vijay_nair

SEEKING WORK - Designer/Front-end Engineer - Remote

Location: Bangalore, India

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: HTML/CSS/JS, Node, WordPress, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, Principle

Portfolio: https://www.dffrnt.com

Email: vijay@dffrnt.com

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I'm Vijay Nair, design partner and front-end engineer for startups with over 19 years of experience. I specialize in:

- UI/UX for websites and SaaS products that convert visitors to customers

- Brand identity systems (i.e., logomarks, app icons, favicons, UI style guides, printed office stationery, flex hoardings etc) that scale with your growth

- Design systems that enable engineering teams to move faster

- Interactive prototypes that help secure funding

- WordPress plugin and theme development, customization, installation or migration with a strong focus on your brand's unique identity and user experience

Previously won the brand identity contest for io.js (which later merged into Node.js) and have worked with dozens of funded startups across logistics, social media and B2B SaaS.

I offer flexible engagement models - from quick design sprints to ongoing collaborations. For all your graphic and motion design, interactive prototype development, web apps or WordPress jobs, please contact me at vijay@dffrnt.com.

Thank you.

When drugs targeting the gut have effects in the brain, serotonin receptors are usually involved and it's 5-HT4 this time. Taking carbidopa (or benserazide, another peripheral decarboxylase inhibitor) along with prucalopride can potentially enhance the memory effects by preventing gut metabolism.

Blocking 5-HT6 also improves memory (in mice) but it seems to come with circadian disruption.

SEEKING WORK • INDIA • REMOTE OKAY

Portfolio: https://dffrnt.com

Email: vijay@dffrnt.com

Experience: 15 years

Branding & identity designer, full-stack web developer focused on helping startups get both their marketing and product off the ground ASAP. I cover everything from logos and business cards to websites and web apps (Node + Mongo or MySQL)

Designer of the branding for io.js, which has now become the new Node.js — https://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept

Social banners designed as part of the branding for io.js on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/official_iojs

Previously I was employed as a Front-end Engineer at Infinera working on web-based NMS solutions (Angular + D3).

SEEKING WORK • INDIA • REMOTE OKAY

Portfolio: https://dffrnt.com

Email: vijay@dffrnt.com

Experience: 14+ years

Branding & identity designer, full-stack web developer focused on helping startups get both their marketing and product off the ground ASAP. I cover everything from logos and business cards to websites and web apps (Node + Mongo). If you have an idea and a plan of attack, I can build it out for you.

I'm proud to be the designer of the branding for io.js, which has since become the new Node.js — https://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept. I also did the social marketing banners for their Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/official_iojs.

Previously, I was a front-end engineer at Infinera working on web-based telecom solutions, mainly focused on bringing their Java-based DNA NMS to the web using Angular and D3.js. The highlight of my work there was building a D3.js-based semantic zoom-pan interface that allowed customers to start at the node level and drill down into the servers at each node, then into the racks inside the server, continue still further down to the chips and lasers inside the racks. This works similar to how you can zoom-pan from the world map all the way down to the street level in Google Maps. This allowed navigating the interface with zero clicks so NOC engineers can see an alarm and simply scroll to dig deep down into a node and identify the faulty piece of equipment. Besides this, I also designed and implemented a standard style guide/design language for all their internal apps along with a unified icon theme.

Over the years I have been lucky to have found quite a few clients from these threads and it has always been exciting to work with HNers. My one and only regret so far was when I almost landed the logo design for jsDelivr CDN; even though they paid me for the job, I found out later they later decided to go with a different design that has an angular.js/HTML5 bent to it. I use their service quite a bit and I would've loved to see my work on their website. That would have been a big break for me and I'm sad to have missed out on it.

Hope to redeem myself soon with my next project. Looking forward to meeting some new faces this time around, cheers : )

I rolled out my own Firefox/Chrome web extension to tweak the native UI. Nothing drastic, just a gentle tweak of the CSS.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/vjk2005/status/1343664202288754689

I have a private HN client that does this and more but I don't want to release it and destroy what we have here. I've gone a step further and removed username display next to comments so I make judgements based solely on the content of the message.

Only some of them are on a daily schedule so actual pill count/day is low. Niacin (vitamin B3) for example leads to diabetes and liver damage when taken upwards of 4g/day. So I take 0.5 mg (nearly a tenth of the therapeutic dose, that too on alternate days, to reduce the potential for side effects even further). High dose vitamin B6 (>20mg/day, I take 3mg once every 5 days for 30x reduction compared to therapeutic dose) can lead to lung cancer in men. So the b-complex pill¹ is taken once every 5 days. Vitamin D overdose can lead to hypercalcemia so that's taken once a week (60000 IU) and some months I stay off it entirely as fat-soluble vitamins like vit. D tend to build up in the system. There are similar rules for other supplements as well.

