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I am, strangely enough. My output has waned over the last year as I've become busier. But I'm happy to take the fleece. In the meantime, enjoy some of my greatest hits of the past year, most of which are not that great: Biology * Shan Kothari's answer to Is it a good idea to interbreed the various endangered tiger subspecies like the Sumatran, Malayan, Indo-Chinese, South China, Bengal and Siberian tigers so that they have more genetic variation? [ https://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-good-idea-to-interbreed-the-various-endangered-tiger-subspecies-like-the-Sumatran-Malayan-Indo-Chinese-South-China-Bengal-and-Siberian-tigers-so-that-they-have-more-genetic-variation/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Can giraffes swim? [ https://www.quora.com/Can-giraffes-swim/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Ecology: What do ecologists think of Lotka-Volterra? [ https://www.quora.com/Ecology-What-do-ecologists-think-of-Lotka-Volterra/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What is the future of big data in ecology? [ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-big-data-in-ecology/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What is hermatypic coral? [ https://www.quora.com/What-is-hermatypic-coral/answer/Shan-Kothari ] Philosophy * Shan Kothari's answer to Why did Blaise Pascal not immediately understand the "which god" problem with his wager? [ https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Blaise-Pascal-not-immediately-understand-the-which-god-problem-with-his-wager/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Philosophy of Mind: What is functionalism? [ https://www.quora.com/Philosophy-of-Mind-What-is-functionalism/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Do ethical philosophers tend to be more ethical? [ https://www.quora.com/Do-ethical-philosophers-tend-to-be-more-ethical/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Can you be a philosopher and still believe in god? [ https://www.quora.com/Can-you-be-a-philosopher-and-still-believe-in-god/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What are the main differences between epiphenomenalism and materialist reductionism? [ https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-epiphenomenalism-and-materialist-reductionism/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What has philosophy contributed to society in the past 50 years? [ https://www.quora.com/What-has-philosophy-contributed-to-society-in-the-past-50-years/answer/Shan-Kothari ] Other: * Shan Kothari's answer to What are some famous pictures that ruined people's lives? [ https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-famous-pictures-that-ruined-peoples-lives/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Why is it common liberal policy to reject Social Darwinism despite wholeheartedly embracing evolution? Why this contradiction? [ https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-common-liberal-policy-to-reject-Social-Darwinism-despite-wholeheartedly-embracing-evolution-Why-this-contradiction/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to Who are the best or most famous Christian poets? [ https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-best-or-most-famous-Christian-poets/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What are the most impressive intellectual achievements completed by persons under 20 years old in terms of the influence, magnitude, depth, scope, creativity, or difficulty of the achievement? [ https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-impressive-intellectual-achievements-completed-by-persons-under-20-years-old-in-terms-of-the-influence-magnitude-depth-scope-creativity-or-difficulty-of-the-achievement/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What is it like to attend a REU? [ https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-attend-a-REU/answer/Shan-Kothari ] * Shan Kothari's answer to What directors chose the same people to work with time and time again, in any roles, and who are these people? [ https://www.quora.com/What-directors-chose-the-same-people-to-work-with-time-and-time-again-in-any-roles-and-who-are-these-people/answer/Shan-Kothari ]

Balaji Viswanathan (பாலாஜி விஸ்வநாதன்)If ever you want to learn something new on daily basis.please switch on the notifications from Balaji Vishwanath sir.Awdhesh Singh (अवधेश सिंह)In case if you are wandering for the best views from an intellect,he is always on cards !Gopalkrishna VishwanathIf ever you wanted a simple answers with so much of life experience,don't forget to follow Gopalkrishna Vishwanath sir!Abhimanyu SoodIf you want to hear a story,please don't miss this guy.. he is my fav!User-9248814863030902883In case if you crave for travel experiences,this guy is fantastic ! Sinless bloke indeed.Sean KernanSarhad ChoudharyIn case if you are eager to know son and grandson of quora ..don't forget these wonderful guys !Vishak RamanIf you want to keep reading and getting lost.he is nice to read! Unique guy I must tell you !Dhawal BarotIf you seem very interested in shortest feel good stories,this guy tops the list!Loy MachedoWhenever you feel low,reading his answers can make you feel better!The list continues !And if ever you want to read some stupid answers follow this guy! Raghavendra MThanks for reading

Perhaps not "lesser known", but I've been using keyboard shortcuts for years under "Settings": This probably comes from my vim background, but inside gmail, I almost never use the mouse. Instead:While viewing a list of threads (i.e. Inbox, All Mail, Drafts, search results, etc.):c to compose a new mailj and k to move the cursor down and upx to select/deselect the current thread that's pointed to by the cursore to archive all threads that have been selected [Enter] to go into the thread pointed to by the cursor"g i" to go to my Inbox"g a" to go to All Mail"g d" to go to DraftsWhile inside a thread:n and p to browse down and up messages inside a thread (move the cursor up and down)a to reply all (or r to reply individually, but that's rare) to the message currently pointed to by the cursorf to forward the message that's pointed to by the cursoru to go back to the previous thread list view, which could be your Inbox, All Mail, Drafts, etc. This is the same as the back button: s to toggle through the stars on the message currently pointed to by the cursorIn case you're wondering, the "cursor" is the very thin vertical blue line visible to the left of the third thread in this picture:Other useful shortcuts:/ to make the search bar active"* u" to select all unread emails"* n" to deselect all emailsShift+i to mark all selected emails as readShift+u to mark all selected emails as unreadWhile inside a thread, Shift+u will bring you back to the previous thread list view and marking the current thread as unread. I do this a lot to keep important threads at the top of my inbox.And that's basically all I ever do in gmail. It can be painful to learn at first, but just start with the very basics: j, k, and [Enter] to browse through your inbox. Within a month or two, you'll be zipping through your inbox like Usain Bolt through the 200m.Full list: http://support.google.com/mail/b...Edit: David Craige mentioned a very useful Google Labs add-on under "Settings --> Labs": a [Send & Archive] buttonAnd another useful add-on:

