2020 - S Anand

2 inches will change my life

December 30, 2020 January 23, 2022 / Data, How I do things / 1 Comment

I walked ~11 million steps in the last 3 years, at ~10K steps daily.

Since 1 Jan 2018, I’ve steadily increased my walking average until Aug 2018. Then my legs started aching. So I cut it down until Jan 2019. In Feb, I resumed and was fairly steady until May 2020. To complement workouts like this, products that are aimed for men over 50 can be used.

In May, my wife refused to let me walk for more than an hour a day. It took me a few months to convince her and level up. I ended 2020 averaging a little over 10K steps for the year.

I’m becoming more regular. I walked 10K/day 15% more in 2020 than in 2018.

2018: I walked 10K steps almost half the time.
2019: it grew to a bit more, to 56%.
2020: I walked 10K steps a day almost two-thirds of the time.

But in May 2020, I went for 5 days without walking even 3K steps.

In 2018, I started being more and more regular until my leg started aching.
2019 was fairly consistent.
2020 is when I applied brakes again — for very different reasons.

I’ve never gone for 5 days without walking even 3K/day before, since 2018. At most, it was 3 days at a stretch.

But when my wife refused to let me walk for more than an hour a day in May 2020, I went on strike! 😉

I walk ~77 min daily. This has increased over the years.

In 2020, this has gone up slightly to 84 min — but it’s still under an hour-and-half. I spend most of this time on calls or listening to audio books / podcasts.
Instead of spending it with my family.

Sometimes, I lose myself in calls and walk for almost 3 hrs and 20K steps.

Naveen is usually to blame. But this happens rarely. I walked 20K steps just 6 times over the last 3 years.

Though the longest walk here indicates over 3 hrs, I’ve never walked 3 hrs in a day.

On 21 Nov, my daughter borrowed my phone and went for her walk. So my phone shows our combined walks, not mine. Many of the other long walks are spread out during the day when I commute by walking in Singapore.

Date	hrs	km	#	Why?
21-Nov-20	3.46	15.5	1	My daughter took my phone. These are her + my walking stats.
15-Nov-19	2.98	11.5	2	Walked to meetings in Singapore.
17-Sep-19	2.96	10.7	3	Walked to meetings in Singapore.
11-Jul-20	2.89	13.9	4	Was talking to Pratap & Ganes.
15-Oct-18	2.83	9.5	5	Walked to meetings in Singapore.
03-Sep-20	2.82	13.0	6	Was talking to Naveen & my coach.

I want to walk faster. I walk at ~4.4 km/hr. My target is 5 km/hr.

Walking at over 5 km/hr speeds the heart up and improves metabolism. (Or so I’ve heard.)

I was steadily going towards 5 km/hr in my early days of walking. I slowed down starting Aug 2018, since my legs were aching. Then I picked up speed in end-2018.

I slowed down again in Nov 2019 — and I don’t remember why.

In Jun 2020, I started walking much faster — mainly to complete 10K steps within the hour my wife gave me. That seems to have had a lasting impact. I walked faster overall in 2020.

I’ve managed fast walking 66 times in 2020, a bit more than before.

In Jun 2020, I walked at over 5 km / hr on 20 / 30 days — a very consistent high speed. I’ve never gotten close to this any other month.
(Clearly, there are adverse effects of being able to convince my wife.)

The fastest I walked was in 2018, at 6.8 km/hr. It might have led to my leg aches.

My top 5 walking speeds were in 2018. In 2020, I’ve managed to walk faster than 6 km / hr just once.

Fastest days	km/hr
07-Jun-2018	6.80
05-Jan-2019	6.65
16-Mar-2018	6.34
08-Jun-2018	6.31
06-Feb-2018	6.19
05-Jun-2020	6.02

The normal stride/height ratio is 0.43. I’m 5’8″. My stride is 2.4 ft. That’s almost exactly 0.43 times my height. So all is well.

By increasing my stride by 2 inches, I can cover 10,000 steps in 8 min less time.

For every inch I lengthen my stride, I walk ~0.2km/hr faster.

