the most important part, if you aren’t enjoying it, stop doing it. Why tortuself in this one life you have. I came across an interview with Alex Valle, a street fighter legend of the game. He’s 31 years old now and still going strong with strategy. And the stuff that this game has.. man you wouldn’t believe the amount of mechanics there is to this game. The whole interview with Alex Valle is up here, but I thought I’ll post some of the most interesting tid bits related to strategy thatI found.
Alex Valle of USA , street fighter
On how developing motor skills before tournaments is important.
If you’ve seen an online match, they’re so sloppy because nobody cares. You want to land all this crazy stuff, but it’s so sloppy trying to do it. If you were to take that same sloppiness to a real tournament match, like 50% of your life would be gone attempting to do something technical. Attempting. So once you figure that that out in round 1, in round 2 you’re not going to have anything left. You’re not even going to attempt your old strats that you practiced online, because when it counts and you’re sitting right next to the person and they know that you can’t beat them, they don’t work.
On how age affects game play
The only thing that’s going to affect me is my execution. For many of the standard photographic situations that are coming at me, it’s the conditioning and the execution part that I’ll probably be struggling in. As far as strategies and overcoming all the obstacles, that will never leave me. Age really doesn’t matter. You still have Street Fighter II Super Turbo players who are pushing 40 and still dominating, and that game requires a lot of fast-paced execution. There are no short cuts in Super Turbo: if you missed an uppercut, it’s because you really missed an uppercut.
I actually do feel I have somewhat of an advantage over these new guys because being really good at all games, I’m already prepared for it. They have to put in the work and the time to adjust to any hardships.
On dealing with trash talking
Yeah. Going back to everyone calling me “1998-Power” and “old timer” and stuff it is what it is, but were in 2009 and my name is still out there. Where are you at?
On playing high level and enjoying it
Look, I’m not the only one: but there are only a handful of people who can still do this. I’m one of them, John Choi’s one of them, Justin Wong can do it. These guys don’t really have to go to all these tournaments to prove anything. They have this set in stone in their minds: it’s like riding a bike, being good at Street Fighter. You can like practice two weeks before a tournament, a national tournament, and still place like top 10, top 8, whatever. That what happens after many years of grinding at this game. We will never suck, and I rode this for the past couple of years. After not practicing, I’m still placing top 8 at EVO, but now in Street Fighter 4, I’ve never seen as much hype and hunger for a game that it takes me back to the 90’s. It really does. I’m stepping over my life boundaries between taking my girlfriend out or holding RTSD sessions for these players. Or like going to Watson’s pad and leveling up with them, or doing what I’ve got to do to really be dominant in this game. I’m doing what everybody that really enjoys something does.
Excellent analogy between Street Fighter (and games like Quake 3) vs RTS (Warcraft 3)
Let me give you my analogy for this. (clears throat). You’ve got tennis, where you can watch any Open live, and then you’ve got an MMA fight, right? So if someone hits a serve and someone hits it back, no one’s saying anything in tennis until someone finally scores a point and then everybody claps because they’re allowed to. In MMA, you’ve got people cheering all the way down to the ring. You’ve got the announcements, the hype, and whatever happens before to piss those to guys off to put them where they are up to the very first swing. That’s what you have with Street Fighter right now. An RTS game is like tennis: you can’t really see anything. There’s just boring, there’s no hype. It’s crap. You don’t even feel intensity. Even if those guys were shit-talking before, you don’t know that. You don’t care. You just want to see how fast they have a zerg rush. Who cares. When you’re watching these guys at SBO on the live stream, you know Slasher and Gootecks did a really good job just trying to talk about what’s going on. Some people like it, some people didn’t like it, but it was really hype. I’ve never seen anything like this before.
On staying motivated
Actually, I do. Keep playing. Everybody out there, if you can’t make it to EVO, you might make it next year. It’s not like mandatory you have to go to these things. Just keep in mind that the community is strong, and we’re always going to help you, but also keep in mind that it’s a very competitive scene. Don’t take it the wrong way if someone wants to win really bad. That’s just them. Either you can suck it up or challenge it, or just get better man. Get better at home. Do what you’ve got to do to get better at Street Fighter, and the scene will take over.