Yes.Here’s the problem: most people who know a lot about Bitcoin can only speak “tech”.I was at a conference recently. I was the keynote speaker but had zero talk prepared (as usual). It was a crowdfunding conference so I “crowdsourced” my talk.I asked the audience: I can talk about entrepreneurship or I can take fifteen minutes to explain Bitcoin without using any technical jargon. Clap for which one you want.Almost 100% of the people wanted to learn about Bitcoin without the technical jargon.People are hungry for this. They don’t want to hear about “crypto” or “blockchain”. They just want to know what all this Bitcoin stuff is about.Back in 2013, I thought Bitcoin was a scam. I was wrong.First, some credentials.In early 2013 I had my doubts. I started reading everything I could. Then I got my hands dirty.I’ve been a coder / programmer since 1985. I decided to code up a Bitcoin only store (maybe the first ever) and sell my book, “Choose Yourself” on it before it was released on Amazon.It was very hard. I had to develop the store from scratch since there were no easy tools to help me. There still isn’t (hint: business opportunity).Once I launched it, quite a few people bought my book. I sold a PDF of my book for 0.1 Bitcoin. Bitcoin was then $60 so I sold it for about $6 per PDF. Right now, it’s as if I sold each PDF for $1600. I sold many copies.I went on CNBC when they heard I was doing this. The anchor asked me, “Did you just do this for publicity?”I said, “Well, I’m on national TV so I guess it worked.”Another thing worth noting: Most of my customers came from one domain name (they had to submit their email addresses for me to process the sale): Amazon.com. Make of that what you will.A few months ago I started writing about cryptocurrencies again. I saw so many people getting involved in scams, I wanted to help.The other day I had an Uber driver who thanked me during the car ride for helping him “get it”.And last night at a restaurant, the waiter at the end of the meal shook my hand and thanked me for helping him “finally” begin to understand what Bitcoin was about.In order for crypto currencies to succeed, people need to understand at a basic level what they are. Nobody needs to learn complicated cryptography or blockchain.Just understand why now. Why this is important for us a society.TWO CRITICAL REASONS BITCOIN IS HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT AND HERE TO STAYJust understand these two reasons. Then you will know the potential for Bitcoin. And you will be popular at cocktail parties.A) THE HISTORY OF MONEYEvery new style of money solves the major problems of the last style of money.BarterIf I have a bag of rice and I need shoes, what if you make shoes but you only need 1/2 bag of rice. Do I get 1/2 a pair of shoes?Barter has a lot of problems. In the above, coming up with the rice to shoes exchange rate is difficult.Then coming up with 1000s of exchange rates just to go out and buy groceries is almost impossible.PLUS, what if you have to move (your kingdom is attacked). How are you going to carry all that rice? All of those shoes?Money has two purposes:as a store of wealth / savingsto make transactionsThere’s a third, which Ray Dalio, the head of the largest hedge fund in the world, Brigewater, told me the other day. But we’ll get to that later.Barter is horrible as a store of wealth. And for transactions, best case it’s very difficult.But problems lead to opportunities. Which leads to…2. PRECIOUS METALS / COINSGold and silver are scarce. It’s hard to mine them.But it’s hard to forge them because you can measure by weight.So the scarcity combined with the lack of forgery makes them good choices for money. I can convert my rice into gold coins, you can convert your shoes into gold coins, and now we can trade and now we can buy whatever we want.(Marcus Aurelius on a gold coin)As a store of wealth, it’s not great but not horrible.If my kingdom is attacked and I have to move, gold and silver are easily stored and carried as designed jewelry.BUT, two problems.One: what if you live in a country that doesn’t have any gold mines. Now you either have to trade for gold or start attacking countries: (this did not work out so well for the Aztecs).Two: What if you wanted to buy a house right now: are you really going to bring a truck of gold bars to the closing? Or if you have to move to another country and you have a lifetime worth of savings: are you going to ship all of your gold bars to your new home?People say that gold is “real” as opposed to (later) paper money and cryptocurrencies.This is not really true. Gold is a rock. But it does have industrial uses (silver is better for this because of price but still…). Gold and silver are great electric conductors, can be used as SILVERware. Can be used as antibiotics (hence great for fillings on teeth).So we can say that gold money is “backed” by something that has real use with value associated with it.But we still have to solve the problems above.3) PAPER MONEY BACKED BY GOLD AND…PAPER MONEYCountries made paper money that was like a contract with the government that all of that money can be converted into gold.This was great for transactions (easy to carry paper money).This was great for store of wealth (put the money in a bank and you can go anywhere). The first banks for paper money backed by gold helped fund every war in Europe in the 1800s. Good job!When paper money is backed by gold it also puts a clamp on inflation. You only have as much paper money in a country as there is gold in that country.(yes, there is a 100,000 dollar bill in the US. Woodrow Wilson is on it).So you can trust the government to not go crazy printing money that is not backed by gold (like German in the 1920s when trillions of Marks were printed and Germany went into an inflationary death spiral that was at least one cause for World War II).BUT, why benefit the countries where gold is easy to mine and punish the countries where gold is hard to mine.Also, the world is expanding in every way: more people, more technology, more innovation, more THINGS.I’m not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing (see: Germany above) but sometimes countries need to balance debt with money printing to manage their fiscal policy.The US went off of gold in the early 70s in order to fund the financial needs of both the Vietnam War and the social improvement programs of Lyndon Johnson.This created inflation.Paper money will often lead to this situation. Someone will say: why do we need the gold part?Again, might be good or bad. There’s a lot of debate. Did money printing save the US in 2008 and 2009? Maybe. Or will their be future problems caused by this? Maybe.Nevertheless, there are other problems with paper money that need to be solved:a. No privacy.If I’m making a sizable (greater than $1000) transaction I’m usually not using cash but either a credit card or a money wire.So that means your bank knows. Other banks know (the bank you are sending money to, the Federal Reserve, the local Reserve bank, etc).Government agencies know (the IRS, the NSA, etc etc).Potentially sites like Google and Amazon know depending