photo by John Shen

It was great to see Fanfarlo live — especially to see how much (or how little) of the instrumentation you hear on the tracks translate to the live performance. The songs have a lot of great rhythm to them. The band played briskly through their set, pulling in a few songs from older EPs. They came back for a quick encore, which ended in a rousing edition of Fire Escape. We milled around after the show, taking in the music hall. It’s neat with these small bands — the bandmembers just came out after the show into the audience area and mingled with people.

The journey home took a few turns. I accidentally ended up on the Bay Bridge after dropping John’s friend off, and ended up doubling back via Treasure Island. We actually stopped and took in a great nighttime view of the San Francisco skyline, glowing in the darkness.

This was the first concert I had been to in a long time, and hopefully just the beginning of a good year of events.

Anyway, on to the wheels. It’s a 2006 Jetta GLI with Autobahn package (whatever that means) with 48,600 miles on it. Same engine as the Audi A4 (2.0L turbo), sunroof, etc. Certified pre-owned, with two year warranty. I’m having them install an iPod integration kit too.

One justification is that if I had bought a cheap car now, I would have probably upgraded in a few years. This is a car that I’d gladly drive until the engine creaks to a halt. Or maybe I’m just being self-indulgent and embarking on the destructive path of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. After all, now four of the five members of Joseph’s team drive Jetta. Either way, it’s done.

Now — who wants a drive?

This music makes me happy.

Go sing too loud
Make your voice break – Sing it out
Go scream do shout
Make an earthquake…

You wish fire would die and turn colder
You wish your love could see you grow older
We should always know that we can do anything

Go drum do go out
Make your hands ache – Play it out
Go march through crowds
Make your day break…

You wish silence released noise in tremors
You wish I know it surrender to summer
We should always know that we can do everything

Go do you´ll know how to
Just let yourself fall into landslide

Go do you´ll know how to
Just let yourself give into low tide

Go do!

Tie strings to clouds
Make your own lake – Let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout
Make your own break – Let them grow

Let them grow (Endless summers)
Let them grow (Endless summers)

(Go do endless summers)

You will survive we´ll never stop wonders
You and sunrise will never fall under

You will survive we´ll never stop wonders
You and sunrise will never fall under
We should always know that we can do anything

Go do!

What I love about this song is how the horn section surfaces towards the end — though it’s at first unexpected, it fits perfectly and really elevates the song.

In a recent interview with Matt Berninger, the lead singer for The National, he talks about how dramatically songs can change for good and bad in the mastering process, and says:

But the other side of the coin is the song “Fake Empire”. It wasn’t ’til the very end of the process that we added the whole fanfare, the horns at the end, which turned a sleepy little simple song into something more exciting. That whole moment at the end of “Fake Empire” makes that song in many ways. It’s an average song without that. We’re right in the place where those kinds of things happen.

Kinda neat to read that, because that’s just what I felt about it too.

With our honed just-in-time logistical skills, Nishu and I picked them up and made it just as the ferry was about to set off. It was a warm day out on the water with the sun shining. I didn’t realize that Alcatraz has became a national park, or much about it’s history after prison operations ended. In the 1960s a group of Native Americans occupied Alcatraz claiming it to be old Indian land, and stayed out there for some time.

We had a quick bite to eat in the dock area then started heading up hill towards the prison yard. The whole island is smaller than what the movies make it seem to be. There are some support buildings scattered around, more often in pieces than not. But still, the views around the Bay were just stunning. What a stark contrast it must have been to be imprisoned on this island with so much vibrant life all around you.

There was a whole audio tour about the history of the prison and famous escape attempts, but we wanted to get outside. There is also a lot of natural life on the island — it’s a Bay rookery for water fowl, and flowers too.

And with that, it was back on the ferry towards the pier.

We got back to the somewhat shady parking lot we snagged near the pier, and I got them over Van Ness where they picked up a rental car. It was Super Bowl time! I realized I was near Nob Hill, where my friend Nevin has an apartment and gave him a ring. I even found a parking spot less than a block away. The party was in full swing 20 minutes before kickoff, and even Chrissy and Dave were there. Nevin and his roommates were terrific hosts with great food throughout the evening.

