Book I read - "Cityboy": Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile

From play.com

I've been lately reading just business related books, so it was fun to get my hands on bit more narrative one for a change. Book still is business related and about banking world and more specifically about what's really happening in the banks of London. It's based on true experiences of the writer Geraint Anderson who was working inside the system for 12 years.

Book really tries to shock you. It feasts with dirty details how money, sex and drugs play huge role in a world full of egoistic individuals of banking. Those seem to contain mainly quite young white men. It shouldn't be no surprise to anyone involved in team sports or being part of other manly activity groups that there are lot of men like this in world. These cityboys in London, just happen to get too much money and respect out of the work they do and that makes them act like this.

The other part of the book is really about how screwed up the economic system has been. When people get short term rewards on how well they anticipated the markets and how much commissions their company gets, I can see there's room for cheating and trying to manipulate the market to get more rewards. Book attacks the most toward Hedge funds which are in this book seen as the most greedy form stock markets. Still quite equally it blames most of the cityboys beings selfish, money addicted assholes. Still I wouldn blame only the playes, I'd blame the rules.

I have an insider also in London banking system, an old friend who's been working there for 7-8 years already. I must admit that he's view to normal world is sometimes bit distorted, which kind of a proofs the point of the book. Still I don't believe it's all that bad, there's lot of really talented and motivated people out there, who are not definitely only about sex, drugs and money, but about business itself. Lot's of these cityboys really commit (read: waste) their lives to making money to themselves and their companies.

The book itself is a bit longish sometimes when Geraint tells lots and lots details about drinking and partying. Also it requires a bit of an interest towards stock markets and banking to really follow all the curiosities that are being told. Part I enjoyed the most was actually the epilogue, where author confesses that money and working like hell doesn't really matter that much and didn't really make him happy. Maybe it's just because I'm not in this banking world, and I'm just jealous. But I've really tried to think similarly for sometime already. I do enjoy working, but I still do it only for living and not the other way around.

Often there's one sentence that sticks in my mind after reading a book and the one in this book was: "Everybody just needs to make their own mistakes." That's so true. If you believe in some pattern of living bad enough, there's no one who can convince you to change the pattern. The only way is to really see the mistake yourself.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

One more great music streaming service - Grooveshark

I've lately almost abandoned spotify and started to use Grooveshark the most. It so damn easy to just open browser and start streaming music. My main use is for radio type of service where I let the service to decide my music, I'll only give it a hint what I like.

Actually there are two main ways I've been using in this service. Sometimes it's just fun to listen these really popular stuff and for that I just select popular from left column and hit play all. OK, there are lot of stuff I don't really like, but I can skip those easily.

Second case is, I hit Radio button low right and let it start playing different songs for me. Then I'll teach it a bit by liking and disliking some songs and soon I start to get proper music for the current mood. It's just so awesome.

If I wanna listen some specific artists, then I use other services. For me Grooveshark just works perfectly for discovering and listening some good music. I've used it so much lately, I thought it would deserve blog entry.

Give it a try, if you are not familiar with that one already.

Zero complex

I think I have zero complex. I've noticed that I just must get my to do counters to zero when those are existing.

In Gmail, Google reader, work mail and other similars, I have fixation to get unread items to zero. It doesn't mean I need to really thorougly read those, but I at least need to check the headings and see if it's something worth reading later.

Funny thing is, this same doesn't happen with Twitter or Facebook or anything else which don't have that a counter showing how many are not read.

I don't think myself as perfectionist, but certainly this has something to do with completing. I have no idea though where this fixation came from. But I guess it's easy to blame parents about all these things you do subconsciosly.  I just hope my boss is not reading this.. I would be so easy to motivate me by just having huge number on my wall showing unfinished tasks :)

Just wondering am I alone, are there others with Zero-Complex around? Maybe we should set up some support group..

Nice music service to discover new music - Hitlantis

I really like what these guys have made. It's place for new bands to share their music and let people to boost them if they're worth it. The playback function is quite nice. It jumps from band to band either with selected genre or within all genres.




Not sure how they are doing, is anyone really buying any stuff from there, but at least it's fresh and different. And works very well in my browser. Only thing I would appreciate is browser extension, so that I wouldn't need to always open that tab to change songs.

Give it a shot: hitlantis.com

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Games are changing the way we behave

Interesting Ted talk about game dynamics being the thing for this decade. Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world:



I've seen this happening for some time already, so it's not really a new thing. 2002-2004 I used to play Hattrick for a long time and it totally changed my week schedules. There was something specific for each day, but main days where Wednesday as practice/cup match and Saturdays for league matches. That's what Seth is really talking about, how games change people.