on what payment services you use and what you are buying.So you have no privacy on your transactions with paper money.b. Fees.If I send a friend in Korea money, I go through my bank (fee), local reserve bank (fee), Federal Reserve (fee), International wiring system (fee), their central bank (fee), their local reserve bank (fee), their local bank (fee).That’s a lot of fees. Those fees help create inflation because every transaction needs to have a profit on top of those fees.c. Forgery. Something like $200 billion in forged money is circulating right now.d. Human error. This is a CRITICAL problem. There are so many opportunities for human error. When you transfer money, they can send to the wrong account. Or a bank’s software can be hacked and you lose all of your money.Or, most importantly, the Federal Reserve in the US can decide to print another trillion (Like 2009) and, without your permission, the value of your dollar has gone down.In the US we’ve been lucky. But all of South America hasn’t been so lucky (all of their currencies crashed in the 80s. Most of Asia wasn’t so lucky in the 90s (their currencies wiped them out). Russia in 1997 was wiped out.Many countries have relied on humans to print (or not print) money and the slightest human error can wipe out an entire country’s economy.The United States has been lucky. For now. But this is a HUGE error we risk every day.These are the basic problems. There are more (theft, for instance).e. What is backing paper money?Only our trust. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist. But the reality is: a dollar is a piece of paper. Just like gold is just a rock.How do they make us trust that the money has value?They put “In God We Trust” on it. They put George Washington. They put the signature of the Secretary of Treasury (pretending it’s a contract.).And, for the weirdos, they even put a pyramid with an eye on it.And that’s supposed to be why we trust it. I don’t trust it.4) BITCOIN (and, btw, Bitcoin is not the end. There will be a “5”).Bitcoin solves the problems above.a. Human error: there is no printing of money. There is a fixed supply of 21,000,000 coins.How do I know this? I’m a skeptic. So I read the software behind Bitcoin. I read it over and over until I could figure it out. In one part of the code they clearly define how many coins can be “mined” / printed (printed is the wrong word but I’m using it here to make the connection with paper money). And there’s another part of the code which “enforces” the first part.(part of the code that limits the total # of bitcoins to 21,000,000. I found this by reading ALL of the code for bitcoin).b. Theft. Like with every other form of currency, an exchange (like a bank) that stores your Bitcoin can be hacked and money stolen.BUT, I only keep a small amount of money in an exchange. You can get a storage drive, store your money, and put it in a safety deposit box. So even if the exchange is attacked, you still have your money.ALL theft can be prevented this way with Bitcoin. You can’t do this with paper dollars because if you have too many dollars, how will you store it? Ditto for gold.c. Forgery. The software guarantees that Bitcoins can’t be forged.d. Privacy. I can send you a Bitcoin and nobody knows who is sending it, who is receiving it, and no government institutions are aware of it.e. Fees.Some bitcoin transactions have small fees. But it’s nothing like the fees of going through six banks in the transaction described above.What’s backing it?There’s about 1000 man-years of science backing Bitcoin.The underlying technology of Bitcoin which involves heavy amounts of cryptography, financial know-how, and basics of contract law, plus the “blockchain” have 100s of use-cases that we have only just begun to play with.EVEN IF Bitcoin is never used as a coin (although note: it’s being used every day as money) there are 100s or 1000s of other uses for Bitcoin that have nothing to do with the basic money use.I won’t get into the weeds here: but suffice to say that ALL of contract law can be (and will be) eventually replaced by Bitcoin.And ALL of logistics will be replaced by Bitcoin (e.g. UPS is replacing all of their internal logistics (tracking millions of packages every day going from millions of locations to millions of other locations) by Bitcoin technology.There’s nothing behind paper money or gold like this.Now…Bitcoin has problems also.Hence the need for other cryptocurrencies. But that’s ok and not the topic for here. Suffice to say, Bitcoin solves all the basic problems of paper money, which solves the problems of gold, which solves the problems of barter.HOWEVER, there is another reason why Bitcoin is here to stay and it’s so compelling.——EVOLUTION OF EVERY INDUSTRYEverything in life evolves. Not only species but ideas.Let’s look at some industries.MEDICINETheism: 500 years ago if you got sick, you’d either pray to a god to get better, go to a shaman, make a sacrifice, or assume you committed a sin that made you sick and would try to undo the sin.Humanism: Post-rennaissance, we had human “experts” called doctors who would either leech us to death, perform horrible surgeries that would kill us, or would pat us on the back, hammer our knee and say, “take two aspirin”.Doctors aren't bad. They’ve saved many many lives. But Humanism has it’s limits. A known fact is that, on average, the moment when a doctor is most effective is his or her first year out of medical school. After that, statistically downhill.Data-ism:Now when if you go to a doctor, you get tests. You get blood work, you get an MRI, an EEG, an X-Ray, the X-Ray might go into a database and an AI algorithm matches it against other X-rays (does it match a tumor X-ray or a non-tumor X-ray?). We even get genetic testing to see if our illness is in our chromosomes.Then, armed with data, often a computer will tell us the correct solution (and even a computer can do the robotic surgery needed), or a human will help interpret the data (but there’s room for human error here).(source: National Genome Research Institute)So Medicine has evolved fromTheism → Humanism → DataismLet’s pick another industry:WARTheism: 3000 years ago if two countries went to war, the kings would perform massive sacrifices to their gods the day before.In the Bible, whosever God was stronger (Baal versus Yahweh being a notable Hebrew battle), that group would win the war.Fragments of this exist right now: May the Force Be With You, said to Luke before he flies out to fight the Death Star.Humanism: For the past 500 years, whoever had the most humans on the ground, the most bullets, then the most planes, then the most bombs. ,would win the war.Data-ism:War is being fought every day now. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Every day, some country tries to bring down the electric grid of Poland.Every day, every Fortune 500 company is attacked by “bot armies” coming from…nobody knows.I’ve been involved in the cyber security space for 25 years or more.I once was talking to a company who helps Fortune 500 companies fight “bot armies”. All of the employees were top Phds who were the experts in their fields.One guy told me, “No matter how smart we are, they are smarter.”Who are “they?” The people making the bot armies. Where do they come from? We don’t know. They come from everywhere. They are just smarter than us.Elections are rigged. Companies are attacked. Information is stolen.We have been in World War III for at least 20 years and it will never end. Dataism has taken over war.Ok…MONEYTheism: “In God We Trust”Humanism: “George Washington”. A picture of Independence Hall. Or the White House. Anything. Anything at all so that we trust humans with what we are given in exchange for the hard labor we do every single day.Do we trust humans? I tend to trust humans. But that is maybe not so smart all of the time. Humans make a lot of mistakes and that’s been the downfall of so many companies, so many families, and so many…everything.Data-ism. Bitcoin and now other cryptocurrencies.1000s of man-years of science. 100,000s of lines of code that has been checked by 10,000s of the best programmers.Data-ism prevents forgery, keeps privacy, re-creates all contract law, avoids fees, avoids theft. And this is just a small sample of what data does for money.“In Data We Trust” for better or worse. But it works.The natural evolution of money has arrived. And it’s not only Bitcoin but other cryptocurrencies.FAQ:Why do we need other Cryptocurrencies?Why do we need more than one currency at all? Why is there a US dollar and a Canadian dollar.FOR NO REASON. Just an artificial border created in 1770 and we have two different currencies.Cryptocurrencies have what I call are “problem borders”.One coin is better than Bitcoin for making contracts (Ethereum).Another coin is better for privacy ((Zcash. A problem with Bitcoin is that although there are no names on a transaction, I can see the size and the time. So privacy is still a slight problem).Another coin might be better for solving a problem of decentralized storage (as opposed to storing all of your photos on one centralizes spot that can be hacked like Google Drive). Bitcoin doesn’t address this problem.Problem Borders create new currencies.Is it too late to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?Right now, this reminds me of the Internet in 1995–6. There’s a bit of irrational exuberance in new coins. Prices are going crazy.There will be a massive pullback. BUT, the legitimate coins are here to stay and will keep going.Amazon, of course, pulled back, when the Internet pulled back. Now it will eventually be a trillion dollar company. Many companies that started in the 90s have survived and thrived and were great long-term investments that have paid off.Cryptocurrencies are the “internet of money”. The internet is here to stay and so is the internet of money.We are only in inning one of the cryptocurrency shift in our money.Will cryptocurrencies replace paper money?Yes. Eventually. It might not be Bitcoin although Bitcoin will always exist.But each country, to solve the problems of paper money, will eventually switch. Countries that are debating it include: Israel, Estonia, Venezuela, Argentina.Countries that will use some aspects of cryptocurrency technology in their central bank will soon include China, Korea, Russia, and yes, the United States.And many countries will reject cryptocurrencies but their population will shift en masse to cryptocurrencies in order to avoid corruption, human error, theft, etc. First on my list for this is Argentina.What will the value of cryptocurrencies be?When I first wrote about this, all cryptocurrencies added up was about $200 BILLION. Now it’s around $750 Billion. Although I do view many of the currencies as scams so the number is really less.That’s the “SUPPLY” of cryptocurrencies.The DEMAND is the amount of paper money + gold that exists.That number is $200 TRILLION.So in order to go from ONE TRILLION to 200 TRILLION that’s a 200x gain. In other words, $10,000 turns into $2,000,000.And if you focus on the legitimate currencies, the gains are much greater.So, again, we are very much in the beginning of this. There is no other investment opportunity in our lifetime greater than this. And we ARE at the beginning.What are the legitimate cryptocurrencies?There are many. I don’t want to get into the weeds here and discuss all the technology.And I also don’t like all the speculative trading that is going on in cryptocurrencies. Speculation leads to scams and bubbles.But just like there were Internet companies that survived the bust and became the companies we use every day, there are cryptocurrencies that exist now that we will use every day ten years from now.You said on CNBC that Bitcoin will go to a $1,000,000? Were you kidding?No.Bitcoin hit $20,000 recently. We just said it could go at least as much as 200x higher. That’s $4,000,000. So even at $1,000,000, Bitcoin will be a buy.How else can one make money in the Bitcoin sector?You don’t have to be a software developer.When the gold rush hit in the 1800s, Levis Jeans became the big winner. And the companies that sold “picks” and “shovels”.There will be many picks and shovels companies in the Bitcoin space.Sites that have the latest bitcoin news and analysis will do well. Exchanges will do well. Companies that help integrate traditional companies with the deeper parts of Bitcoin technology will do well (like whoever is helping UPS integrate blockchain tech into their logistics).Companies that help new cryptocurrencies launch will do well.And on and on.Someone said you called “Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme” in early 2013. Why should we trust you now?First, I’m always a believer that the best investment is in yourself. This will provide greater than 200x returns.That said, I was wrong in early 2013.I’ve been a software guy for 25+ years. I’m able to do my research. Which I did.By May 2013 I had already done enough research to build my own bitcoin store, go on CNBC and discuss Bitcoin, and be an advocate when it was just $60. This is all public info.But, for me, focusing on my physical health, emotional health, creative health, and spiritual health, will always be the most valuable “Currency” I can develop and trade in.Could Bitcoin be just a fad?No.Paper money DOES have the problems described above. Someone has to solve those problems. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies solve them.And every industry evolves. Cryptocurrencies are the “In Data We Trust” way in which money is evolving.And $750 BILLION believes in me on this.Who is Satoshi?Satoshi is the secretive founder of Bitcoin. He is worth many many billions in Bitcoin right now. He is anonymous and reporters, governments, etc have never figured out who he is.That said, a number of people know who he is. I read his blog every day, He is a secretive person and nobody wants to blow his cover.Well, what should I do now?Don’t listen to me.a. Get an account on Coinbase (or wherever). Buy $10 worth of Bitcoin just to taste and feel it.b. Then read. Read a lot.Here’s some books not about Bitcoin that are worth reading:Sapiens by Yuval HurariThe Evolution of Everything by Matt RidleyThe Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.Antifragile by Naseem TalebThere’s a lot of discussion of cryptocurrencies on Reddit and Twitter. DO NOT read those. Most of those discussions are filled with trolls although there are some decent sources there.Blogs / Sites: start with Coindesk and CoinTelegraph. You'll find the rest as you read more.