¹The B-vitamins (1 to 12) + zinc + calcium are a single pill called "Recobex-Z". These are generally called "b-complex", it's a combination drug.

Essentially the daily pill count is 2 in the morning + 1 in the afternoon + 2 at night, so 5 pills/day. I also do supplement fasting days with no pills taken on that day.

No condition and no medical diagnosis. For the past few years I've been afflicted by periods of existential crisis and L-DOPA short circuits this. Much better mood, focus and most importantly — drive (which is what helps most with the EC). Feels almost as good as how I felt when in my teens¹.

As others have mentioned I simply buy them off of Amazon.

¹completed my 37th trip around the sun yesterday, the 17th.

Vitamins (B-K) + calcium + fish and cod liver oil: several years.

L-citrulline, zinc: 2+ years.

Ashwagandha, Boswellia: slightly more than a year.

L-DOPA, niacin, L-taurine: a few months.

It's been a few months now. L-DOPA tolerance is dose-dependant, term-dependent as well as drug-dependant. After looking for ways to work around this, I found L-DOPA from Mucuna pruriens does not have the two major side-effects I was concerned about:

1. LID (Levodopa induced dyskinesia) - ironically the "cure" for Parkinson's disease (abbreviated to PD from here on) induces PD like side effects!

2. tolerance built up over chronic use.

We're not sure why Mucuna is able to do this but regarding LID one hypothesis advanced in a paper I read was that it might have something to do with pure L-DOPA being co-administered with Carbidopa in order to prevent peripheral metabolism of L-DOPA so that a greater amount reaches the brain. In the paper they show Carbidopa worsens LID and patients on pure L-DOPA alone took longer to get LID. Mucuna group didn't see any LID symptoms for the duration of the study.

Regarding tolerance, there are a few papers that compared Mucuna with other common PD drugs and found trial participants remained responsive throughout the study to a greater degree while on Mucuna compared to the other drugs. Here's one such paper: "Mucuna pruriens in Parkinson’s disease: a double blind clinical and pharmacological study", https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/jnnp/75/12/1672.full.pdf

Tolerance also seems to depend on the dosage and delivery regimen, the key thing to watch out being the prevention of dopamine peaks and to maintain a smooth steady level through continuous administration via IV — "Does Tolerance Develop to Levodopa? Comparison of 2- and 21-H Levodopa Infusions ", https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8474479/

Having done all this work, I'm still highly wary of continuing Mucuna for years. I keep a watchful eye on any behavioral (hallucinations, insomnia) and physiological (tachycardia) abnormalities in myself, just in case. Also because I don't have PD, I can stick to a relatively low dosage (PD patients are given 45g of Mucuna/day equivalent to 1.5g of L-DOPA; I take 2.4g/day, roughly a twentieth of the therapeutic dose) which seems to be highly correlated with LID (what I'm most anxious about).

What gave me the confidence to move forward was knowing that Mucuna has been used in traditional Ayurvedic and Siddha medicinal systems here in India for thousands of years and is still actively in use as treatment for mood disorders¹. Something that lasts long and is also backed by science can't be wrong. Even so, I won't deny that L-DOPA via Mucuna is a minefield I'm gingerly stepping across.

¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyxVCPgUVMI (sorry, the video is in Tamil, "poonaikali" is vernacular here for Mucuna pruriens)

Supplements, especially L-DOPA (amazing mood improvement and libido boost), L-citrulline (libido and energy boost) and niacin.

There are other supplements¹ in my stack but these three stand out as the effects are near immediate, measured in mere minutes/hours.

¹zinc methionine, L-taurine, Ashwagandha, Boswellia serrata, fish oil, cod liver oil, vitamins B1, B2, B6, B9, B12, C , D, K, calcium, resveratrol.

SEEKING WORK • INDIA • REMOTE OKAY

Portfolio: https://dffrnt.com

Email: vijay@dffrnt.com

Experience: 14 years

Branding & identity designer, full-stack web developer focused on helping startups get both their marketing and product off the ground ASAP. I cover everything from logos and business cards to websites and web apps (Node + Mongo)

Designer of the branding for io.js, which has now become the new Node.js — https://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept

Social banners for io.js on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/official_iojs

I almost landed the logo design for jsDelivr CDN but even though they paid me for the job, they seem to have gone in a more angular.js/HTML5 style logo in the end. Which is a pity as I use their service quite a bit and would've loved to see my work on their masthead.

