Latest Posts

• Book of the Week: When to Rob a Bank

  The authors of Freakonomics and Think Like a Freak turned their blog into a book called When to Rob a Bank. There seems to be a trend of turning blogs into books. I also listen to their podcast. One thing I noticed is that all the their books have deckle edges, where edges of the pages aren’t cut clean. The book feels like they are milking a cow. It is an easy book to pick up and put down without retaining any big ideas. That said, I still read it. Proof of Purchase Insurance In India and San Francisco, you purchase a ticket and get on the train. Your ticket may or may not be inspected while you’re on the train. If you don’t have a ticket when you’re inspected, you get a fine. If they never inspect you, you didn’t to buy the ticket in the first place. In India there is an associated of ticketless travelers.

• Book of the Week: Man's Search for Meaning

  Man’s Search for Meaning was written by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived The Holocaust. The first part of the book is an account of his experiences in concentration camps and the second part of the book explains logotheraphy, which was another branch of psychotheraphy developed by Viktor. The concentration camps section reminded me of Schindler’s List.

• Book of the Week: Franklin Barbecue

  Since I didn’t want to pay $130 for a ticket for 2 beers, the cookbook and a plate of barbecue at the San Francisco pop-up event, I decided to read the Franklin Barbecue book instead. Even if I did want to pay for the tickets, they were sold out in seconds. This book is about Central Texas barbecue which is focused on beef brisket with no sauce. There aren’t many recipes in the book, because this book is about the process of making good barbecue. Fire + Smoke I was reminded of Alan Ada’s flame challenge when I read the Fire + Smoke chapter, where Aaron explains what happens when wood burns. It is hard to follow a recipe exactly and wind up with great barbecue. There are a lot of variables that go into making fire, especially when you are using a wood fire instead of gas. The skill lies in managing the fire. When to stoke the coals, how to select and arrange the wood and when to add more wood to the wire. Ideally, you want a lot of air for clean and efficient combustion that results in good smoke. Efficient car engines products less pollutants. You want your fire to be efficient. I wouldn’t want to operate a BBQ joint, because barbecue is a lot of work and you smell like smoke all the time.

• Book of the Week: Vagabonding

  

• Book of the Week: The Pumpkin Plan

  The Pumpkin Plan is geared toward entrepreneurs (small business and lifestyle) who can’t scale their business, because they say yes to everything. They spend lots of time and effort working while realizing minimal returns. The Pumpkin Plan uses an analogy to giant pumpkin farmers to help entrepreneurs prune their patch in order to make their pumpkins grow. Pumpkin Growing Process

• Book of the Week: The Four Pillars of Investing

  This week I skimmed through The Four Pillars of Investing by William J. Bernstein. There are summaries at the end of each chapter, so it is easy to skim through. This is a good book for people who want to invest. If you already have an index fund portfolio spread among different asset classes, you can skip this book. If you don’t, then after you read this book, you’ll will. The Four Pillars From the back page.

• Book of the Week: Scaling Up Excellence

  I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Huggy Rao about scaling. Scaling Up Excellence is a book Stanford professors, Huggy Rao and Robert Sutton, wrote about the problems that occur when companies try to scale up. Things start breaking, what worked before doesn’t work anymore. How do you grow without getting into a clusterfug? The book goes over a lot of examples since it is complied from 7 years of talking to people, but it is not as crisp and clear as I wanted it to be since a lot of things are nuanced. Reoccurring Cast It seems I can’t read a book with Silicon Valley start ups without Bill Campbell’s name appearing. Seems like he’s more “the Don” than “the Coach”. Also, when anybody talks about the d.school, they bring up the pediatric MRI example. If d.school and design thinking is truly effective, wouldn’t there be more than one example that really hugs the heart strings? I like design thinking, but only have a singular example makes me lose faith. It is like talking about Michael Jordan when trying to get people to play basketball. You may like basketball, but you aren’t going to fly like Mike. Scaling Mantras

• Book of the Week: Design Patterns

  This week, I take a look at Design Patterns: Elements of Reuseable Object-Oriented Software, which is often recommended to new programmers. When you start out as a programmer, your main concern is writing code that accomplishes a task. As you write more and more code, you notice that you need to do the same things over and over again. You notice patterns. Then you begin to isolate and identify things by giving them names. When you starting talking to other programmers, you need some common vocabulary. Design Patterns provides that common vocabulary. 24 Design Patterns Purpose	Design Pattern	Aspects That Can Vary
  Operation	Abstract Factory	families of product objects
  	Builder	how a composite object gets created
  	Factory Method	subclass of object that is instantiated
  	Prototype	class of object that is instantiated
  	Singleton	the sole instance of a class
  Structural	Adapter	interface of an object
  	Bridge	implementation of an object
  	Composite	structure and composite of an object
  	Decorator	responsibilities of an object without subclassing
  	Façade	interface to a subsystem
  	Flyweight	storage costs of objects
  	Proxy	how an object is accessed; its location
  Behavioral	Chain of Responsibility	object that can fulfill a request
  	Command	when and how a request is fulfilled
  	Interpreter	grammar and interpretation of a language
  	Iterator	how an aggregate’s elements are accessed, traversed
  	Mediator	how and which objects interact with each other
  	Memento	what private information is stored outside an object, and when
  	Observer	number of objects that depend on another object; how the dependent objects stay up to date
  	State	states of an object
  	Strategy	an algorithm
  	Template Method	steps of an algorithm
  	Visitor	operations that can be applied to object(s) without changing their class(es)

• Book of the Week: The Monk and the Riddle

  This week I read The Monk and the Riddle, by Randy Komisar, who works for a VC firm currently being sued by Ellen Pao for gender discrimination. The book is a little unusual, but I liked it. It’s fiction interspersed with Randy’s life and experiences as a VC. There is an overarching story of a caricatured guy trying to raise money for funerals.com and he takes side tangents to go into his background and experiences. Deferred Life Plan

• Book of the Week: The Progress Principle

  This week I read The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, a husband and wife psychologist team. This book is written for managers. The Progress Principle

• Book of the Week: The Pursuit of Wow!

  I did not like this book at all. I’m used to books conveying a coherent idea. The Pursuit of Wow! is the equivalent of an explosive diarrhea brain dump. There is just shit everywhere and somebody should clean it up. This might be okay as a coffee table book in the lobby of the doctor’s office. This book is written for people with ADD. I don’t need to be told 200 things. I just need to be told one valuable thing. I gave up reading the book, because I couldn’t remember what I had just read.

• Book of the Week: Growth Hacker Marketing

  This week I find out what it means to be a growth hacker with Growth Hacker Marketing. There’s not much to the book. It doesn’t tell you how to be a growth hacker in detail. Traction is better for specific things to do. This is written for old school marketing people who want to find out about this new thing called the Internet. This book is an interesting read after The 4-Hour Workweek, because Ryan worked on marketing Tim’s other book, The 4-Hour Chef. Everyone is linked together someway. Growth Hacker