The 100 Rules for Being a First-Time EntrepreneurIf you Google “entrepreneur” you get a lot of mindless cliches like “Think Big!” For me, being an “entrepreneur” doesn’t mean starting the next “Faceook”. Or even starting any business at all.It means finding the challenges you have in your life, and determining creative ways to overcome those challenges. However, in this post I focus mostly on the issues that come up when you first start your company. These rules also apply if you are taking an entrepreneurial stance within a much larger company (which all employees should do).Just as good to be an “entreployee” as an “entrepreneur”. Either one will help you survive this world of increased economic uncertainty.For me, I’ve started several businesses.Maybe 17 have failed out of 20. I fail quickly. I fail frequently. Entrepreneurship is a sentence of failures punctuated by brief success.I’m invested in about 28 private companies. I’ve advised probably another 50 private companies. I’m on the board of several private companies and one public company. The companies ranging from $0 in revenues to a billion in revenues.Along the way I’ve compiled a list of rules that have helped me deal with every aspect of being an entrepreneur in business and some in life.Here’s the real rules:A)        It’s not fun. I’m not going to explain why it’s not fun. These are rules. Not theories. I don’t need to prove them.But there’s a strong chance you can hate yourself throughout the process of being an entrepreneur. Keep sharp objects and pills away during your worst moments. And you will have them. If you are an entrepreneur and agree with me, please note this in the comments below.B)        Try not to hire people. You’ll have to hire people to expand your business. But it’s a good discipline to really question if you need each and every hire.C)       Get a customer. This seems obvious. But it’s not. Get a customer before you start your business, if you can.So many people say to me, “I have an idea. Can you introduce me to VCs?”There is a HUGE gap between “idea” and “professional venture capital”.In the middle of that gap is “customer”.D)        If you are offering a service, call it a product.Oracle did it. They claimed they had a database. But if you “bought” their database they would send in a team of consultants to help you “install” the database to fit your needs.In other words, for the first several years of their existence, they claimed to have a product but they really were a consulting company. Don’t forget this story. Products are valued higher than services.And almost EVERY major software product company was a service company in the beginning. Don’t forget that.E)       It’s OK to fail. Start over. Hopefully before you run out of money. Hopefully before you take in investor money. Or, don’t worry about it. Come up with new ideas. Start over.F)         Be profitable. Try to be profitable immediately. This seems obvious but it isn’t. Try not to raise money. That money is expensive.G)        When raising money: if it’s not easy then your idea is probably incapable of raising money. If its easy, then take as much as possible. If its TOO easy, then sell your company (unless you are Twitter, etc).(if its too easy, sell your company)H)        The same goes for selling your company. If it’s not easy, then you need to build more. Then sell. To sell your company, start getting in front of your acquirers a year in advance. Send them monthly updates describing your progress. Then, when they need a company like yours, your company is the first one that comes to mind.Don’t be like that guy in the TV show “Silicon Valley”. If someone offers you ten million for a company that has no revenues, then sell it. Not everything is going to be a Facebook. And even the Google guys tried to sell their company for ONE MILLION DOLLARS to Yahoo before they were revenue positive.SELL THE COMPANY.I)          Competition is good. It turns you into a killer. It helps you judge progress. It shows that other people value the space you are in. Your competitors are also your potential acquirors.J)         Don’t use a PR firm. Except maybe as a secretary. You are the PR for your company. You are your company’s brand. You personally.I’ve never had a good PR company. I’ve had good PR secretaries. But they are cheaper. One time I hired a PR company and they accidentally sent me the contract for Terry Bradshaw. He was paying $10,000 a month. How did they do for him?K)        Communicate with everyone. Employees. Customers. Investors. All the time. Every day.Employees want to know what to do. And they want to know you are thinking of their overall career.Customers want to know how to keep their bosses calm.Investors want to be your friend and want to know they can count on you when time’s are tough.L)         Do everything for your customers. This is very important.Get them girlfriends or boyfriends. Speak at their charities. Visit their parents for Thanksgiving. Help them find other firms to meet their needs. Even introduce them to your competitors if you think a competitor can help them or if you think you are about to be fired. Always think first, “What’s going to make my customer happy?”Note: EVEN if that means introduce them to a competitor. If you are the SOURCE, then everybody comes back to the source.M)        Your customer is not a company. There’s a human there. What will make my human customer happy? Make him laugh. You want your customer to be happy.N)        Show up. Go to breakfast/lunch/dinner with customers. Treat.O)        History. Know the history of your customers in every way. Company history, personal history, marketing history, investing history, etc.P)         Micro-manage software development. Nobody knows your product better than you do. If you aren’t a technical person, learn how to be very specific in your product specification so that your programmers can’t say: “well you didn’t say that!”Q)        Hire local. You need to be able to see and talk to your programmers. Don’t outsource to India. I love India. But I won’t hire programmers from there while I’m living in the US.R)        Sleep. Don’t buy into the 20 hours a day entrepreneur myth. You need to sleep 8 hours a day to have a focused mind.If you are working 20 hours a day, then that means you have flaws in how you are managing your time. You can argue about this but it’s true.S)         Exercise. Same as above. If you are unhealthy, your product will be unhealthy.T)         Emotionally Fit. DON’T have dating problems and software development problems at the same time. VCs will smell this all over you.U)        Pray. You need to. Be grateful where you are. And pray for success. You deserve it. Pray for the success of your customers. Heck, pray for the success of your competitors. The better they do, it means the market is getting bigger. And if one of them breaks out, they can buy you.V)       Buy your employees gifts. Massages. Tickets. Whatever. I always imagined that at the end of each day my young, lesbian employees (for some reason, most employees at my first company were lesbian) would be calling their parents and their mom and dad would ask them: “Hi honey! How was your day today?” And I wanted them to be able to say: “It was the best!” Invite customers to masseuse day. W)       Treat your employees like they are your children. They need boundaries. They need to be told “no!” sometimes. And sometimes you need to hit them in the face (ha ha, just kidding). But within boundaries, let them play.X)        Don’t be greedy pricing your product. If your product is good and you price it cheap, people will buy. Then you can price upgrades, future products, and future services more expensive. Which goes along with the next rule.Y)        Distribution is everything. Branding is everything. Get your name out there, whatever it takes. The best distribution is of course word of mouth, which is why your initial pricing doesn’t matter.Write a blog about your industry and be very honest about all the flaws (even your own) that is currently in your industry.Authenticity is the best branding.Z)         Don’t kill yourself. It’s not worth it. Your employees need you.Your children or future children need you. It seems odd to include this in a post about entrepreneurship but we’re also taking about keeping it real.Most books or “rules” for entrepreneurs talk about things like “think big”, “go after your dreams”. But often dreams turn into nightmares. I’ll repeat it again. Don’t kill yourself. Call me if things get too stressful. Or more importantly, make sure you take proper medicationAA)     Give employees structure. Let each employee know how his or her path to success can be achieved. All of them will either leave you or replace you eventually. That’s OK. Give them the guidelines how that might happen. Tell them how they can get rich by working for you.BB)      Fire employees immediately. If an employee gets “the disease” he needs to be fired. If they ask for more money all the time. If they bad mouth you to other employees. If you even think they are talking behind your back, fire them.The disease has no cure. And it’s very contagious. Show no mercy. Show the employee the door. There are no second chances because the disease is incurable.I don’t say this because I want anyone to be hurt. But if you’ve followed the rules above then you are treating employees well already. NOBODY should spread the disease and badmouth you or your customers.CC)      Make friends with your landlord. If you ever have to sell your company, believe it or not, you are going to need his signature (because there’s going to be a new lease owner)DD)     Only move offices if you are so packed in that employees are sharing desks and there’s no room for people to walk.EE)      Have killer parties. But use your personal money. Not company money. Invite employees, customers, and investors. .FF)       If an employee comes to you crying, close the door or take him or her out of the building. Sit with him until it stops. Listen to what he has to say. If someone is crying then there’s been a major communication breakdown somewhere in the company. Listen to what it is and fix it. Don’t get angry at the culprit’s. Just fix the problem.