Author: Andrea Grassi

Nor to be a Nerd.

In fact, I feel quite a normal person, with no inclination on any particular side.
I have passions, photography, writing, that can’t be called a job because I do it for fun.

I like to test myself (and this blog is proof), but aside from this, no, I didn’t expect to be a true geek.

I don’t do nerd or geeky jokes, nor I laugh too much at them (but I love them from time to time).
I use the command line daily, but I don’t feel it’s my home.

I wouldn’t write in emacs an email.

That said, I am partly surprised by my actual interest in Tarsnap. a backup solution I just discovered.
It’s geeky in the sense that it’s a highly technical backup solution.
No difficult, but technical.

Still, I love it. I love the idea, the execution, and even the old style text-website so much that I want to use it back it up right now.

Today the main competitor of this (on a different level) is the BackBlaze B2 cloud storage, which feels like a different planet.
But how much do they compare? I’m curious, really curious, and I’d love to use them both and see the differences in prices and so on.

I guess that the main reason I liked tarsnap at first glance was its simplicity.
It’s simple, it’s easy, and it does the job.

Why would you want more? It also moves away from a fixed pricing an in a prepaid model, nice work.

This morning I was going to Milan for work and in the time between two train connections I stopped in a bar to take a cappuccino. 

While drinking it I realized it was cold. Way too cold.

It was 7am in the morning and outside it was freezing and one door of the bar was open. The door lead to the bus arrivals terminal.

I exclaimed “it’s cold, why would they let us freeze like that” pointing at the open door and my colleague instantly replied “it’s not cold. It’s marketing”

Marketing? It took me a while to realize that it was such a nice move. An open door is a clear, unmistakable indicator that a bar is open.

It also invites you to enter. In addition to that, smells are often the best way to attract clients. The smell of a good pizza or a coffe are enough to stimulate you to indulge and stop by.

In town festivals sellers use ventilators  to spread odor of cooked food.

Marketing, great marketing, hides itself from the eye. It hides into the appearance so much it blends into the forniture and you don’t know it’s there.

It’s so great that it’s not even trying to sell in the usual sense, instead it just shows. It appeals to senses and mind and it gets you by your own free will.

There’s no better work than one in which you help other people directly. That’s why coaching is so mainstream

Today I read something written by a former Opera employee (the web browser).
I remember he talked about how injecting ads into the desktop browser was a bad move for him (and later on he was right).

In his words there was something that resonated with me deeply, he then said that he somewhat felt bad because he didn’t see the silicon valley behavior he expected.

This is the bad thing about expectation vs reality, it puts you down if you don’t consider the outcome and the reality.
Luckily there are solutions to this. Namely being honest with yourself every day.

Understanding what’s good and what’s not. Keeping in mind of what really is the work you’re doing.
Accepting is the hardest part, but you won’t be left without a choice.
You can always choose to change, to do a different work that resonates more with you.

Today Dropbox announced that Mailbox and Carousel would shut down.
It’s hard not to think about the value that these two services brought to user, yet they are still shutting down and I can see why.

There’s no innovation anymore. Once the idea is grasped and becomes mainstream, you need to be in a field where you can innovate quickly and effectively to potentially continue working there.

Otherwise you need to change and start from zero and I guess this was the choice behind the shut down.
When service aren’t paid by subscription you rely on the fact that the company will do their best to support you in the future, but that isn’t a guarantee.
As it often happens, companies change plans, ideas, they break things and build new ones.

This is why I love the take Basecamp has on the subject. They build things for the long run and don’t leave users alone.
In a world where free seems so convenient, this revolutionary thinking makes me feel at home.