I think this is a fine interview , read up the whole stuff. Shoryuken!! Here’s an awesome video btw of Alex playing Sagat against the best street fighter player in the world, Daigo Umehara.
Most of my time is spent nowadays on Posterous posting and the ever addictive Twitter. I am also working with some fine clients to get their project up. More details on completion.
Here’s an excellent link for basic photography tips. I liked the ones below as well. Click on the pics to see a larger view.
Part of my job was to write PR releases for various products we released. Initially the excitement’s all about blowing your company’s horns around and getting as much brand recognition as you can. But at the end of the day, if someone read your copies over a period of time, they would have to find something exciting about your release. Not a long list or portfolio of your company’s directors. One of the best articles I have come across about how to write great PR is termed a $25 million press release written by David Seaman.
Added below are the thumb rules and do give the copy a read, this is gold stuff.
Shorter is better - No long stories, just the facts but interesting ones at that. A good press release is between 300-400 words - he quotes 200, I would say 300 is ideal. Keep it easy - skip out of the fluff like best company in the world, disrupting all landscape around you. Keep the title snappy and clear - If you talk about Gun control, talk about it in the title. 3 percent to 5 percent keyword density in copy - if your total words are 100, SEO keywords are 5. 15 percent density keyword in title - This was new to me. Persistency pays off - keep iterating it and revising it till you can cut out the flab no more.
One of my friends posted a link about the networth of one’s website. Now given the chance to do any ego searching one must comply and check their own website. If you don’t then you are either lying to yourself or don’t love yourself too much. So what I did immediately after checking out his stats was to put my own URL and check out the value and lo and behold I’m worth $1722.8. That’s an awesome ROI. But then a deep sadness hit me. I haven’t been faithful to my blog nor have been updating it consciously, so I decided that we are going to raise this networth by this month end by atleast a 100 dollars. That’s doable I think and something I would seriously like to flex my writing muscles with. Here’s the quote for today that has inspired me.
I dont count my situps. I start count when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, thats when I count, coz that’s when it really counts- Mohammed Ali
I must apologise for starting with an apology. I have been twittering and reading up a lot. There I said it. I have started to understand why Twitter is really cool as a tool. But I’ll save that for another post. I have been seeing a couple of movies of late and also thought I should pen down my thoughts, if only for keeping the content juices flowing. I chide myself for not living up to it. I have taken up a new project that I am very excited about and will post details about it as well.
Links for today was something I started on my office email and sent it over to my gmail address for later reading. Along the lines I started checking out firefox extensions like Read it Later , delicious bookmarks, foxymarks and so on and so forth. None of that ever got to me reading them later on unless they had something super urgent in them. So I decided that I’ll follow the ways of my good friend (not really) Steve Ruebel from Micro Persuasion and post interesting links that I see. Start clicking!
What’s up yo? Thought that my friendly readers (you precious few that I adore) would want to know what’s up with me and what I am up to. Without further ado here are some changes.
Getting more active on Twitter
A couple of my friends can’t get it and call it crap. Sometimes it might appear to be a waste of time, but people have successfully leveraged it to form a whole new form of expression and medium to connect with. I have started following up on tweets, and try to keep updating whenever I can. Twitter’s not without it’s share of celebrities. The extremely hot, and now proven intelligent without doubt, Gul Panag is on twitter. There’s also Ashton Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore who seem to be having their fun. Oprah and Larry King are on it as well. All in all a great bunch of people, I think you should get in touch with as well.
Learning to Rock Wordpress themes
You’ll notice I have changed my theme to Thesis, this is hailed as one of the best themes around on the WWW for Wordpress. I got myself this theme thanks to a friend and will be using the book I purchased - How to be a wordpress rockstar to shape up my skills in Wordpress theme and design.