It was a fun game to watch, even though I was rooting for the Colts. Personally felt the commercials were a total bust this year. But the atmosphere was great and a lot of new people and faces to meet. Not a bad way to spend Superbowl Sunday.

Here’s a track called Love Me Girl.

Other standouts for me include I Remember, Rome (for a funky swing feel), and Madder Red.

I don’t really remember what we talked about on the drive up, but it was nice.

For lunch we sat outside in the patio area of a cafe, enjoying the warm sunlight and treating ourselves to some local brews.

Of course, as many of my friends know one can never really truly get away from one’s research, leading to amusing moments like this:

But this is why I love my friends. :)  We enjoyed an impeccably fresh butternut squash ginger soup, followed by pizzas with just-picked mushrooms in a real wood fired oven (like the one Mary’s family has!). The menu even called out the exact kind of flour they were using.

After our immensely enjoyable lunch, we headed towards the seashore. The creeping of gray clouds did not deter us from taking a hike to the beach.

The fog drifting in softened the horizon and the corners of the cliff faces, giving my photos the feel of landscape art. At least to me, anyway.

A nice day all in all. Looking forward to going back later in the spring. There is just so much the Bay Area has to offer like this…must stay vigilant to enjoy it all!

]]> http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/08/point-reyes-national-seashore/feed/ 1 http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/07/blogroll-addition-backspace-prologue/ http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/07/blogroll-addition-backspace-prologue/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:20:26 +0000 Saket http://www.saketvora.com/?p=1343 I’d like to announce a new addition to the blogroll today — Backspace Prologue by my friend, roommate, and “professional coffee shop hopper” Troy Brant. He will use Backspace Prologue to share his experiences in developing and writing iPhone and iPad apps, but also about general issues and key trends in programming in this new paradigm as well. As some of you might know, Troy will be having a book released later this year and an extremely polished and functional iPhone app in the days (weeks? months? nudge nudge)  to come. Check out Backspace Prologue — I’ve already warned Troy that you can’t start off a blog with such epic posts, because people will just keep expecting even more from you. Present company excluded, of course. :)

Bonus fun fact — one of the most visited parts of Troy’s website is http://troybrant.net/reg/, a student course scheduler and planner that Troy wrote for a Georgia Tech class project while a student there. Thousands of Tech students go there every year to help them plan their semesters. I wish someone had done this for our school!

The bar at the top floor was pretty swank, with an outdoor hot tub. Was a little too cold outside though.

There was a lot of construction in preparation for the World Expo. All the sidewalks were being torn up.

Not much to show this trip. More later though, for sure.

Early Monday Morning, Saket packed up the aforementioned ESFoC and began his arduous commute from Menlo Park to Cupertino, by way of Interstate 280.  What he did not expect was that danger lurked behind every Jersey Barrier – and that fate had it out for him that day.

At approximatley 0800 (I think – I’m actually just making this time up completely), a dark and sinister SUV began to skulk northbound on I-280, seeking unsuspecting victims.  Little did Saket know… that HE would be that victim.

At approximately 0830, the dark SUV leapt over a Jersey Barrier, defying the laws of gravity and common sense, and began a furious nose-dive toward Saket’s vehicle.  This is specifically counter to the purported design objective of the Jersey Barrier – which should deflect such SUVs back into their own lanes.  But these barriers were never designed to stop *predators*.

Over the concrete, with total disregard for human life and $125, the SUV spun out and landed on Saket’s hood, wrenching solid steel and bending aluminum and fibreglass sheeting (it’s a Mazda).  The SUV’s massive jaws tore into the soft, supple underbelly of Saket’s front passenger differential couple, mangled the engine block, and snapped his axle in half.  Saket’s Mazda responded with the fury of a dying animal, forcefully chomping back at the SUV, and staggering forward in its death throes, lunged for the heart.  The Mazda scoured the underside of the assailant. The rain poured down torrentially.

Amazingly, the passenger compartment of the Mazda did not flinch.  Through the windshield, Saket’s coldforged eyes pierced the very soul of his attacker.

