Life in a Graph

“Thoughts about the universe, drawn on x-y axis.”

Perhaps it’s my gaming background – or maybe my love for physics and probabilistic processes – but I have a tendency to think about various aspects of life in mathematical terms. Among  the topics I covered in this blog/collection of essays are cost-efficient choices, psychological motivation tricks and game design analysis – to name a few.

The Weekly Idea

Ever since I started getting involved in the startup community and business, I was a firm believer that ideas are cheap. Even if you thought about something that at least sounds like something people would want, your company and product can still fail in a myriad of ways. So, both in order to "prove" this view and to train my mind in spotting products that should exist but don't, I've created a closed mailing list of friends and colleagues and sent an idea for a product/startup/service every weekend - getting feedback and evolving the idea further. I kept it up for about 9 months, at which point I felt like I proved the point (at least to myself :) ).

That was several years ago. Since then 3 of the ideas were brought to life by startup companies I’ve heard about (and perhaps more by companies I didn’t). 

Brutal Motivation

“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.” – Latin Proverb.

I do not tend to publish my inner thoughts and feelings – this collection being the exception. In this blog I curate various quotes, music, videos, images, stories, articles etc. that motivate me to break through obstacles, to work harder and to fight for the right to build my own destiny. I explained the reason for creating it in the first post so I won’t reiterate it here – I just hope some of the content makes you feel the same way I do.

Commemoration site for my father (Albert Shalyt)

My dad once said to a good friend of his that in the age of the internet the way to commemorate someone is not via a tombstone in a graveyard – but with a public website containing his achievements and creations. After he died I decided it’s a good idea to do exactly that. The site I’ve created is far from summarizing all of my father’s life and work but it showcases some of what I found in his archives.