Learning advertising, online marketing and logo design
Three interests of late and something that I have started working with certain people with. I love the fact that you can mingle freely as a consultant, brew the entrepreneurial blood in you and at the same time be truly happy with your work. My areas of interest (and soon to be expertise) would be SMO, Social Media consultation, Wordpress theming and design. I have an immense interest in Logo design and Font-o-logy, but I am not sure if I will convert that to a commercial venture.
Books, books, books and more books. Movies Movies and more movies.
I love them, can’t get enough of them and will keep continuing reviewing them all.
Reading biographies of Leaders and CEOs.
For some strange reason, I am drawn to knowing more about the life of those in command. Do I see myself in that position some day? Quite possibly. Do I enjoy reading about them? Most definitely. Do I want to write about what I have observed and learned? Without a doubt. That’s part of the stuff you can look forward to me writing about.
By the way, if anyone wants a copy of the watchmen comics do let me know and thanks to my friend, I’ll forward it. You can, if you are really smart, grab the torrents and read it up as well. I heard it comes highly recommend. Check out my movie review here.
It’s not every movie that makes me jump on to the blog and write out my thoughts. But I would blame that on my mood and something that hasn’t happened before. The lax-ing of the Censor board in India. But more on to that later.
Watchmen is a movie directed by Zack Sydner. You would remember him from the wonderful movie 300, where the visuals were mind blowing, the script tight and the flow great. He kept the visuals part of that equation intact and floundered miserably on the the other two. This is based on a comic book and you know how seriously I take such movies where the rendering of the movie/character/hero has to bear some sort of resembalance to the whole thing right? Right.
The story starts about an ex-superhero being killed and a murder investigation then starts by a current hero. This current hero is the coolest character in the movie and goes by the name Rorschach. He is convinced that there is a larger plot, but how large is revealed as the movie goes on. This is a complicated intrinsic plot from the looks of it and many events occur together which are loosely pieced in the end.
So how was the movie?
In one word : disappointing. There were many useless scenes and the only reason I would give it credit is allowing full frontal nudity in Indian theatres. Apparently sex on the Indian screens is not really taboo. But that’s not the point. The point is this movie was patched together for lack of a strong story line. I haven’t read the watchmen comics but I know from what I have heard (from my friends and in particular Arvind and Tvac) that it holds a lot more depth and is hailed as one of the best “books” written. Not just a comic, but a book. Why would they want to screw it up in a movie? Largely because of the lack of being able to convey emotions that are abound in books and art. You cannot really express many things that you could in a book in a movie. And this is where the attempt failed. Scenes where miss.jupiter and nightowl fight and save some people from a burning house showed that they were as good a team so they had to do it to celebrate. Epic Fail.
It is important to understand that this concept of Watchmen was brought at a time when the readers in the 80’s and 90’s thought about a new understanding of the concept of a “super hero”. The understanding is that they use them and these superheros work together to prevent nuclear war destruction which was a large threat between Russia and the USA. The super heros start to question their roles in the whole equation and start to develop their character. There is a God in it who goes by Dr.Manhattan who has so many powers endowed and cannot age or die and can see into the future. How does he deal with it? What about the roles played by lesser godly heros who give into the dark temptations of man (Greed, Power and Lust). These are concepts that were explored and brings about a concept that is largely on the minds of people. Are Superheros more human than we think? Do they crumble?
These concepts should have been explored in a better way rather than focus on meaningless trivilaties. So many scenes like the Jailbreak, the love making scenes between the heros and heroines were largely useless in the story telling, but necessary to appear commerical. The reason this movie failed was trying to appeal to a commercial audience by roping them into the visual awe and forgetting that many people sometimes need
End Result: Movies at 5/10 mostly for visuals. But it’s a far better tribute paid to Alan Moore than that effin idiot who killed the Batman. Watch it for seeing how far we have progressed in visual effects in Cinema, but read the book if you want some deep meaning into this. As far as I can tell the movie is good for those that don’t expect anything, don’t read between the lines and don’t expect to go in with prejudged thoughts.
{UPDATE} - Thanks to Pegu I now have the Watchmen comics with me so as is customary, I shall read it and add a follow up. My score of the movie, by itself without comparing, still stands.
