Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 198 // Week 34 // 2020

Saturday Pentacle Weekly Newsletter - Banner
By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

Welcome to another edition of Saturday Pentacle.

As I’ve been learning more about habit-forming and consistency, I’m also learning about the other side of things, entropy and related things.

EntropyA measure of disorder is not just one state, it indeed is the default state of the universe. If we want to bring some order, you have to apply force to reduce entropy and increase order. Entropy is universal, but it is also personal.

We are struggling every day to bring order in our lives, make everything better. But Entropy is like a time’s arrow, it will always be there. You like it or not. You handle this situation, that situation will come. You may have one moment of peace and the next moment you find that entropy pushed that domino and everything is a mess.

That’s where things like being consistent and building habits, help. We can’t predict everything, but what we can do is – reduce the mess or recover fast from the entropy moments.

I’m constantly finding myself fighting against entropy. That’s why I’m constantly doing more to better on my habits and being consistent. James Clear’s book “Atomic Habit” which I finished last month was a good help.

Moving forward to the newsletter, here is my weekly creative progress –

  1. I’m crossed my 50th (consecutive) streak of a new language learning class (on Duolingo), next target is to reach 100 days of learning.
  2. My book reading progress – (added another interesting book to reading list this week – 3rd one)
    1. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from the CEO of the Walt Disney Company – Progress 35% (Audible)
    2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Progress 20% (Audible)
    3. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry – Progress 15% (Audible)
    4. World War Z by Max Brooks – Progress 10% (Audible)

That’s it for personal and creative updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.


Issue 198 // Week 34 // 2020


A product which got me excited

fanttik Electric Screwdriver-Power Meets Precision – For my DIY projects I was looking for an electronic drill which can do “jack of all” kinda work. I found this amazing product on IndiGoGo. It has those little things which makes distinguish the product from good to best –

  1. One Hand easy drill bit pull-off.
  2. Precision for very delicate drilling and high power for drilling a wall.
  3. Digital Display (this is the first time a drill has a digital display)
  4. Ergonomics! (I think this is one of the key selling points)

If you are a DIYer, you might love this product as well. It’s shipping soon, so book while you can.


A (unix) nerd fact I discovered —

Apple replaces bash with zsh as the default shell in macOS Catalina – Last year (Jun 2019) Apple replaced the main shell from bash to zsh (called may be zeesh or zish?). Well, this point may only be relevant to you if you are a developer using a mac or may be you are a nerd. If not, then you can move on to the next point.

With zsh basically, you’ll have to link your z profile to your main bash profile (.profile) to be able to access to your normal shortcuts and aliases. Plus there is much more difference in zsh and bash. Here is a link for further reading between zsh vs bash comparison.

Here is why you should move from bash to zsh, if you haven’t yet.


A newsletter I’m loving

Indiepod Bulletin by Sonologue – If you are a podcaster or aspiring to be one or maybe you love audio (audio engineer? producer?). This is one newsletter you should subscribe to.

My dear friend Chhavi who is a podcasting coach and producer herself started publishing her newsletter few moons back. (BTW she’s been in my podcast too!)

Here is the third issue of her newsletter. Check it out!

You can subscribe to it here.


A song I loved —

You & the Cockroach – This song by Hobo Johnson stole the show last week, Amazing lyrics and a very alternative style for a song. Storytelling, sarcasm, politics, comedy and what not! All in one song.

Check it out.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1DytbGZoEsEMV5UeMr9Vtv?si=tLiKspcsSEKP8s7TG7uJ0A

Quote which I found meaningful –

Plant a bitter crop and guess what you get when it’s the harvest time, it’s Karma Bitch!

— Unknown

Before saying “see you next week”

I’m really excited to share the new Lifestyle Architecture Lab interactive community on Vibely app! 💙

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

Why vibely? Basically it’s a place where we want to make the group and our content interactive. There are daily interesting challenges like –

  • Reading for 1 hour everyday and posting your progress
  • Doing one act of kindness every day
  • Journaling prompts for you
  • Travel writing for 500 words

and more such creative challenges.

It’s a really fun place to be. You’ll get gamified rewards and recognitions for completing the challenges. We are trying to make it a safe place for all the like-minded people to join in the self-growth journey. If you are already working on your passion projects then you’ll get all the support you can and no bashing or judgement for being who you want to be.💡

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

P.S.: Our Facebook group is not going anywhere, we are just adding an interactive branch to it.

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 198 // Week 34 // 2020


What to do Next?