The SUV had expected an easy feast, not a fierce battle against a determined opponent.  Rebuffed, it staggered off to the right shoulder of the northbound interstate to graze in the grass.  It would taste no more steel that day.

Sirens blared.  The rain continued to fall.  (I assume.  I wasn’t there. But this makes it sound better).

The firetrucks arrived and shut down the interstate, delaying and infuriating thousands of southbound commuters.  And the emergency crews approached the tattered remains of Saket’s Mazda.  They prepared for the worst -

- but lo, Saket stepped out in to the roadway, unscathed, and clutching the Envelope Stuffed Full of Cash.  He had been saved.  By Japanese automotive engineering.

“Damn you, destiny!”  he bellowed into the mists.  ”This money must get to Chrissy!”  Destiny would hear none of it.  Saket shook the ESFoC toward the sky in futile rage.  But Destiny was dead-set on preventing the ESFoC from reaching her.  And so, the Firemen and the Ambulances arrived, and the Trucks removed the carcass of the Mazda from Interstate 280, and interned it in a Camp for Broken Automobiles, saying that it was a Danger to Itself and Society and could not be allowed back on the public roadways…

And to preclude any chance that the money would make it to its rightful recipient, Apple corporation decided to send Saket overseas. But before he was shipped out, Saket managed to make one critical telephone call.  To me.  ”The money…” he gasped.  ”It … must… be… delivered…”

And so, I trekked to Menlo Park, in the cold and the wet and the rain, and I found Saket doubled over at the foot of his bed.  The Envelope Stuffed Full of Cash was at his side.  ”Nader…” he said, “There is pasta on the stove… somebody must eat it.”

You have to give the man credit for determination.  There was no time to eat the pasta – the men from Apple were coming to take him away…

But he would not be dissuaded.  He stuffed at least 15 raviolis full of boiling cheese in his mouth, desperately eating what might be his last meal for weeks.

The phone rang.  Saket could barely answer, for his scalded tongue.

On the line was the Man from the corporation.  He had come to take Saket away.  I knew that the ESFoC would never survive an international flight.  I have tried this before, and it always gets confiscated by the D.E.A….

Improvising a solution, I stuffed the envelope into my jacket pocket and snuck out the side door; I hobbled my way towards my Toyota.  I heard a trunk slam and as I lumbered off into the foggy night, I looked back to see the silhouette of the black limo car.  The man from Apple drove away with Saket.  I fear I may never see him again.

Thanks Nader :)

I’ll be catching up with a few posts that will trickle in over these next few days then we’ll be back on track. Thanks.

I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the left, trying to avoid the SUV. Next thing I know, I find myself stopped next to the concrete barrier dividing north and southbound traffic.

The airbag had deployed, I reached down and picked up my glasses. I grabbed my laptop bag and darted outside into the rain. Behind me I saw the SUV stopped. The man in the Mercedes had stopped and came up to me, asking if I was ok. I was. No sharp pains, no cuts. He said “the SUV came out of nowhere!” I thought the SUV probably spun out in front of us. The car looked pretty bad.

The wheel had completely separated from the axle. 911 was on its way, and soon the cops came and got my info. A tow truck arrived later and I waited inside of it. The couple in the SUV were walking around and didn’t appear hurt, but they were on the opposite side of the highway. I wanted to talk to them, but didn’t seem like a good time. The cops came up to me later with the more bizarre part of this all:

The SUV hadn’t spun out in front of us. It was going northbound on I-280, then apparently lost control, went up the embankment, hurdled the central concrete barrier, and into the southbound traffic. No wonder the Mercedes guy said the SUV came out of nowhere. Jeez.

Joseph came to pick me up at the tow truck’s place and took me to an urgent care center near work. I had been feeling some shakes, but Sachi said that was probably the adrenaline wearing off. Still, I didn’t have a scratch. The urgent care center wouldn’t see us because it was a vehicle collision, and my health insurance company’s offices were closed for MLK holiday. Go figure. In the parking lot back at work I ran into my colleagues and went straight to lunch with them, showing them pictures of my car. Even though I’m on a diet, I had a chocolate chip cookie. It was good.