Previously, I was a front-end engineer at Infinera working on web-based telecom solutions. Specifically, I re-built parts of their Java-based DNA NMS for the web using Angular and D3.js. I also designed and implemented a style language for their internal apps.

Over the years I have found a few clients from these threads and it has always been exciting to work with HNers. Looking forward to meeting some new faces this time around, cheers.

• Magnetism. There are plenty of videos out there calling it the result of a relativistic charge imbalance. But I've never been able to use this point-of-view to practical use cases like understanding how permanent magnets work or how increasing the number of windings in inductors boosts the magnetic field strength. There were more situations I tried to put this POV into use but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

• Qualia. What is this subjective experience that I know as consciousness? I've gone through Wiki, SEP and a fair number of books on philosophy and a few on neuroscience but I still don't understand what it is that I experience as the color "red" when in reality it's just a bunch of electric fields (photons). Why can't I get the same experience — i.e., color — when I look at UV or IR photons? These too are the very same electric fields as the red, blue, green I see all the time.

• Photographic composition. I'm a designer. I know them. I use them. But only empirically. I just do not understand them at a neuroscientific level. Why does rule-of-thirds feel pleasing? Is the golden ration bullshit? My gut says yes but I'm unable to come up with a watertight rebuttal. Why do anamorphic ultra-widescreen shoots feel so dramatic/cinematic? Yet to see an online exposition on the fundamental reasons underlying the experience. Any questions to artists are deflected with the standard "It's art, not science" reply.

• Wave-Particle duality. "It's a probability wave that determines when a particle will pop into existence out of nothingness." okay, where exactly does this particle come from? If enough energy accumulates in a region of empty space, a particle pops into existence? What is this "energy"? What is it made of? What even is an electron, really? I've followed quite a few rabbit holes and come out none the wiser for it.

• Convolution. It's disappointing how little I understand it given how wide its applications are. Convolution of two gaussians is a gaussian? Convolution in time domain is multiplication in frequency domain and vice-versa? How do these come out of the definition which is "convolution is sliding a flipped kernel over a signal"?

SEEKING WORK • INDIA • REMOTE OKAY

Portfolio: https://dffrnt.com

Email: vijay@dffrnt.com

Experience: 14 years

Branding and Identity designer for startups. From logos and collateral (business cards, letterheads), to social media banners as well as websites and web apps (Node+Mongo back-end, Vanilla JS front-end).

Designer of the award-winning branding for io.js, which has now become the new Node.js — https://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept Social banners for io.js on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/official_iojs

Previously, I was Front-end engineer at Infinera working on web-based telecom solutions (NMS).

This was a compelling read on the buyback issue from earlier this year: https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for...

SEEKING WORK — Remote okay

I’m Vijay, full-stack designer and developer from South India, freelancing at https://dffrnt.com.

Designed the award-winning branding for io.js, which eventually merged back into Node.js from which it was initially forked from — https://behance.net/gallery/23269525/IOJS-logo-concept

Previously at Infinera, I did data visualization/front-end engineering using a combination of d3.js and angular.js to bring their Java-based NMS (Network Management System) to the web. Highlights were building a semantic zoom for network topology navigation, icon design and building a visual library of web components that also served as a style guide called INDIGO (Infinera Design and Interface Guidelines and Objectives)

If you need to setup Nginx servers (with caching and TLS), build node.js apps, scrape websites (puppeteer), pull out data from OAuth gated APIs (passport.js/request), visualize data (d3.js), build out a complete marketing packet (logo design + branding, landing pages and full-on websites or web apps using vanilla JS + Node + Mongo/SQL stack), then please email me at vijay@dffrnt.com.

Thank you.

I'd buy Tesla Powerwalls¹ and charge 'em up. One of them can store upto 13.5 kWh of energy and going by your comment below (190 kWh/30 days = 6.3 kWh/day, which seems in line with "I have an extra KW of power generation for ~8 hours" for peak days), it seems two of them costing $14k as per their calculator can handle 4 days worth of surplus.

Not sure if the economics would work out in your favor² but I personally consider going off-the-grid worth the cost.