If you are not signed up to my email list, go ahead and do it right now so that you don’t miss any new weekly SATURDAY PENTACLE post and more interesting emails on Lifestyle Design, Productivity and Creative Entrepreneurship. (plus new podcast episode announcements).

Just enter your email address below and click “Subscribe!”

Continue Reading

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 172 // Week 8 // 2020

Saturday Pentacle Weekly Newsletter - Banner
By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello there!

Hope your weekend was well spent. Recovering and reflecting maybe?

It was a long weekend for me and I was recovering from being under the weather from the mid of last week. I got better and worked on some creative stuff as well. 2 more podcasts are published now, one in the mid of last week and another one today.

So, all in all, it was an okay week with a recovery weekend for me. (How was your week? Reply in the comment section!)

Coming on book listening progress, I didn’t make much progress in listening to the books, just couple more hours than last week for both the books – Homo Deus (70% done) and “A Study in Scarlet” of Sherlock Holmes series (around 70% done). This week I’ll try to be more consistent. Past week 2 additional holidays reduced my commute by 4+ hours, hence less book consumption.

Coming back to the Saturday-Pentacle, let’s get on with it.


Issue 172 // Week 8 // 2020


An advise I loved

How to Create the Life You Want (And Find Your North Star) – Oh man! This guy – Nathaniel Drew. In this video hey shares how to create the life we want. Almost all of his self advice videos are amazing and I dig this one as well.

He shares practical things to discover what you love and how to pursue them.

Check it out.


News of the week

Death of Larry Tesler (Creator of copy and paste command)

Larry Tesler

The year 2020 continuous to shake us with deaths of Legends. After Kobe Bryant earlier, now the creator of Copy and Paste Command in computers Larry Tesler, died on 16th Feb 2020. May he rest in peace, who made lives of modern-day humans who use a computer so much easier. (Can’t imagine what will we do without copy, paste).

Lawrence Gordon Tesler was an American computer scientist who worked in the field of human-computer interaction. Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo!


A person I’m curious about —

Taika Waititi – Taika won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his Movie Jojo Rabit this year. In this movie, he also played the role of Adolf Hitler who is an imaginary friend of a Jojo a young boy living in Nazi Germany.

Here is a TedX talk Taika gave on The Art of Creativity in Doha in 2010. Which blew up to many million views in the past few days, after he won the oscar. His works are just astounding.


A video which blew mind –

Billie Eilish Talking to a robot – I just loved this conversation between Billie Eilish and a robot driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Even though initially it looked like a gimmick but it isn’t. I was blown away by the quality of questions.

Machines are coming closure to humans.


Quote I’m pondering on lately – 

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Aristotle

Before saying “see you next week”
Here is a podcast episode I published in the past week. Episode 17 with Chhavi Sachdev. We talk about podcasting, radio culture in India her story, routine, tools, tips and a much more.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NizeIL1pb6xIQIos8iWVL?si=xIYM-qqOQAK_4kVmXsYPMg

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


Hey friends, I’m Himanshu, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories. Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!


No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 172 // Week 8 // 2020

Continue Reading

#17 – Chhavi Sachdev (Founder of Sonologue and Independent podcast consultant) – Telling stories through Audio and bringing podcasting to life in India

Chhavi Sachdev
Episode will play in a new window
The Episode will play in a new window

In this episode, I’m talking to Chhavi Sachdev. She’s an independent podcast producer, consultant, and coach. Basically one-stop-shop for podcast production. She is also the most experienced podcaster in India; she has been making podcasts since 2008.

She is also a multimedia journalist and has worked with names like BBC, PRI and NPR. When she moved back to India from the US almost 10 years back, she saw almost nobody in India was working with the new intelligent medium of storytelling which was podcasts. So she embarked on this long journey of making the Podcast medium relevant in India. Like smart and intellectual radio stations.

Meanwhile, Chhavi worked on interesting projects and co-founded IVM which is a big podcast production company now, but she left after a short stint and eventually founded Sonologue which is her own podcast production company. She has worked on a wide array of projects in Audio and it reflects in her production value.

Chhavi has also been conducting regular workshops for individuals, colleges, corporates, as well as NGO’s. Her 4-hour crash course in podcasting is fairly popular.

In this conversation, we cover many of the things about podcasting, the state of radio industry in India. Her productive routine, tools and tips about podcasting.

I had a blast having this conversation with Chhavi.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Chhavi Sachdev.

Links and references from the episode –

Continue Reading