I got a ride back home from a colleague at work who lives near me in Menlo Park. I made phone calls to my sisters and later in the evening told my parents, who are in India. My mind started to drift back to the accident. I started to feel pretty lucky, all things considering. I even had my rear brakes replaced last week, but now the car was likely totaled. But maybe those new brakes helped me walk away from this one. A few meters here or there, and it could have been a lot worse. I ran though some what-ifs….what if I had just left home a few minutes earlier, or if I hadn’t pushed to make a traffic light. But I quelled those pretty quick — we all make hundreds of decisions each day like those, and it’s just not worth the energy to ponder all the problematic outcomes that could arise from them. I guess I’ll be thinking about this when I start driving again too. We just need to control what we can control. The other thought that crossed my mind before going to bed? I’d like to find a girlfriend.

]]> http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/19/a-bad-case-of-the-mondays/feed/ 5 http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/13/skiing-at-squaw-valley/ http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/13/skiing-at-squaw-valley/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:18:16 +0000 Saket http://www.saketvora.com/?p=1319 Last weekend, I went with a group of friends up to Tahoe for skiing at Squaw Valley, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. It was my first time skiing in over five years, but still I had a great time. Our group consisted mostly of Apple colleagues, and Chrissy did an awesome job of finding a great lodging in nearby Truckee. We drove up after work on Friday (Nader drove me, Dan, and Wendy in his new Rav4) and got in after 11pm that night.

We killed some time that night exploring the cabin. It was huge, with a sauna and hot tub. It had a big kitchen (with a pasta faucet over the six burner stove) and just about every kitchen gadget you could want. Nader got the fireplace going and jammed out on the guitar a bit. John brought his Nikon D200 with a 35mm f/1.8 lens and I had a blast using it (the photos are from it)

John and Rong are regaled by Nader.

Dan shows Brook and Georgina his snowboard

The next day we drove ~30 minutes to Squaw Valley. What a different setup than the Wintergreen ski resort I’ve been to in West Virginia! A group of us went to rent our skis then took the funiculare up to a point 2/3rds up the mountain. Several lifts were available from here, including a handful of green circles. I stayed on those for the morning, getting my ’snow legs’ back. Turning gracefully while keeping my skis parallel is still pretty hard, but I didn’t fall on the slopes or coming off the lift.

It’s so beautiful to just be up on the mountain in Tahoe. The lake was shrouded in a blanket of fog, while all the peaks of the surrounding mountains was covered in snow. It wasn’t that cold, and the sun shone through a thin layer of clouds. Feeling adventurous, Rong and I took a lift up to the top ridge to try a blue square. The lack of snowfall during the past week hurt this one, because the very beginning offered just a narrow path of good snow, with the edges being rocks and dirt. Not too good for a newbie like me! But we made it down, eventually. The group had split up to check out different runs, but we all met up around 1pm for lunch. We packed bagel sandwiches, and I kept a few Clif bars in my ski pants.

After lunch the newbies (John and I) went on another blue square, with Chrissy and J.Lo being great sports in staying with us. There’s a mental block for us — I’ll be feeling fine on blues but then comes this one hill which scares the heck out of me. I just have to man up and barrel down it. Falling a few times was good for me, cause it’s not that bad. Getting back up is harder than actually skiing.

We ended the day by taking a mile long “mountain run” to the very bottom of the mountain. This was the highlight of the day, because it was right at my skill level, long, and our group of five serendipitously started running into all the other members of our group on the way down. About 2/3rds of the way down, it started to rain a bit, and I could feel the snow start to get a little slushy. It wasn’t too much longer though until I was finally down.

We returned our gear and headed back to the cabin. We made some pizzas, broke out the drinks, and chilled for the rest of the evening. We also played ‘the Game’, a cross between Pictionary and Telephone. Everyone has a sheet of people, and you write a sentence or phrase at the top. Pass the paper to the right. That person has to draw something that represents that phrase. They then fold the first sentence over and pass it along, such that the next person just sees the drawing. That person has to write a sentence of what they think the drawing means. You keep going round with people translating between drawings and sentences, and in the end nearly always hilarity ensues as someone’s original intent gets completely transformed into something entirely different.

