All posts by vyom

Meeting Team LLA

Personal, ,

It was an ordinary weekend like any other weekend. I was caught up in putting my new born baby to sleep, when student suddenly my phone vibrated to show a notification which I found quite interesting. It was RJ on the Jagruk Journal community intimating that they were in Delhi hosting a meet and greet event in collaboration with Stable Money team and that if we were interested, we can come.

RJ, aka Rishabh Jain, CEO of a famous Youtube channel, Labor Law Advisor and also the host to many videos and shorts, is someone I had greatly come to appreciate over past few years. I also wrote about LLA being one of my favourite YT channel few years back! I find their videos on finance highly educational and greatly unbiased, and together with Mandeep made me along with millions highly informed.


So it was very unexpected that I was given the chance to meet them. But was as I reading it right? Was I dreaming? Was it a scam?
It wasn’t! It was actually RJ posting himself! While I knew about the event, but I was not formally invited. Apparently, it was a wild card entry! One last chance to attend the event!


First, I hesitated. Had doubts to go due to family commitments. But an opportunity knocked on my door and I wasn’t going to miss it. So I discussed it with my partner, packed my JJ Journal to get them signed and got ready to go. Event was in Crown Plaza, an hour away from my home but I was determined to meet the LLA team!


Reached an hour late, but better late than never I thought. I was surprised to see that there were more than 400 people at the event (Yes I counted the chairs afterwards). First, I was impressed at the gathering and soon a bit sad. I thought that no chance I am going to meet team LLA in person with so many people around!


I saw Harish on the big stage, one of the co-founders of Stable Money on the stage. And while I invested in FDs for my father through their app, I had no idea about the person behind the recent start-up. So it was fascinating to hear his story and they have come up with more products like bonds with a clean UI and fresh approach for next gen investors!


But then Mandeep announced that RJ and Andy were about to perform a skit and I was excited to finally be able to see them. Entry of RJ and Andy was something out of a movie. Great ramp walk! And the skit was great. Especially about the bit where we personal finance guys loves sharing our gyan and making an excel sheet before deciding everything!
After the event, I was totally surprised to see how RJ, Mandeep and Andy stood with the crowd to let people have selfies with them. They made sure no one goes disappointed.

RJ, the Man Himself!


RJ kept asking the community who they were, what do they do, and having lovely exchanges with them. He even took selfies himself and videos for those who came in groups. It was totally different and surreal watching him online. His voice sounded more commanding in person and aura more real. I felt special when he took out time to sign my copy of the Jagruk Journal, mentioning that we were on the same boat, as we both became recent parent.


Mandeep kept discussing personal finance queries from the crowd while taking selfies. He was also more grounded, was making everyone jealous sporting great hair but not shying away from anyone who wanted to interact with him. His signature was short and sweet to keep learning, which I greatly admire.

Money Minded Mandeep


And Andy was every bit straight out of his shorts! An appearance everyone was waiting for, after his apparent lack of performance in new shorts. A little secret, he did whisper that he’ll “be back”!
Andy, even when he was getting late to catch his flight to Jaipur,  took out time for signing my copy or JJ and write a lovely message!

Anari Andy!


Overall it was fascinating to meet everyone standing just inches away and talking to the “fans” face to face. In never felt that they were a personality. As RJ said in one of the skits, being “kinda famous” has its ups and down.


I remained in the hall right to the end, till RJ had to literally step down from the podium as stage was started to get dismantled by staff. Shook hands with RJ for one last time as he departed, and I exited from Crown Plaza, with a big fulfilling grin over my face.
I had taken a metro on the way to the event, but took a cab on the way back. Not because it was the best financial decision, but I had to just sit for a while and contemplate my amazing experience meeting the team LLA and what I can do in my life further to make me and my family more happy.


Also honourable mention to an acquaintance I made with one of the community member, with whom I got a chance to sign the copy with RJ! (Name withheld for privacy reason).


To conclude, I am taking a big inspiration from team LLA, after meeting them in person, and hoping to meet them again and have more conversation than remain star struck!

Big thanks to the staff of Jarguk team LLA and the chance to meet them in person! Until next time…. Be Jagruk!

Fixing Manjaro Boot Menu

Technology

I was fed up of Windows update erasing my grub entries. So I have documented the steps to fix it, the steps which works for me. I hope it helps me when I lost my grub bootloader again.

