Some new thinks I learned: OLark is pretty good for site feedback.  People had no idea what it is, so they checked it out and then left.  Now the goal is to figure out what would get people to post things…  at least before I do a an actual launch and start telling people about it…

The best outcome for a confrontation is to not have one. I remember how, back in Russia, we had legends of martial artists so good that they would just look at each other, understand who is stronger, and walk away – no fight necessary, the winner evident. Recently, I finally understood the trivial idea of strength and its purpose. It is to set up cause-and-effect in an effort to avoid a full confrontation. A fight is not just the process of knocking someone out and coming out victorious – in most cases victories of this sort have an extremely high cost: opportunity cost of time and effort, burnt bridges, bad reputation, etc. Moreover, when you corner someone, they become unpredictable, belligerent. You may think you understand their goal, but, under righteous indignation, they may prefer total destruction to embarrassment of defeat. So the goal is to allow all parties to accurately calculate as far ahead as possible to avoid a confrontation later on, resolving matters quickly instead.

Every conflict has two components: goals and methods.

Goals: It is not always possible to accurately understand your opponent’s goal. Does your opponent understand your goal? Do you yourself understand what your goal is? Ego-driven goals are rarely a good idea. Extremely hard to detach from your ego.  If you don’t actually understand what your opponent’s goal is, you are in trouble – this then generally leads to compensation through strength, which leads to escalation, which leads to a lot of wasted energy/resources. Try to understand your opponent’s goal. Try to understand your goal. Remove ego as much as possible.

Methods: This is where strength comes in. If push comes to shove, the strongest may technically win. However, the stronger the parties, the more devastation they cause in the process of fighting, which potentially makes the whole fight a lossy proposition to both parties as the fight itself has higher cost than the win to either party.  Then the goal becomes quick resolution, which, when parties differ on goals, requires an understanding of how the game will play out. This places both parties into a solid negotiating position where negotiation is both about accurately understanding the strength of the opponent and calibrating attainable goals accordingly.

So the purpose of strength if not to beat your opponent into submission. Its goal is to ensure accurate calculation for all parties of consequences of various scenarios allowing for quicker resolution of disagreements.

To take that a step further, then the process of a longer resolution is generally an indication of a miscalculation earlier on.

I recently discovered that strength can also be applied in a way that is perceived extremely unethical despite the best intention, which evokes anger and an almost overwhelming sense of righteousness that would make a religious zealot blush: a completely ridiculous situation.

So it looks like brute strength is not respected, but despised and tolerated when it must be.  People respect strength delivered with calmness and wisdom.  So the new philosophy is: choose a course, be as clear about your intentions as you can, and don’t compromise ethics no matter how much you may wish to do so – the most stable path forward, one requiring least amount of energy. Besides, life is too short to be an asshole.

• Editor: XCode – a bit frustrating to use with Python cause it doesn’t respect spacing quite well…
• Source management: Git and GitHub (thanks for one of the TWILIO guys for helping out in setting this up)
• Back-end:
• Python on Google App Engine (GAE) is fun.  Moreover, GAE hosts the project and deployment onto it with the launcher/deployment tool is really nice.
• Datastore (the database used on GAE) is kinda weird and takes some getting used to.  Not your regular relational database.
• Used only the webapp framework. Frustrating to write pagination for tables using the Datastore (see above).
• Front-end:
• Boostrap, from Twitter is a really good resource

Some other tasty tidbits learned this weekend:

• CabanaApp is supposed to be pretty good for iPhone development– they had some trials available at the StartupWeekend for it and one team made two projects.  Definitely something to consider moving forward.  Also was recently recommended Titanium and PhoneGap…  haven’t played around with any of them yet, but will report soon.
• github is not that scary and github is really nice

Yes, I know that WhatChangedMyLife is a really simple project, but it was my first full project on GAE with which I started playing around only about a week or two ago.  So don’t hate.

On a different, a bit more serious note, it looks like Amit Gupta, the dude who started Jelly among other things, needs a bone marrow transplant. So spreading the word.  If you know South Asians, let them know that Amit need them.