We all cleared out of the cabin by 11am and Nader’s car stopped in Berkeley for lunch. We went to an authentic ‘Berkeley experience’ organic co-op cafe on Telegraph Avenue. No Hare Krishnas today. Nader saw some hippies with signs saying “No to Dedicated Bus Lanes”, which made Nader say “A hippie who is against dedicated bus lanes? Just whose side are you on?!” Hah.

All in all, it was a great tip and I’m already looking forward to another trip sometime in mid to late February.

]]> http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/13/skiing-at-squaw-valley/feed/ 2 http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/08/weekend-in-tahoe/ http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/08/weekend-in-tahoe/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:55:28 +0000 Saket http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/08/weekend-in-tahoe/ Posts have been light lately, but I’ll catch up after the weekend — heading up to Tahoe for some skiing. It’s my first winter visit to Tahoe and my first time skiing in maybe 5 years. Hopefully I won’t break any limbs :)

A remarkable difference, to be sure. Raleigh — the “City of Oaks” — and the Research Triangle area in general seems to have begun a noticeable revival in the recent years. The change is most recognizable in downtown Raleigh, where there seems to be new bars, restaurants, and cafes popping up every few weeks.  I’ve heard my friends in Raleigh talk about new places they are finding, and I initially thought it was a function of transitioning to off-campus life, but it’s much more than that. The changes are even surprising to those who have grown up in Raleigh. Over winter break, I was downtown bar crawling for the birthday, then again to see Avatar in IMAX 3D, and again to a cafe one afternoon with friends.

This is really exciting to me. It seems that many of the re-development efforts undertaken by the local governments in the past 5 to 10 years are finally bearing fruit. Even though the recent recession has hit some of the stalwart Research Triangle Park companies (i.e., Nortel and SonyEricsson), new entrants like Fidelity and Credit Suisse are coming in. And as a whole, the Triangle area wasn’t hit as badly as other parts of the country. Consistently Raleigh and the Triangle are ranked top in the best places to live, best places to start a business, best places to start a family.

If this keeps up, I see no reason why Raleigh and the Triangle can’t be elevated further into the national discussion as great/unique metropolitan areas. One example I give is Portland, Oregon — a city smaller than the other landmark cities of New York, LA, Chicago, Austin, etc — yet has a well known character of being very progressive, green and yuppie friendly, and with its own unique music scene.

Keep it up Raleigh, keep it up.

Upon returning from winter break, the realization that my time at Stanford was just six months away truly hit. At this point, I was completely immersed in energy and greentech courses and market trends. Apart from fleshing out new venture ideas of my own, organizing the Social Entrepreneurship Business Plan competition was also kicking into high gear. I was also working part-time back at Apple, helping to get the new interns up to speed. In February — in the depths of the stumbling economy — I decided to turn down a job offer from Cypress Semiconductor, boldly stating “I didn’t come to Silicon Valley to take the safe way out,” (only to join Apple 7 months later…). That was a hard decision, but one that I’m glad I made. February also marked the end of my father’s 40 year working career; he visited India for the next couple of months. School was becoming a blur — all my energy related classes were projects based, I pushed and helped execute a really ambitious film project for Hindi class, I was attending more events off-campus like the ThinkGreen forum trying to figure out what to do after graduation, the Social E-Challenge eating up more time as we got closer to the competition date.

Visits by my friends helped kept me sane and recharged — in those last two quarters at Stanford, I saw Mike, Donny, Mark and Jennie, Greg and Kelly, my corridor-mate Eddy from Sweden, Jordan, and Laura! (Bonus points to Greg and Kelly for making a trip just to see me! hehe) I also got to see Melih, Brent, and Tim more often. On campus, I enjoyed getting to know a whole new group of people who were interested in energy issues that were in all my civil and environmental engineering courses.I also grew closer to the people I already knew on campus. The tick-tock-tick feeling that looms over an impending graduation can be dreadful.