To fix the bootloader, follow the below steps:

  1. Boot from a Manjaro Live USB
  2. Open Terminal
  3. Type below command:
sudo manjaro-chroot -a
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
update-grub

Source: https://gist.github.com/dianjuar/a6e0d801a9f71f8edc06321178390320

black blue and red graph illustration

My favorite Finance YouTubers

Finance, , , , , ,

Indian economy have a bright future. It have come a long way since the Harshad Mehta times where loopholes could be use to become millionaires. The market have matured a lot since then and there are plenty of opportunity for becoming winners, if you have the discipline to follow the rules of the game.

My Finance Journey

My financial journey took a long time to start. Although I started investing in tax saver mutual funds probably since 2016, I never actually set foot in actively trading or investing. The equity market always fascinated me. But before I jumped onboard, I knew the horror stories of people loosing their entire savings in few days. So I was always keen on learning to swim before I set foot in the uncharted water. Then the covid-19 happened.

Continue reading My favorite Finance YouTubers →

How to setup WordPress on Digital Ocean (2020)

Technology, ,

With incidents such as Australian bush fire, Covid-19 Pandemic and civil unrest in many countries over one reason or the other, 2020 is basically proving to be one long nightmare. To make it worse for me, my server got hacked, majorly due to lack of proper security or a bad WordPress vulnerability (To put it in the words of Einstein, mildly, human stupidity has no limit).

So I decided to migrate the server to a new one and this time decided to invest some time in making it more secure. This guide is basically a document to setup such a server to host WordPress sites with as much security hardening as I possibly can do. 2020, bring it on!

Continue reading How to setup WordPress on Digital Ocean (2020) →

Android apps for TV

Uncategorized,

Android on TV has a long way to go. There is no clear guide on which apps to use or how to use it when it comes to having the most of Android on a TV. This article is for those who want to claim their Android TV as their own!

List of apps

Amazon
CCleaner
Chrome
CPU Identifier
Firefox
Foxit PDF Reader
FTP Server
IMDB
Internet Speed Meter lite
List my apps
Google Maps
Prime Now
Prime Video
Steam

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.amazonvideo.livingroom

Convert VBA Editor to Dark Theme

Technology,

So there I was, trying to find best color combination for making my VBA editor in dark theme. While I did find an open source utility on GitHub to hack the VBE.dll and then replace it in the system, I simply wanted to know a color combination that I can quickly set in the built in VBA color palette editor so that I can make the editor dark.

So I made this guide for myself to do just that, a quick 2 min will give you dark theme!

To set these, in the VBA editor, goto Tools -> Options -> Editor Format. Then refer below table to set the colors.

Now set the colors to below:

FieldForegroundBackground
Normal Text White Black
Comment Text Dark Grey Black
Keyword Text Light Green Black
Identifier Text Sky Blue Black
Bookmark Text Dark Green Black
Call Return Text Blue Black

And there, in 2 min now your VBA editor looks something like below. You can tweak it to your liking.

Final result

Spartan Poker – Using your poker face for good

Uncategorized

Quickly, and honestly, tell me what’s the first word that you think of when I say the word, “Poker”? Is it “Gambling” or “Luck”? Whatever is that I bet you didn’t think of the word, “Skill”. Yes my friends, let me give you a Red pill and tell you that for the most part the game Poker is actually based on skill.

But how?

A big difference between poker and gambling games is when gambling you are playing against “the house.” The Casino have a huge upper hand to all their games which means in the long term you will lose.
In poker, the casino has no interest in the outcome, as they are just the facilitators, and are providing a platform for players to play against each other for a fee. One player will win at the expense of others. The rules of real money poker accord every player a statistically equal chance to win, unlike gambling.

David Sklansky, a professional poker player from America gives a thought exercise. He says to think of the game and try to loose the game. In pure gambling games, you can’t “intentionally” loose. The chances of you winning as well as loosing are about the same. “Each move has a similar chance”. That is not the case in poker. In Poker, a player’s decisions and the ability to make right call depends heavily on his winnings. Continue reading Spartan Poker – Using your poker face for good →

Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love

Personal, , , , , ,

Story of the day I bought the Gixxer

Years of wishing, months of making up my mind and weeks of planning, the day had finally arrived. A day in September 2017, when I will buy my first ever motorbike.
The day was exciting for me. I had a plan. I had a shortlist of bikes that I wanted to try. I went to a showroom of Yamaha to try Yamaha SS RR, a bike which I found to be good. Alas, it was a bit over my height and so I dropped the idea of buying it. Next I moved on to a showroom of Suzuki, where I was about to test ride Suzuki Gixxer. My friend was also with me to test ride with me and to help me find my perfect bike.
So I did a test ride. I was a bit apprehensive since I was about to test ride a completely new bike on a busy road of Delhi. But as soon as I started the bike and hear the engine road I felt an ecstasy. I throttled a bit and felt a sudden rush of air on my cheeks. I felt good. The throttle was very powerful and the bike snappy to my commands. I was happy that all went according to plan. I returned the bike back to the showroom. I knew this was a perfect bike for me. Talking over the price details, I found that they were not really ready to give any sort of discounts. So I went to another showroom of Suzuki. Continue reading Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love →

How to secure your site using Lets Encrypt

Technology, , , , , ,

If you have your own site, encrypting is something that should be mandatory. Not only does it makes your site secure against hackers/crackers but also google rank those sites higher who serve their site on https.
Here’s how you can secure your wordpress based site using certificate provide by Lets Encrypt.

Some background:

I am quoting the following direct from the Let’s Encrypt site:

To enable HTTPS on your website, you need to get a certificate (a type of file) from a Certificate Authority (CA). Let’s Encrypt is one such CA. In order to get a certificate for your website’s domain from Let’s Encrypt, you have to demonstrate control over the domain. With Let’s Encrypt, you do this using software that uses the ACME protocol, which typically runs on your web host.

If you have shell access (that is if you can connect to your host using PuTTY), you can follow the instructions provided here to install certbot.

Process:

Assuming your wordpress site runs on nginx web server on Debian 9, here’s how to do it:
Add the repository source in your sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main

to your /etc/apt/sources.list (or add a new file with the “.list” extension to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/) Continue reading How to secure your site using Lets Encrypt →

Telegram and WhatsApp

Technology, , , ,

WhatsApp

If I remember correctly I was first introduced to WhatsApp as early as 2012 by one of my IRL friend. It was the thing which was “in” at the time. But it wasn’t that well known. Adoption of WhatsApp spread like wildfire since then, and now in 2018, it’s like everyone who have a smartphone have WhatsApp on their phone. Heck, even the non smartphone, like Symbian have a WhatsApp client now. What started of as a small project in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo, in Mountain View, California, soon grew to be a company worthy to be acquired by the Facebook giant in 2014. The acquisition took just US $19 billion out of Facebook’s pockets, but Zuckerberg knew it was a bargain.
The USP of WhatsApp was it’s simplicity and ad free experience. The founders promised that it will remain ad free for eternity but never promised anything about simplicity. After being bought by Facebook, WhatsApp went numerous changes which traded the simplicity to introduce features like Instagram, which was another social network app company acquired by Facebook in 2012 earlier for mere 1 billion (sounds like a steal in comparison to WhatsApp deal now, isn’t it?).

Telegram

Telegram on the other hand was developed by two Russian brothers, Nikolai and Pavel Durov who had previously founded the Russian social network VK, but had to leave the company after it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group (credit: Wikipedia). From it’s initial release in 2012, it have grown to become a great alternative to WhatsApp and currently is struggling to keep it out of grips of influential like big corporations and government scrutiny.
When I first stumbled on Telegram in October 2015, I confused it with a copy of the app WhatsApp but digging deeper I realized it offered something to the table which WhatsApp couldn’t especially after it’s acquisition by Zuckerburg. I soon began to love Telegram for what it offered and the convenience it bought with it. In those times I use to be a frequent user of IRC and use a channel to communicate most of my online friends. But Telegram changed that. Now I have almost left IRC for Telegram and use it for a lot more reasons then just communication with online friends. I use it as a pastebin, a medium to transfer files, a way to get updates on cryptocurrency and also to chat secretly, if needed.

Difference between WhatsApp and Telegram

I have tired to compare both of the social network app on features and technical factors.
[table “4” not found /]

While there are numerous things which are great on Telegram, I haven’t even mentioned that most of the security features were first added on Telegram and later came out with WhatsApp. But the most important thing is the commitment of Telegram founders which are making efforts to make it more secure and not to let big corporate giants controlling them, thereby it promises more security and privacy. For me though, the most important thing is feature and convenience and for that Telegram is perfect. No wonder more and more companies are choosing Telegram for it’s ability to connect to masses.