¹https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

²subsidies: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/learn/incenti... (could potentially knock off 50% of the cost if you qualify)

Perhaps a real-time version of this can be embedded into the diving goggles(AR) for murk-free dives.

yutru here; I ran into Raste earlier on EU CTF and was wondering how that happened... now I know : )

Thanks for making this post Jan, I hope it brings some of the old timers out of hiatus and back into the game for a second inning. Had some great memories with them, like watching aimbot and bug, two players who knew one another from their Subspace days back in their teens, come together once again after all these years apart to carry the red flag to victory; detect and xyz aggressively spamming south entrance of blue base in preds giving me hell on defense; the whole bot-based shenanigans with blankspace dude; Dr.Pepper posting absolutely ginormous guides on how to play on our reddit then getting angry in the comments; sniper and his kid doing a father-son combo sweep of the map; that one epic 5-hour game last February when spy had to infitrate blue team to act as a decoy to finally end the ordeal and many, many more... the whole thing was a riot and a half. The past couple of years was roller-coaster ride personally but Airmash and the often lovely, sometimes crazy, players were the one constant in my life the entire time. You guys are fantastic.

Thanks to yourself, Bombita, Steamroller, gadgetoid and Nuppet for not only keeping the game alive in (nine|five)sigma's absence but even chaperoning it to a better place.

Shout out to Rockzone for being the first one to mentor me in the ways of Airmash. Miss you buddy. Also miss (North|South|Undead) Korea who taught me base defense... notice me sempai! Shout out to xplay and secvtor, my good friends who are still playing; please don't quit guys, the game will truly be dead for me then : ) Shout out to Moz (I see you working on Notable now, all the best mate :)), Apathy, Praise kek, Maximus, Azimuth, Banmeplz, Fallen, Memer, Benderovec and Marshan, you guys were good players and great company, hope you can swing by sometime. Last but not least, shout out to aimbot who spent an hour of his valuable time teaching me two things: 1. don't oversteer and 2. be orthogonal to missile path to evade. After two years of play I'm still nowhere as good as you'd expect me to be but my k/d has more than doubled from 0.8 to 2 and I'm doing better than ever.

Here's to many more years... pew pew!

I assume you're talking about celiac disease? If you have already sought professional help I don't think there's anything new I can tell you besides the usual suspects like "grit your teeth and stick to the diet" or "find someone who can keep you on track like wife, siblings or friends".

That said, if I was in your position and if I couldn't tackle the problem in any of the standard ways, I'd take an NSAID like aspirin¹ on "cheat" days to temporarily suppress the immune system as an experiment and see how that works. I found a 1982 issue² of The Lancet where someone had the same idea and reports success with this strategy but I'm not even close to a medical professional and this is just one data point so YMMV, caveat emptor etc, etc.

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¹But not ibuprofen or other NSAIDs, those seem to worsen the problem — https://www.thedailybeast.com/research-shows-link-between-ns.... Aspirin however has its own set of side-effects (bleeding risk, may interact with medication you are already taking etc) so strict diet is still the safest, long-term solution for now.

²http://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/s0140-6736(82)90024-1: 650mg Aspirin, 5-15 mins before meals, not after. Again, this is NOT medical advice, it is just one data point.

I want to call attention to the "oxidized" part of "oxidized LDL" as that's what makes LDL so dangerous. While pathologies of LDL and fat hog the limelight, it's important to keep a close eye on the third villain in the fight against AS and that is immune system pathologies mainly chronic inflammation.

Immune cells kill using peroxides, superoxides and other free radicals. Anyone with an over-active immune system that's triggered easily — allergies, chronic stress, sub-optimal sleep, genetics, exposure to pollutants, metal ions etc¹ — you're better off reducing immune system activity.

So yes, eat less fat but also focus on the immune system. A study found 29% of Japanese babies less than 1 year old had fatty streaks and they were not spending the first 11 months chugging slurpies and McDs.⁴

TL;DR: Dietary fat and adipose tissue/adipocytes involved in AS are two different things⁵, and try not to get oxidized to death by a glitchy immune system while busy chasing fats or the latest fad diet. Fats are just one piece of the puzzle.

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¹Mechanisms of LDL oxidation: http://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.cca.2010.08.038

²This means sleeping better, reducing stress, taking anti-oxidants, reduce insulin triggers i.e., reduce food with IF/ADF/CR³ and reduce carbs

³Intermittent Fasting/Alternate-Day Fasting/Calorie Restriction. This study finds ADF to be superior to CR; if you can stick to it, that is: Differential Effects of Alternate-Day Fasting Versus Daily Calorie Restriction on Insulin Resistance — http://sci-hub.tw/10.1002/oby.22564

⁴https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812791/ - conjecture is the mothers were smokers, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2644569/ for more info. Pollution should be focused more strongly when it comes to heart health, the evidence is clear.

⁵Any excess energy gets stored as fat, so reduce fat intake but increase protein or carb intake to compensate? No dice, the body will generate fat for you in the form of adipose tissue which will lead to AS in the presence of an unregulated immune system.