Graduation came, with a piece of paper stating I (miraculously) had a diploma from the Leland Stanford Junior University, and my family came to the Farm. A little bittersweet though, for a last minute scare back in India saw my dad depart for India before the graduation ceremony. The four of us also went to Tahoe for some hiking — so pretty.

So what to do now? Brent and Abhi back at RTI were kind and let me do some part-time working on a project, so I worked on that while continuing the job search. For the past few months I (and tens of thousands of other soon-to-be-graduates) had been looking for job opportunities; startups, companies, or even new ventures. I eagerly sought out greentech companies, but the recurring line I got was “we think you’d be a good fit, but we want to wait 6/8/12 months before hiring because we’re not sure how our project load is going to be with the current recession.” Not very encouraging. The world was gray…I was between worlds. Still living in my on-campus apartment through the summer, but no longer a student. Not sure what or where I’d be in the next few months. In my heart I wanted to stay out in the Bay Area, but what if this application for a position at the renown National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the Boulder region of Colorado goes through?

Then, Joseph called me up and wanted to meet for dinner. Well, this was interesting. Over the next few weeks, I sought advice and perspective from everyone I spoke to. The advice that resonated with me the most: don’t undervalue the fact that you love working with the people there. That is actually a rare thing and appreciate it when you can.

A room for rent opened up in a Stanford friend’s house in Menlo Park, so I transitioned there for the fall while starting at Apple. I got consumed by work, and loved living with Troy, Michael, and (effectively) Karla. Troy was busy working on his iPhone app and writing his book, Mike converted to full-time as Box’s lead mobile developer, and our evenings routinely featured new recipes on the stove and hours of ping-pong. Talked hours of college football with Troy, Melih, and Matt. I got to see some of golf’s great players at the President’s Cup tournament with Melih and Matt too. My grandmother visited America and I visited home for Diwali. I decided that I would move up to the City, and started spending more weekends in the City. I was delighted by a day spent up in San Francisco with Peyton. In mid December, Dad got the call from India and was on a plane the next day for his hometown of Akola. A few days later, my grandmother passed away.

Finally, spent winter break back at home. Went out on the town with friends and had a terrific time for the 25th birthday, and got to see them more before the eventual return to California. It’s hard for me to describe the feeling of seeing and being with my friends back here; it’s like slipping on a favorite pair of well worn shoes after a long absence. They’ve been with you for countless miles, places, and situations, and will never let you down. It makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

So what’s next for 2010? I now feel good and confident about a few aspects of my life — I graduated from college (for real) and have a great job that I love. Now, while I love living with Mike and Troy, I’d like to find a place to live that I can feel more settled in. And finally, at the top of my goals for 2010, I want to finally start paying attention to my personal life. Although I’ve just hit the quarter-century milestone,  I know there is so much more I have yet to experience in life.

Now, let’s get to it.

Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone! Thanks for reading.

I admit, I’ve got a soft spot for epics. The grandeur, the archetypal narratives, and the scale of emotion. And with a film, the vision and sheer force of will needed to convey an epic story through the screen is deeply intriguing to me. Avatar was not a film whose production I actively followed; I only learned what James Cameron was cooking up when I saw the first teaser trailer. My expectation were low. The consensus of most people I’ve talked about Avatar with is that a) the story is cliched to just ‘alright’ and b) the visual experience is stunning. On part b, I wholly agree but I’ll play defense to part a. I’ll argue that the underlying narrative of Avatar is a recurring, archetypal one that we have seen played out many times before, both in cinematic and literary history. I can look back at many films and stories and find elements that match particular beats and sequences in Avatar. The spectre of Joseph Campbell’s famous hero’s journey is present here, I think. Each viewer will likely think back to different sources when comparing Avatar; Fern Gully for it’s environmental theme, Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai for the “gone-native” theme, and (for me) Dune for the growth and maturation of Jake Sully’s avatar character within the Na’vi society. For these reasons, I don’t go as far as to dock points from Avatar due to its story.