(you don’t want your employees to be sad.)GG)     At Christmas, donate money to every customer’s favorite charity. But not for investors or employees.HH)     Have lunch with your competitors. Listen and try not to talk. One competitor (Bill Markel from Interactive 8) once told me a story about how the CEO of Toys R Us returned his call. He was telling me this because I never returned Bill’s calls. Ok, Bill, lesson noted.II)        Ask advice a lot. Ask your customers advice on how you can be introduced into other parts of their company. Then they will help you. Because of the next rule…JJ)        Hire your customers. Or not. But always leave open the possibility. Let it always dangle in the air between you and them. They can get rich with you. Maybe. Possibly. If they play along. So play.KK)     On any demo or delivery, do one extra surprise thing that was not expected. Always add bells and whistles that the customer didn’t pay for.This is such an easy way to over deliver I’m surprised people don’t do it 100% of the time. They do it maybe 1% of the time. So this is an easy way to compete and surprise and delight.LL)      Understand the demographic changes that are changing the world. Where are marketing dollars flowing and can you be in the middle. What services do aging baby boomers need? Is the world running out of clean water? Are newspapers going to survive? Etc. Etc. Read every day to understand what is going on.LLa) Don’t go to a lot of parties or “meetups” with other entrepreneurs. Work instead while they are partying.MM)    But, going along with the above rule, don’t listen to the doom and gloomers that are hogging the TV screen trying to tell you the world is over. They just want you to be scared so they can scoop up all the money.NN)     You have no more free time. In your free time you are thinking of new ideas for customers, new ideas for services to offer, new products.OO)     You have no more free time, part 2. In your free time, think of ideas for potential customers. Then send them emails: “I have 10 ideas for you. Would really like to show them to you. I think you will be blown away. Here’s five of them right now.”OOa) Depressions, recessions, don’t matter. There’s $15 trillion in the economy. You’re allowed a piece of it:FedEx, Microsoft, HewlettPackard, and many huge companies were started in recessions or depressions. Leave economics to the academics while they leave good business to you.PP)       Talk. Tell everyone you ever knew  what your company does. Your friends will help you find clients.QQ)     Always take someone with you to a meeting. You’re bad at following up. Because you have no free time. So, if you have another employee. Let them follow up. Plus, they will like to spend time with the boss. You’re going to be a mentor.RR)      If you are consumer focused: your advertisers are your customers. But always be thinking of new services for your consumers. Each new service has to make their life better. People’s lives are better if: they become healthier, richer, or have more sex. “Health” can be broadly defined.SS)       If your customers are advertisers: find sponsorship opportunities for them that drive customers straight into their arms. These are the most lucrative ad deals (see rule above). Ad inventory is a horrible business model. Sponsorships are better. Then you are talking to your customer.TT)      No friction. The harder it is for a consumer to sign up, the less consumers you will have. No confirmation emails, sign up forms, etc. The easier the better.TTA) No fiction, part 2. If you are making a website, have as much content as you can on the front page. You don’t want people to have to click to a second or third page if you can avoid it. Stuff that first page with content. You aren’t Google. (And, 10 Unusual Things You Didn’t Know About Google)UU)     No friction, part 3. Say “yes” to any opportunity that gets you in a room with a big decision maker. Doesn’t matter if it costs you money.VV)     Sell your company two years before you sell it. Get in the offices of the potential buyers of your company and start updating them on your progress every month.  Ask their advice on a regular basis in the guise of just an “industry catch-up”WW)    If you sell your company for stock, sell the stock as soon as you can. If you are selling your company for stock it means:a.         The market is such that lots of companies are being sold for stock.b.         AND, companies are using stock to buy other companies because they value their stock less than they value cash.c.         WHICH MEANS, that when everyone’s lockup period ends, EVERYONE will be selling stock across the country. So sell yours first.XX)     Execution is a dime a dozen. If you have an idea worth pursuing, then just make it. You can build any website for cheap. Hire a programmer and make a demo. Get at least one person to sign up and use your service. If you want to make Facebook pages for plumbers, find one plumber who will give you $10 to make his Facebook page. Just do it.Fail quickly. Good ideas are HARD. It’s execution that is a dime a dozen.YY)     Don’t use a PR firm, part II. Set up a blog. Tell your personal stories (see “33 tips to being a better writer” ). Let the customer know you are human, approachable, and have a real vision as to why they need to use you. Become the voice for your industry, the advocate for your products. If you make skin care products, tell your customers every day how they can be even more beautiful than they currently are and have more sex than they are currently getting. Blog your way to PR success. Be honest and bloody.ZZ)      Don’t save the world. If your product sounds too good to be true, then you are a liar.ZZa) Your company is always for sale.AAA)  Frame the first check. I’m staring at mine right now.BBB)   No free time, part 3. Pick a random customer. Find five ideas for them that have nothing to do with your business. Call them and say, “I’ve been thinking about you. Have you tried this?”CCC)   No resale deals. Nobody cares about reselling your service. Those are always bad deals.DDD)   Your lawyer or accountant is not going to introduce you to any of their other clients. Those meetings are always a waste of time.EEE)    Celebrate every success. Your employees need it. They need a massage also. Get a professional masseuse in every Friday afternoon. Nobody leaves a job where there is a masseuse.FFF)     Sell your first company. I have to repeat this. Don’t take any chances. You don’t need to be Mark Zuckerberg. Sell your first company as quick as you can. You now have money in the bank and a notch on your belt. Make a billion on your next company.Note Mark Cuban’s story. Before he started Broadcast and rode it to a few billion, he sold his first software company for ten million.GGG)   Pay your employees before you pay yourself.HHH)   Give equity to get the first customer. If you have no product yet and no money, then give equity to a good partner in exchange for them being a paying customer.  