This happened to me back in college when I was into NFS Underground which gave players points for swiping as close to oncoming cars as possible ("Near Miss"). After a few long and intense sessions I would have the urge to swipe close to cars IRL anytime I went out in my car. It was fascinating and a bit scary; not only did I have the urge, it was really strong as well.

Tangential: I looked at other "Hacker News for X" sites and a lot of those links are now dead — https://hn.algolia.com/?query="hacker%20news%20for"&sort=byP...

Only lobsters and Product Hunt made it out alive from what I can tell. Says a lot about HN's moderation team, do the things that don't scale indeed.

Something I remembered just now that was actually one of the reasons I was glad I stopped when I did: do be careful racing up and down the stairs in 20 seconds multiple times a day as the article suggests. I was constantly having low-grade anxiety one of those days I'd slip or trip and end up maimed or worse.

There are several simple HIIT routines on YouTube that can keep you gym fit without getting you killed. I like this one¹ but there are plenty others.

¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkaYafQ-XC4

Swimming ticks all the right boxes for me but the nearest pool is a bit far from here and I wasn't sure about the quality of water and general upkeep.

If those variables can be controlled swimming is definitely the best way to get a full-body workout without taxing the joints. Just the fact that I don't end up a sweaty mess with an extra load of laundry after each workout is a major win for me. Only problem is I don't trust the people running the pools here.

Edit: Tried cycling for a few years but it ended up not being safe early in the morning with a few politically-motivated murders on my route.

My current workout is just lifting weights + mountain climbers¹. Hasn't rocked my world but they do help me maintain status quo.

¹https://youtu.be/nmwgirgXLYM?t=40

Logo and Branding are highly dependent on the success of the company than the other way around. Nike's logo is iconic because of the success of the company, it's not intrinsic to the shape itself. This is something I have to remind all my clients who send me a brief that essentially boils down to "Make me a billon-dollar logo."¹

I then have to remind them that the only way to do that is to actually build a company worth a billion dollars in revenue, then open Photoshop and draw a random squiggle.

¹Most common one is, "I need the logo to be world-class, like Apple or Microsoft."

Four years ago I went looking for the fastest way to cut down my weight and ended up comparing different modes of running on Wolfram Alpha. Turns out increasing the incline was the most effective at burning energy, almost 3X or 300% at 30° incline¹ which is bonkers.

I couldn't mod my treadmill to get any significant amount of incline but quickly landed on the idea of using my staircase and thus began a 4 hour regimen (10:30 pm to 2:30 am) of running up and down 25 steps 120+ times. It was highly effective (96 kg to 83 kg) but I blew out my knees and right ankle after 4 months of this, forcing me to stop. It also was a problem when my neighbour's wife kept peeking through their door to let me know they didn't appreciate all that clacking at 1 in the morning.

4 years later I'm holding onto the same level I reached back then (84 kg) and I'd love to do it again and get it down by another 10 kg in an intense two-month sprint. But I get cold feet every time I think about it.

I'm taking Vit. C now to boost collagen so my joints should fare better the next time I try it. The lawyer and his wife have also moved out which is another annoyance taken care of. Whether I can resist the urge to push hard after seeing the results is the question.

¹https://imgur.com/a/DAvovYA

Looks similar to http://joystream.co which has been paying users with BCH for the past few months.

I made a similar one for personal use — https://www.dffrnt.com/maxculator/

I actually use it more than I thought I would. Some cases where it helped:

• Last year I invested some money in Govt. bonds at 9% interest. The catch was the interest won’t be compounded. Using this app I was able to quickly estimate what an equivalent FD interest would be (about 8%, which is not a good deal given current inflation here in India)

• Estimate the effects of Inflation. Avg. CPI inflation over the past 4 years has been hovering around 5%. Plugging in the numbers (100, 5 and change duration value until result pane shows 200) tells me how much time it takes for me to lose half my money to inflation (just over 14 years)

• Reflect on luxury purchases. I often get tempted to buy the iPhone X and Apple Watch along with an upgrade for my 4 year old MacBook Air. The total cost comes to 200k INR which, while affordable, is still a non-trivial amount. Plugging in the numbers (200k, 8% FD, 3 years of patience), I get 250k at maturity which will allow me to buy all of the above items and still have 50k left (worth 4 years of supplements.)

• Interesting trivia. Plug in 100, 8% FD, and keep changing the duration until the Effective Interest Rate field reaches 100%. This duration, 51 years, shows how long it’d take for the compounding (@8%) to be so large that my money basically doubled each and every year.

Given that this is HN, my comment probably came across as a disappointment and most people were already aware of the surface level details of caching.

Hope I kept them at least mildly entertained while waiting for the real deal to drop : )