The visual experience is truly stunning. I saw the film twice in IMAX 3D, and I give major credit to Cameron’s immersive use of the 3D effect, rather than just ‘gotcha’ moments. This isn’t a 3D film as much as the visuals hover in front of your face, but that there is greater depth and substance to the visuals on the screen. Beyond the technical effect, there is Cameron’s world of Pandora. Lush, grand, detailed, with sweeping vistas and wonders. And of course, the Na’vi — the ten foot tall, blue-skinned, at-peace-with-nature inhabitants of Pandora. Cameron developed critical advances in motion-capture technology, both in the capture process and rendering process such that Avatar presents to me the first time an alien ecosystem is fully realized. Peter Jackson’s Gollum was the first, followed by the tentacle-faced pirate captain Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean. But Avatar showcases a whole array of immediately believable creatures. The picture of Neytiri at the top of this post shows a moment that I insisted was either a prothestic-wearing actor or a sophisticated animatronic. It simply looked too good in the film to be entirely computer generated. But no…none of the actors ever put on blue makeup and all the Na’vi are entirely CG.

One of the things I marveled at while sitting through the credits was the sheer force of will it took to make this picture. I’m the kind of film geek who has watched all the dozens hours of behind-the-scenes material of The Lord of the Rings…twice. The credits for Avatar read likes a who’s who: Joe Letteri and Weta Digital, John Knoll and Industrial Light & Magic, Richard Taylor and Weta Workshop, Stan Winston Studios, Skywalker Sound, plus a half dozen other smaller visual f/x houses (though no DigitalDomain? hmm). I joked to Dan that it was as if Cameron had opened his rolodex and just started asking who had free computer clusters to render some scenes for him. Regardless, the outcome is simply staggering. The 3D effect aside, there so much visually going on in just the background of some scenes, let alone the technical mastery of creatures, vehicles, and the main characters. I am eagerly looking forward to the behind-the-scenes story of how Cameron and his team accomplished this extraordinary feat.

The one real criticism I have of Avatar is that its musical score does not rise to the occasion. I think back to some classic ‘big’ films — Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion King, Jaws — and they all share incredibly memorable scores and musical motifs. Play five seconds of the main melody from any of these films and recognition is instant. For a cinematic feat such as Avatar, this absence is a bit disappointing. Was I too focused on the visual spectacle? My friend Dale observed that the fairly rudimentary score was perhaps a reflection of the Na’vi culture and place within nature. This could be plausible; Howard Shore’s monumental score to The Lord of the Rings builds its motifs around races and cultures that have developed for thousands of years. We just don’t know enough of the Na’vi’s background and context in the Pandoran world. I’d love to see this explored in future films.

I enjoyed Avatar and I’m excited to see the effect it’s had on cinema. I think it breaks new ground on what filmmakers can satisfyingly convey to an audience, and just wait until these techniques are employed in telling more original, daring, and challenging stories.

thank you all for everything

At times it feels like a less extravagant Arcade Fire (but not in a bad way), but also notes of Eisley or The National (ok, maybe a stretch there). Lyrically the songs have a lot of depth as well.

Fanfarlo – The Walls Are Coming Down

The Walls Are Coming Down

They swallowed it whole, they went for the gold for the gold
We fall for the same lies, we all have the same shoes to fit
The preachers and books of your empire will fight here alone
Some day they will be forgotten and die one by one

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

For atoms have gone as far as atoms will go
Your books write themselves, they line up in row after row

The walls the walls are coming down, the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in, the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

Despite arriving to Dulles on time, we spent 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up. This was a bit problematic, because some of us had connections with under 20 minutes to make them. The good news for me was that there was 25 of us on-board intending to continue on to Raleigh, so they called ahead and held the plane. On that flight, I ended up sitting next to a Brit who was  a screenwriter. We ended talking about scripts and film for the entire flight, even all the way to the baggage claim. It was great.

Enjoying the time back so far, especially seeing Mom and the sisters. Did some light shopping yesterday (got some new kicks) and watched Pitt beat UNC in football (haha). Looking forward to catching up on things (like movies), seeing my friends, and eating more of Mom’s delicious delicious food.