I’ve walked with a stride as long as 32″, which is 3″ more than my 2020 average stride. By walking with a 2″ longer stride, I can be 9.2% faster.

So in 2021, I plan to get healthier (and scolded less) with a 2″ longer stride.

A longer stride means a faster walk. That’s a good cardio exercise.
A faster walk also means that it takes less time. So I’ll get beaten up less.
All it takes is stretching my legs 2″ more. Might hurt a bit. I’ll report on this when I know better.

	Now	New	Change	Benefit
Longer stride	29″	31″	2″	Builds character?
Faster walk (kmph)	4.5	5.0	0.5	Better cardio exercise
Time to 10K steps (min)	84	77	-8	Less scolding from wife

PostScript: This analysis was done in Excel. Download see the sheet below.

walking Download

My year in 2020

December 28, 2020 December 28, 2020 / How I do things / 1 Comment

In 2020 I made 3 resolutions.

Read 50 books. I almost made it. Here are my reviews.
Walk 10,000 steps daily. I managed it, like the last two years.
Lose 2 kgs. I failed — and instead, put on 6 kgs.

On self-improvement, I completed a Landmark course and an Art of Living course. Both had a huge productivity impact. (Mail me for details.)

On software, I starting playing Minecraft and moved from Gmail to Windows 10 Mail. More on this.

On training, we built a data storytelling course and intend to train 100,000 people. (You can register for a free 90-min online workshop.)

In 2021, I’m taking up 3 new goals.

Lose 10 kgs. I’ll share my stats publicly.
Fail big. Take up initiatives I’m likely to fail on and learn.
Calendar integrity. Do what my calendar says, no matter what.

Hope you have an amazing 2021!

Software & Gadgets, 2020

December 27, 2020 December 27, 2020 / Tools, Top 10 lists / Leave a Comment

My most-used apps in 2020 were:

Everything. Locates files. Like Finder. Fast and brilliant.
Chrome. But Edge is pretty good, and I’m using it for secondary accounts.
Visual Studio Code. It’s my note-taker, TODO list, outliner, and IDE.
Minecraft. I’m addicted.
PowerPoint. I use it to make & edit videos, not just slides.
Zoom. Thanks to the lockdown. Breakout rooms are great.
Mail. It uses under 50MB. Gmail takes 250MB.
VLC. It still plays all formats, but I’m looking for a replacement.
Seafile. Our private Dropbox.
AutoHotKey. The best macro tool, but hard to use.

The new utilities I started using recently are:

WizTree. Fast visual disk space analyzer.
PowerToys. FancyZones and ColorPicker are my favorites.
WSL. Run Linux on Windows, natively (it’s fast).
ngrok. Expose local web apps publicly.
TabMemFree. Closes unused Chrome tabs, saves memory.

The gadgets I bought this year are:

Casio CT-X9000IN keyboard. Good touch response. I play every day.
HP Pavilion x360. My first touchscreen laptop. Yet to explore touch apps.
Raspberry Pi. But I’m yet to use it 😟
Teqneq S530 Bluetooth earbud. 2% of an airpod’s cost.
JBL Endurance Run Headphones. More durable than Foxbit FX500 / JBL C100SI — but one ear always conks off in a few months.
PureIT Eco. Consumes a lot less water than regular RO purifiers.
Treetop Air Purifier. Fairly quiet, and shows the air quality.

Mystery of the extra returns

December 24, 2020 December 17, 2020 / Data / 2 Comments

This month, I sold half my Indian equity mutual funds and was researching funds to invest in. I was looking for something safe & long term.

As I was exploring 10-year Gilt Funds (mutual funds that invest in the Indian Government’s 10-year bond), I noticed that they had a pretty high yield — mostly over 10%.

I took a closer look at ICICI Prudential’s Constant Maturity Gilt Fund. (They had the lowest expense ratio.) The annualized returns over the last 5 years were 10.77%, and it’s never fallen below 10% in the last 5 years.

But the strange thing is that the underlying 10-year bond always yielded less than 10% in the last 10 years.

So, how does a mutual fund that buys only one bond yield more than that bond’s ever done in the last 10 years?

