Saket Vora

Donny recently made a nice comment about my Writings section, and is starting to build up his own as well. It will prove him well I think, for he has a lot more interesting things to come.

I took a moment to update my own Writings section. You can find my recent MEMS project paper & poster, an extensive lab report about the voltage controlled oscillator and phased-locked-loop lab from  EE 414 RF Lab (circuit board photos and neat o-scope shots included), an investment recommendation memo I wrote on a new venture proposal for my entrepreneurial finance course, and a project paper I completed for my neuroengineering class which looks at the impressive work in optogenetic neuromodulation by the Deisseroth Lab at Stanford.

I can hear you all groaning now. Not another blog! Isn’t he longwinded already?

Insta-Pundit is where I’m directing comments about politics and election 2008.

With all the crazy things going on the past two weeks with the financial meltdown, the bailout plan, Sarah Palin in a tailspin, and the debate, I just had to take some of the interesting discussions I’ve been having in instant messengers and emails and shift them into a more cohesive form.

This was strictly impulsive. No idea what this will turn into. Will likely be sort of a glorified ’share this article’ as we do in Google Reader, except I’ll be able to add more of my own commentary. One nice thing is that I’d love for friends and other people to post their own thoughts, stories, articles, etc. My buddy Mike is already contributing.

Just let me know if you want a login and I’ll hook you up. A free for all kind of posting and comments. Let’s make it fun.

So yeah. Probably just another redundant political blog to follow this election 2008. Oh well.

Over the weekend, I migrated my photo gallery to the popular online photo site, flickr. Yeah, all 3,900 photos. I’m disappointed in the clumsy way of organizing collections and sets, but flickr is more integrated into online services compared to my existing solution, the open source program Gallery2. I won’t take down the old gallery, but just letting you.

Flickr photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/saket_vora/

I’m pleased to announce a new feature for saketvora.com: a calendar. I’ve started to use Google Calendar to help me keep track of things and various events that are going on at Stanford. I started an ‘Events @ Stanford” calendar and shared it with several of my friends here, like Amit, Mary, Lei, etc. When they hear of an event, they can add it to the calendar and we can all see it. I’ve also got my classes on there. I do have office hours for classes and such on my calendar too, but that clutters the calendar for public viewing.

Anyway, check it out if you want. Note all times are PST!

I’ve successfully migrated this website (as far as I can tell) to Site5 hosting. Longtime readers of this website might notice a snappier response. I’m feeling that the site is working faster than it *ever* did at GoDaddy. One sticky point was the photo gallery, but I re-ran the installer and it worked out, even the Google map! Sweet.

Now we just have to get the Krispy Kreme Challenge domain pointer fixed.

I have added the paper I wrote about Thomas Kuhn & The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (for my Rise of Modern Science history class) and the final report for that dreaded ECE 511 term project. I am pretty disappointed in my performance with that class. I got so swamped this semester that I was unable to devote the time needed to make my operational amplifier work properly. It was a learning experience to be sure.

Check out the Writings section of this website if you’d like to read them and the other papers I’ve written.

I have added my paper titled Copernicus and the Revolutionibus to the writings section of this website.

I wrote this paper for my Rise of Modern Science class, taught by the wonderful Dr. William Kimler. I am currently writing the second essay for his class concerning the Thomas Kuhn model of how scientific revolutions take place.

I urge all my science-minded peers to read (and I mean really read), Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This is a landmark book on how science is practiced. Written in 1962, it has informed much of the way science is reported…evening coining the oft-used phrase ‘paradigm shift’.

I have uploaded pictures from a two week trip to Hawaii that my parents gave us as a graduation gift after high school, so that is from Summer 2003. Also online are photos from my parents trip to San Francisco last winter.

http://www.saketvora.com/gallery or click the ‘photos’ link above.

I spent the whole day Saturday getting a new photo gallery system for this website up and running, and I’ve very pleased with the results. All my pictures from Europe, my summer, and even my family’s pictures can now be viewed here: http://www.saketvora.com/gallery

As I was configuring the program, a wonderful open-source project called Gallery2, I discovered that someone had written a Google Maps plug-in for the photo gallery. This is something I have been wanting to do for over a year, and now it is finally implemented!

Click on the preview below to check out the travel map with photo album links.

Soon I hope to replace the travel’s section of this website with an embedded map like this, but we’ll see.

This evening I went with Ross and Dan to the rec center and we played basketball for over 2.5 horus. It was a lot of fun. My shot was on and off throughout the night, and I gotta learn how to play more physical and stuff, but I was able to swish a game-winning shot from behind the three-point line. That felt good. :)

A good friend of mine, Keith Dowd, recently launched his website (http://www.einhander.net) and I noticed he had a page dedicated to the papers he has written. While I can’t claim to have written such meaningful papers, I thought I would borrow a page from him and create my own writings section.

The new Writings section on this site features some of the papers, reports, and miscellaneous things I have written. Browse, read, and contemplate at your pleasure. Of course I welcome any and all feedback. Thanks.

Welcome to saketvora.com. This site has been operational for a few days and content is still being added daily. The photos I took during my European travels will be up shortly, and I will be working on transferring the journal I kept while in Europe over from Blogger to WordPress. Check back later for more, and thanks for your patience.