Note: don’t blindly give equity. If you develop a product that someone asked for, don’t give them equity. Sell it to them. But if you want to get a big distribution partner whose funds can keep you going forever, then give equity to nail the deal.III)       Don’t worry about anyone stealing your ideas. Ideas are worthless anyway. It’s OK to steal something that’s worthless.IIIA) Follow me on twitter.Questions from ReadersQuestion: You say no free time but you also say keep emotionally fit, physically fit, etc. How do I do this if I’m constantly thinking of ideas for old and potential customers?Answer:  It’s not easy or everyone would be rich.Question: if I get really stressed about clients paying, how do I get sleep at night?Answer: medicationQuestion: how do I cold-call clients?Answer: email them. Email 40 of them. It’s OK if only 1 answers. Email 40 a day but make sure you have something of value to offer.Question: how can I find cheap programmers or designers?Answer: if you don’t know any and you want to be cheap: use Hire Freelancers & Find Freelance Jobs Online, Elance, or craigslist. But don’t hire them if they are from another country. You need to communicate with them even if it costs more money.Question: should I hire programmers?Answer: first…freelance. Then hire.Question: what if I build my product but I’m not getting customers?Answer: develop a service loosely based on your product and offer that to customers. But I hope you didn’t make a product without talking to customers to begin with?Question: I have the best idea in the world, but for it to work it requires a lot of people to already be using it. Like Twitter.Answer: if you’re not baked into the Silicon Valley ecosystem,  then find distribution and offer equity if you have to. Zuckerberg had Harvard. MySpace had the fans of all the local bands they set up with MySpace pages. I (in my own small way) had Stock Market - Business News, Market Data, Stock Analysis - TheStreet when I set up Stockpickr! Your Source for Stock Ideas. I also had 10 paying clients when i did my first successful business fulltime.Question: I just lost my biggest customer and now I have to fire people. I’ve never done this before. How do I do it?Answer:  one on meetings. Be Kind. State the facts. Say you have to let people go and that everyone is hurting but you want to keep in touch because they are a great employee. It was an honor to work with them and when business comes back you hope you can convince them come back. Then ask them if they have any questions. Your reputation and the reputation of your company are on the line here. You want to be a good guy. But you want them out of your office within 15 minutes. It’s a termination, not a negotiation. This is one reason why it’s good to start with freelancers.Question: I have a great idea. How do I attract VCs?Answer: build the product. Get a customer. Get money from customer. Get more customers. Build more services in the product. Get VC. Chances are by this point, the VCs are calling you.Question: I want to build a business day trading.Answer: bad ideaQuestion: I want to start a business but don’t know what my passion is:Answer: skip to the post: “How to be the luckiest person alive”. Do the Daily Practice. Within six months your life will be completely different.Question: I want to leave my job but I’m scared.Answer: same as above question.  The Daily Practice turns you into a healthy Idea Machine. Plus luck will flow in from every direction.Final rule: Things change. Every day. The title of this post, for instance, says “100 Rules”. But I gave about 70 rules (including the Q&A). Things change midway through. Be ready for it every day. In fact, every day figure out what you can change just slightly to shake things up and improve your product and company.Your business is not your life. When you start a business you also get a cognitive bias that makes you think your business is GREAT.Every day make sure you are not smoking crack. The most important thing is your health so you can be persistent. If you smoke crack you can die.I hope you succeed. Because I really need that smart toilet that sends my doctors text messages after doing urinalysis on my pee every day.Good luck.

Arriving early and doing nothing is viewed more favorably than staying late and working assiduously. It’s unfair, but it’s only the first boot of real life to kick you in the ass.HR and the ethics hotline don’t exist as a resource to you; they exist to cover management’s ass. I’ve worked for bosses who have used racial slurs, homophobic epithets, threatened and intimidated staff, used drugs in the office, and misappropriated their expense credits, but they were never so much as suspended. I almost lost my job for marking a sale as closed when I got verbal confirmation from my client (with my manager on the phone), only to get the actual signed documents a few days later.Always, always, ALWAYS document and organize files of communication between you and your superiors and you and problem clients. Did I say always? Discrepancies (read lies) in accounts of your interactions from either of these parties is a fast track to being escorted out of the building. Nothing shuts up a lying SOB like a time-stamped email with the intro, “Per my email on July 15, I mentioned….”Always keep a pulse on the job market. At least twice a year apply for jobs in your industry to get a sense on what your skills trade for in the open market and to sharpen your interviewing skills. It’s also a great habit to be in the orbit of recruiters because they operate within a tight-knit ecosystem, network with, and know one another. If you’re not a great fit for one role, and they like you, they’ll refer you to a friend or colleague looking to fill another role as a courtesy.Even if you’re not interested in a role that they may signNow you for, always try to recommend or refer qualified candidates to recruiters. This pays dividends down the road.Be wise as a serpent, yet as humble as a dove. Many people advise against making friends, but I would advise that you make them believe that you’re a friend. Being too cold and stoic in the office will make your colleagues withhold gossip, news, and politics from you that may be actionable. You can be friendly without being friends. Whatever your line is, find it and stick to it.Never get comfortable. I had a former colleague who never placed photos of his family or accomplishments in his cube and I asked him why. He said he is always prepared to walk out of the building with the items on his person at a moment’s notice. Speaking from experience, there’s nothing more humiliating or anxiety-inducing than taking the security assisted walk of shame with all of your belongings in a box and colleagues peeking above their cubes like prairie dogs to watch you walk the green mile. Work is a place where you should be as productive as possible; your family, spouse, hobbies, religion, proclivities, and creature comforts shouldn’t occupy the work space.Your manager is NOT to be trusted with personal information. Whether your mom has cancer, wife left you, your kids are suspended from school, or you’re late on the rent, these aren’t the people to share your most vulnerable moments with for two reasons; 1. They don’t have the power to do anything about them, and 2. They are more likely to report this things up the chain of command to use against you should it ever become convenient as a manipulation tactic. I know this oversimplifies things for the truly empathic, and supportive managers out there, but for the sake of generalities, let’s leave those 8 people out of this and err on the side of caution.Use your lunch hour as an opportunity to network with people within different departments to grow your customer base. Every employee has internal and external customers, and it will behoove you to learn how to cater to them. If you’re in sales, take someone in Dev Ops, Professional Services, R&D, or Customer Experience to lunch. You’ll learn all the horrible things sales people do that make their job a living hell, so you won’t perpetuate that. You’ll also forge some great individual relationships for emergencies when you need to phone a friend.Stay away from the office complainer. Every office has at least one, and he/she is a cancer on your outlook and productivity. Regardless of how valid their complaints are about the quality of the snacks, the scheduled All Hands meetings, the increased co-pays on the new insurance for annual enrollment, the way management is trying to screw us with the new Comp Plan, etc., the best thing to do is to keep your exposure to this individual AT. A. MINIMUM.Become a Subject Matter Expert in at least one or more topics within your department. This makes you indispensable among your peers and management, because they don’t want to(or can’t do) do the job of training the whole staff or answering all their questions.Volunteer to headline new products or services, and you’ll become more visible with leadership and ahead of the curve when those products/services become mandatory.Make your career decisions for the people who will attend your funeral one day; not the people in that office. Days, or even hours after your death, someone will be posting a requisition for your position, and your duties will fall on the shoulders of another. Make sure you spend your strategic decisions improving the quality of time with the people who will be crying at your funeral. This puts a whole lot of unnecessary office bullshit into perspective.If you’re in the US, talk to your colleagues about your salary. Corporations benefit from dwindling unions and individual, rather than collective bargaining by negotiating salary and compensation on an individual basis. Men, this is our opportunity to gain solidarity with women who work equally to ensure that they’re paid equally. White folks, this is an opportunity to ensure Black folks, Hispanics, and Natives are paid equally. This isn’t a zero-sum equation; corporations make enough money to pay us all equally. They have the luxury of not doing so. Hold their feet to the fire, or have them risk losing the war of retention.Be kind. Especially to the people who least deserve it. 9 times out of 10, they’re fighting prodigious personal battles, and the only place they can funnel their energy is at work. Be gentle, but don’t be a doormat either.Bring your authentic self to work. I’ve seen introverts, extroverts, flashy dressers, frumpy dressers, those gifted with supreme elocution, and those with the longest, strongest Southern drawl succeed in business, which proves one thing. Success doesn’t care how you show up; just that you show up. I wish you the best of luck on your journey!