(I went ahead and invested. But this is going to worry me to no end.)

Create SVG with PowerPoint

December 21, 2020 December 21, 2020 / Coding, Tools / Leave a Comment

With Office 365, PowerPoint supports SVG editing. This is really powerful. It means you can draw in PowerPoint and render it on the web — including as interactive or animated visuals.

For example, the SVG in this simulator was created just with PowerPoint.

The process is simple. Draw anything. Select any shapes and right-click. Select Save As Picture… and choose SVG.

For example, you can use PowerPoint to create Smart Art, export it as SVG, and embed it into a page. See this example on CodePen.

The SVG is fairly well structured and easy to edit. The code generated for these 2 simple shapes:

… is quite straight-forward — just two SVG shapes.

<rect x="125.5" y="185.5" width="107" height="107" stroke="#2F528F" stroke-width="1.33333" stroke-miterlimit="8" fill="#4472C4"/>
<path d="M243.5 292.5 297 185.5 350.5 292.5Z" stroke="#2F528F" stroke-width="1.33333" stroke-miterlimit="8" fill="#4472C4" fill-rule="evenodd"/>

I was worried about the lack of SVG authoring tools in Windows. (InkScape is not usable, and Adobe’s tools are complex and expensive.) PowerPoint fits perfectly.

lxml is fast enough

December 11, 2020 January 23, 2021 / Coding / Leave a Comment

Given the blazing speed of Node.js these days, I expected HTML parsing to be faster on Node than on Python.

So I compared lxml with htmlparser2 — the fastest libraries on Python and JS in parsing the reddit home page (~700KB).

lxml took ~8.6 milliseconds
htmlparser2 took ~14.5 milliseconds

Looks like lxml is much faster. I’m likely to stick around with Python for pure HTML parsing (without JavaScript) for a while longer.

In [1]: from lxml.html import parse

In [2]: %timeit tree = parse('reddit.html')
8.69 ms ± 190 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)

const { Parser } = require("htmlparser2");
const { DomHandler } = require("domhandler");
const fs = require('fs');
const html = fs.readFileSync('reddit.html');
const handler = new DomHandler(function (error, dom) { });

const start = +new Date();
for (var i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
  const parser = new Parser();
  parser.write(html);
  parser.end();
}
const end = +new Date();
console.log((end - start) / 100);

Note: If I run the htmlparser2 code 100 times instead of 10, it only takes 7ms per loop. The more the number of loops, the faster it parses. I guess Node.js optimizes repeated loops. But I’m only interested in the first iteration, since I’ll be parsing files only once.

Mining for Ancient Debris

December 9, 2020 December 9, 2020 / Games / 1 Comment

I’ve been active on Minecraft for the last 6 months, thanks to my daughter. She keeps watching game videos for hours. I thought I’d see what the big deal was, and made one myself.

In this 5-minute clip, I’m mining for Ancient Debris in the Nether by placing beds — which explode when used in the Nether. That’s a quick way to clear large areas and is cheaper than TNT. Ancient Debris is used to make Netherite Scrap which makes Netherite ingots that can upgrade to Netherite weapons and armor — the strongest things in Minecraft.

Why do I care? Well, when my friend’s son said “You’re the only adult I know who plays Minecraft”, I felt 20 years younger 😊.

Walking 10,000 steps a day

December 6, 2020 December 6, 2020 / How I do things / Leave a Comment

Since 2018, I’ve been walking ~10,000 steps a day. Here’s my journey.

Books in 2020

December 3, 2020 December 27, 2020 / How I do things, Top 10 lists / 5 Comments

My Goodreads 2020 Reading Challenge target is 50 books. I’m at 45/50, with little hope of getting to 50. (I managed 25/24 in 2019.)

The 10 non-fiction books I read (most useful first) are below.

