Misc

I sometimes find myself get lost in the video recommendations the YouTube provides. Well, yesterday I watched for 20 minutes or so a guy put 1000 coins into an arcade machine. And all because I wanted to see how much money he makes back (it was $250 that he started with).

Another thing I watch, even if I have almost no interest in what they’re talking about, is a series of videos about weird Nintendo Switch accessories. Sometimes I fantasize about starting a video series about stupid shit you can find and buy online. It seems so much fun… and probably expensive. But come on, a Nintendo case switch with slots for Nerf gun bullets. What more do you want?

The thing is I always thought of myself as not being interested in this kind of things. So either I’m getting older and weirder or I got too much time on my hands. Or I’ve always been like that, which makes more sense. It’s just that I let it surface more lately than I did before :D

I’m really into using the iPad as more than a device for media consumption, but the most difficult thing was not having a real, desktop level browser. The best browser I could have was iCab, but even using that was complicated.

When I heard of the new Safari browser in iPad OS, I knew I had to install the beta. And boy, did it deliver: Safari is now a genuinely great browser.

To give you an idea: when I tried using Google Analytics, Google Docs or a WordPress dashboard on iOS 12, it was an exercise in frustration. “Clicking” somewhere was a hit-or-miss experience, it would take a long time loading, it would stop sometimes completely. It was bad.

Now, it’s completely different. It really is like using my laptop’s browser. I don’t remember any sites in the last month or so giving me issues whatsoever.

Just for this only I would choose the beta iPad. Of course, it also has a download manager (but iCab also had one), you can use multiple windows of Safari, drag to create windows and the likes. You can see a list of the added things here.

But! Before installing the beta iPad OS, I need to tell you that the beta experience, over all, was quite bad. Yes, Safari is great, but weird bugs appear out of nowhere: keyboard not resizing or readjusting to vertical/horizontal positioning, apps being stuck… If you use an iPad as your primary device, I wouldn’t, frankly, use iPad OS just yet. Just wait until September for the public version.

I watched Battlestar Galactica during their initial run (2003-2009). I think I’ve picked it up during the second season or something and I watched the last 3 seasons as they were launched on TV.

Last week I restarted watching it (yeah, I got some downtime) and I actually find it a lot more interesting than I did 15 years ago. It was interesting then as well: the dark tone of the story, the grittiness, the real development of characters, (especially compared to the Star Trek shows, which I love), but now I see it with different eyes. I feel I’m more interested in the politics of the show rather than in the space battle scenes or the science-fiction elements.

I just got through the first season of the show (not even, I still have the final 2 episodes), but I’m happy I wasn’t that much of a fan, because I barely remember anything. Which makes the experience almost like I’m seeing the show for the first time. And that’s great. Because who other can say “I’m watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time, the second time”?

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none. Zero.”
– Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner

I found this article today and I agreed with a lot of the things I read. Since this is a website dedicated to reading and learning, I thought that the conclusion they reach is quite close to The CEO Library’s reason for being: knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable. In the end, this isn’t the reason you should read the article, but the fact that they make a really compelling argument for reading and getting more knowledge (and getting more knowledgeable).

The writer also gives you a list of essential skills to master in the knowledge economy we’re approaching, so it’s something you can apply once you finish reading the article.

The answer is simple: Learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

I’ve found this article through the daily emails I get from Deepstash, the company some friends started a while ago. You should also check them out.

I’m really interested to see where this is going. I use the iPad Pro a lot on a daily basis (not as a laptop replacement, unfortunately) and I’d love to have a good database on console quality games on iOS as well.

Several people involved in the project’s development say Apple is spending several million dollars each on most of the more than 100 games that have been selected to launch on Arcade, with its total budget likely to exceed $500m. The games service is expected to launch later this year.

A lot of people said that if Apple wants to be a real gaming platform, they need to pay for the games the way that consoles pay for exclusives these days.

Also, it’s obvious there’s a really big opportunity for revenues in “console type” gaming even for a company with revenues as big as Apple’s.

Apple has not said how much it will charge subscribers for Arcade or TV+, but analysts at HSBC have estimated that Apple Arcade revenues will grow from $370m in 2020 to $2.7bn by 2022 and $4.5bn by 2024, by which time HSBC predicts it will have 29m users paying $12.99 each month.

The full article, titled “Apple spends hundreds of millions on Arcade video game service“, is available on FT.com. If you don’t have a subscription to read it, just search for the title on Google and go from there.

In February 2018 I landed in Lisbon. It was my first time in continental Portugal and I wanted to see what everyone was so enthusiastic about. My experience wasn’t the best – though it improved a lot by the end of the year, but I want to talk about something else: Pastel de Nata.

I don’t know how or where I heard the first time about pastel de nata (which means cream pastry, basically, in Portuguese). I tried it pretty soon after landing, because it’s everywhere, and I really enjoyed it.