The exact frequencies we use are arbitrary: our scales are based around A 440 Hz, but they could just have easily have been based around A 442 Hz or 428 Hz. For a long time, continental European concert pitch was different from British concert pitch.In terms of why we have a twelve note chromatic scale and not, say, a 24 note, this has more to do with history and convenience.The basis of the octave is that when you halve or double the frequency, the note sounds as if it is ‘the same’, but at a higher or lower place. This is because, intrinsic in a moving column of air or a string (both of which are active in the human voice), the principal harmonic overtone is the octave. The next harmonic is the fifth, and further harmonics include the major third. As harmonics go up, they tend to get more and more out of tune.If you start with A, and take its second overtone, the 5th, you get E. From E you get to B, from B you get to F#, and thus you will go all the way round until you come to Gx (G double-sharp). This will give you all of the chromatic tones.However, doing it this way does not bring you back to A. Gx will be differently tuned. If you construct a piano or an organ on this basis, you will find the keys around where you started from are pretty much in tune, but as you go further, they will get further and further out of tune.To solve this, instrument makers created ‘tempered’ tuning, which is very slightly flat of ‘true’ fifths-based tuning, though not enough for most people to notice. Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ suite of pieces exploited the new tempered tuning, allowing him to write something in every single chromatic key.With tempered tuning, Gx is the same as A, and Ab is the same as G#.Tempered tuning is in use for the great majority of contemporary Western music, except for barbershop, which exploits the ‘ring and lock’ sound of ‘true’ tuning.Why 12 notes, and not 24?The Greeks came up with three scales. The diatonic was the ancestor of our eight note scale of the ‘natural’ notes. The chromatic was the ancestor of our 12 note scale of chromatic notes. The enharmonic (not linked to the modern use of the word) made use of what we would call quarter-tones. Arabic music and some others use quarter tones, giving, in some cases, a 24-note palette, although the enharmonic was still an eight note scale. Any kind of 24 note scale is harder to work with, and you move away quickly from notes which are harmonically related at all to the tonic note, which is why quarter-tone music is less popular.Why eight notes, and not 12?The original diatonic scale had several shades, and its exact composition only settled down gradually, but it essentially has no interval larger than a major 2nd. Clearly, if you only use major 2nds, you end up with fewer notes: a major 2nd scale is the whole-tone scale, which goes C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-C, but this means that you miss out the two most powerful harmonics—the 5th, which is the second harmonic of the tonic, and the 4th, of which the tonic is the second harmonic. Therefore, to get in a G and an F, but only to use notes that would be generated by the circle of 5th or circle of 4ths (which is the harmonic series we talked about at the beginning), you have to include a couple of half-steps. In terms of the notes you get to most quickly going forwards or backwards on a circle of 5ths or 4ths, you would have F-C-G-D-A-E-B as one potential arrangement, and Ab-Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D as another potential arrangement.In fact, all of these arrangements came to be used, which are known as the Modes. However, the Ionian and Aeolian modes became the most popular. The Ionian is identical to our major scale, and the Aeolian is identical to our natural minor scale, though, usually, you would use the harmonic minor, which sharpens the 7th to give a stronger leading note.Why eight notes instead of five?Much folk music uses not eight notes, but five, being the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic builds exclusively on the circle of fifths going forwards, so you have C-G-D-A-E, and it stops at the fifth of these, not going on to the B.During the middle-ages, much church music was based on quartal harmony (which is to say, the harmony of going backwards to the 4th, rather than forwards to the 5th). Secular folk music, based on quintal harmony, going forwards, established its own distinct flavour. The hymn Amazing Grace owes its popularity partly from distinctively breaking away from ‘spiritual’ sounding church music, which often involved the plagal cadence of IV-I instead of the more compelling V-I, and is written entirely in the pentatonic, which helps with its folky, authentic feel.It’s popularly believed that guitar solos are played in the pentatonic, and that many well-known songs are pentatonic, but, if you analyse them, you often find that they are based around a pentatonic feel, but occasionally include non-pentatonic notes. The famous solo on Stairway to Heaven, for example, makes powerful use of the non-pentatonic F (in the key of Am—Am pentatonic is A, C, D, E, G, analogous to C pentatonic C, D, E, G, A).▲ The circle of fifths. Each note (and key) going clockwise goes up a 5th, each note (and key) going anticlockwise goes down a 5th, which is the same as going up a 4th. For keys based on those notes, the key signature changes so that the notes always stay in the same relationship of tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone for the major. The relative minor keys, inside the circle, have the same key signature as their majors, but they generally have a sharpened 7th written as an accidental (harmonic minor), or a sharpened 6th and 7th when ascending (melodic minor). To avoid writing out huge strings of sharps, flats and double-sharps and double-flats, we make an ‘enharmonic change’ (not the same meaning as the Greek scale) where we call C# Db, and Gb F#. However, this only works with tempered tuning.What about other non-diatonic and non-chromatic notes?The blue note in jazz and blues is a ‘bent’ note (achieved by bending the string on a guitar). Originally this would be a flattened fifth or sharpened 4th, but a bend around the 7th is also heard. This is an ‘out of tune’ note, but it is not a constant note. The character of the blue notes is that they are changing over time, so you might start with the 4th and bend up to a flattened 5th (in minor blues), or start with a minor 7th and bend up toward a major 7th. Although you can play blues to an extent on a keyboard that does not allow for bending, it never has quite the same feel as a saxophone or guitar bending the note.