The Lean Startup by Eric Reis.
The principle of Build – Measure – Learn is useful everywhere in life too, not just in startups.
Never Split The Difference by Chriss Voss.
Shares principle-driven strategies to convince people.
The 4 Disciplines of Execution by McChesney, Covey & Huling.
Teaches how to build execution rigor in an organization. A bit long at the end, but the first section is excellent.
Sprint by Jake Knapp.
A detailed step-by-step guide to running product development sprints that you can follow blindly.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams.
Dilbert’s author shares his strategies for life. Very readable, intelligent, and slightly provocative, but always interesting.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
Written as a story (like The Goal). Talks about the 5 problems in teams and how to overcome them.
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle.
Explains the elements of strong cultures – belongingness, shared vulnerability, and shared purpose.
Data-Driven Storytelling by Nathalie Henry Riche et al.
Shares the latest points of view on telling data stories. My team and I read these chapters as a group.
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek.
Inspiring when I read it, but I don’t remember what it said.
Deep Work by Cal Newport.
Shares tactics to focus. Practical and useful.

I also started, by haven’t finished these four:

Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams
Stories at Work by Indranil Chakraborty

I read these 25 works of fiction — mostly by Brandon Sanderson (my current favorite author) and Brent Weeks.

Lightbringer (Books 1-5) by Brent Weeks.
In a world where color is woven as magic, the most powerful man is caught in politics. This series had enough twists and turns to keep me hooked till the end.
Skyward (Books 1-2) by Brandon Sanderson.
An outcast girl on an outcast planet becomes a fighter pilot with an alien spaceship. I love the way this is developing.
The Wheel of Time (Books 1-6) by Robert Jordan.
I picked it up again mainly because Brandon Sanderson wrote the last 3 books. It was great up to book 4 but has started dragging.
Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians (Books 1-4) by Brandon Sanderson.
The author lies to you. Literally. And tells you that he will, in almost every other paragraph. Great book for kids to laugh over.
Night Angel (Books 1-3) by Brent Weeks.
An assassin in a story that spans centuries of the history of magic.
Legion (Books 1-3) by Brandon Sanderson.
A detective who has multiple split-personalities in him — that help him solve cases.
Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson.
What if you could create a snapshot of the world, enter it, interact with it, and solve crimes?
The Art of Letting Go: Poetry for the Seekers by Sanhita Baruah.
It’s my first poetry book. (I hate poetry.) I took this up to see if I could survive it, and get a fresh perspective. I survived.

… and these 10 comic books/series.

At the moment, I’m at 45 books, with little hope of completing 5 more this month unless I pick up comics. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do 😉

Micro-notes

November 29, 2020 November 29, 2020 / Tools / 4 Comments

I maintain my (extensive) notes in text files. I’ve explored Evernote, Onenote, Google Keep, Apple Notes, and many other platforms. But text files work. I store them as Markdown and sync them on DropBox.

They used to be relatively large files (50-100KB) each, on broad topics. For example:

todo.txt was a consolidated list of things I had to do
people.txt was a list of everything I knew about people (addresses, birthdays, etc)
towrite.txt was a list of everything I wanted to write about
notes.txt was where I tracked notes about any topics
… and more

This led to a couple of problems.

Searching across files was hard. I wouldn’t remember if I wrote ideas for my next talk in todo.txt or towrite.txt, or if my meeting minutes where in notes.txt todo.txt. I had to open each file and search.
Files were getting too big. Editing them on mobile was harder. Scanning them was harder.

So I changed this system a few years ago into micro-notes. These files became a folder. For example, my notes/ folder looks like this:

time-management.txt has my time management notes
book-never-split-the-difference.txt has book notes on Never Split the Difference
eat-food-sleep-exercise-live-healthy.txt has notes on fitness

The folder has nearly 300 files. Here’s a glimpse of the latest files.

Similarly, my people/ folder has details of my discussions with various people I interact with — friends, colleagues & clients.

What made this change possible is Everything, a fast file search tool on Windows that lets me find files as I type. For example, if I’m looking for my notes on SlideSense, I just type “notes s” and it appears on the list.

I usually sort the files by run count (how often I opened them). That makes it easy to re-open the most used files.

It also makes it easier to edit these notes on mobile. I sync the folder on Dropbox, and use IAWriter to edit them while on walks. Dictation is pretty good, so I’ve been using that to take notes too.

Year: 2020