Right after eating a pastel de nata the first time, I remember talking to Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, and telling him “You know, they have this great thing called pastel de nata here”. To which he replied: “Yes, it’s awesome. Just be careful, you’ll be really sick if you eat more than 5 at a time!”. 5? FIVE? I could barely eat 2 at a time, since they were so sweet. But five???

Anyway, after this moment I learned that pastel de nata was a “secret” just for me, that a lot of my friends ate it before and, even more surprising, they didn’t need to come to Portugal for that. I found it afterwards in London at Nando’s, in Bucharest somewhere as well. And today I found out why:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nata’s rise is fueled in part by promotion from the government, which sponsors events like the 2018 Nata Festival in London and funds local businesses.

Here is the entire article, called “The Unlikely Rise of the Pastel de Nata, and Why It’s Suddenly Everywhere“. And, if you, all of a sudden, feel like you want a pastel de nata, don’t tell me. Please, don’t. I have a really good Portuguese “pastelaria” really close. And their pastel de nata is really, really good.

Oh, and if you go to Lisbon, the best pastel de nata I’ve had was at Manteigaria, at TimeOut Market. They also have another place where you can find them, which might be less busy, on the corner of Largo de Camões, in Chiado. A lot of people say that the original pastel de nata, at Pastéis de Belém, is better, but it wasn’t my experience. To each’s own, though :)

Photo source: The illustration on top is Miruna’s.

Around 13-14 years ago while discovering the benefits of p2p communication, I found out a show about cars that wasn’t really about cars. It was called Top Gear, it was in its 4th-5th year or so, and I fell in love with it.

After all, who wouldn’t? It was about fast cars and crazy antics and I was a guy in my early twenties, dreaming about Aston Martins.

Actually, because of watching Top Gear, in 2007 I started, along with my cousin, a blog about cars called AutoUnleashed. It didn’t bring us the money we hoped for, but it gave us a jump start into test driving cars, which we loved. And, its followup, called rpmgo, made enough money when I sold it so I could support the first few months of MavenHut.

Anyway, today I saw – on Amazon, because we don’t need p2p anymore to watch our favorite shows – the last “live audience” episode of The Grand Tour, the followup of Top Gear for the 3 presenters (Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond) . And it impacted me more than I thought it would. And, while I didn’t cry, I wasn’t surprised to see Jeremy Clarkson tearing up.

Well, they will still continue to do crazy antics in special, longer shows, but for the moment, thanks for the memories!

Of course, Top Gear still continues – maybe – on BBC, with a different team, and the show is not bad at all. But, for the moment, I’m actually surprised how much I feel I’ll miss the crazy “original” trio.

Photo source

Well, this is unxpected:

Where do you get your podcasts?

— Off The Pill Podcast (@offthepill) January 26, 2019

If you’re ever in the position to raise money, the first thing you’ll probably do will be to look for examples of pitch decks to use with your potential investors. In 2012, when I was raising money in earnest for MavenHut, finding this kind of examples was difficult. I needed to access my own network (which was not that big) because there were almost no decks available online.

Actually, I think the one that helped me the most was Reid Hoffman’s Linkedin deck, which he published on his own website, along with explanation and context for each deck. It was gold for me, because it helped me understand a little bit more about investor perception and targets. You can still find the article here and I hope it will still be there a long time, because I learned more from it than most of other resources combined.

I wouldn’t have mentioned pitch decks and presentations if I didn’t find today, in Ben Evans’s newsletter (one of the best tech related newsletters online) a mention to an article with 30 pitch decks from some of the most successful startups in the world or, how they put it, legen…wait for it… dary startups. You have the likes of Airbnb, Square, Buffer, Mint, Mixpanel, Moz (of Lost and Founder fame). You can even find Buzzfeed or YouTube. A really good collection that you shouldn’t miss if you’re raising money or think of raising money.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention MavenHut’s public presentation at the end of Startup Bootcamp in June 2012. While the deck is not available online, you can see me barely breathing with stress on stage. It might actually be funny, but I think it’s also educational.

Since we’re on The CEO Library and we’re all about books, here are the books that helped me when pitching and when learning how to pitch, maybe they will help you as well:

• Pitch Anything – by Oren Klaff
• Made to Stick – by Chip & Dan Heath

From here:

If your screen is black or frozen
If your screen is black or frozen, you might need to force restart your device. A force restart won’t erase the content on your device. You can force restart your device even if the screen is black or the buttons aren’t responding. Follow these steps:
– On an iPad Pro 11-inch or iPad Pro 12.9-inch: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Power button until the device restarts.
– On an iPhone 8 or later: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Then press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.
– On an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.
– On an iPhone 6s and earlier, iPad, or iPod touch: Press and hold both the Home and the Top (or Side) buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.

This is on top of my Mac’s microphone not working in Skype (on MacOS, of course).

Photo credit