Dirty Projectors – No Intention

Bon Iver – Blood Bank

Now, I can just see Jordan’s eyes roll at my very mention of Dirty Projectors — a band he’s been namedropping for months now — but I listened to the rest of Bitte Orca and didn’t find the others as memorable. Bon Iver is a band that I’ve been wanting to explore, and this seems like a good entry point.

No Intention

The renegade feeling satisfied
You blinked and closed your eyes
You like the feeling of Saturday
You love the danger in the night
The restless corpse is collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil
What not become what is lapsing
Into the universal fill
Or maybe just

No intention
Or maybe just
No intention

When I am full with endeavor
Nothing can stop gestalt
The freshness of my reality
Makes me feel tingly and hot
When you wake up shouting “Idea!”
Is that a punishment?
You represent saying, “I’m real,”
But is that what you meant
Maybe you meant

No intention
Maybe you meant
No intention

Blood Bank

Well I met you at the blood bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags
You said “see look, that’s yours!
Stacked on top with your brother’s
See how the resemble one another
Even in their plastic little covers”

And I said I know it well

That secret that you know
But don’t know how to tell
It f$@!s with your honor
And it teases your head
But you know that it’s good girl
’cause it’s running you with red

Then the snow started falling
We were stuck out in your car
You were rubbing both of my hands
Chewing on a candy bar

You said “ain’t this just like the present
To be showing up like this”
As the moon waned to crescent
We started to kiss

And I said I know it well

That secret that we know
That we don’t know how to tell
I’m in love with your honor
I’m in love with your cheeks
What’s that noise up the stairs, babe?
Is that Christmas morning creaks?

And I said I know it well
I know it well …

On Wednesday I caught up with Brent over drinks at the Wine Bar in downtown Palo Alto, and Amit joined us later after attending  a conference in Mountain View earlier that evening. On Thursday, Lux sent out a note saying that to celebrate his last final of the quarter he was headed to the Nuthouse. I ended up getting there at 11:30pm (looong day at the office, yeah) and had a good time with him and some classmates, plus Saumya from Econetix with whom Lux is working on some cool stuff. On Friday, Dan invited me to his “Hanukkah” party, which I put in air quotes because in addition to latkes and dreidals there was also plenty of bacon, pork ribs, and shrimp to go around. Dan was wearing this giant dreidal on a chain, a watermelon yarmulka, and a bathrobe with a menora stitched on the back. Hehe.

So I was getting home after 1am the last three nights, which is a little late (even for us) for ping pong. Taking it easy today, then will go up for brunch and maybe apartment hunting up in the City tomorrow. It finally started raining over here, so we’ll see how long I end up staying up. Heisman Trophy ceremony tonight, hoping for a Toby Gerhart win but will be fine if Ingram gets it (he’s in the championship game after all) and it’d be a just world if Suh gets it instead.

We then headed over to the Old Pro, my go-to sports bar in Palo Alto. It’s the same place that Amit and I went to for March Madness when Donny and Mike were both in town. Nader and I were also there last weekend to watch the NCSU vs Carolina game….at 9am. Yes, they had coffee. The place wasn’t too crowded, and we found a table in front of the soon-to-start Florida vs Alabama game. I love watching football with Melih and Matt — these guys know so much about it and are really passionate about the sport. Matt is from Oklahoma and is an OU alum, and so I was very excited when we later found out that Stanford would be playing Oklahoma in the Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

After eating way too much junk food at the Old Pro, I headed back to the apartment and caught the the tantalizing end of the Texas-Nebraska game. It was madness; 1:44 min away from BCS chaos, and Nebraska then completely self-destructs.

On Sunday, I headed back up to SF (I know, been visiting a lot lately) to drop off an application for an apartment in Noe Valley. I picked up a sandwich at Whole Foods and strolled over to Dolores Park where I hoped to get some sun and reading done. But alas, the weather didn’t cooperate; the sun never broke out from the clouds, and the wind picked up. I killed some time in coffee shops and looked at some DSLR cameras in stores along Market Street. Melih was free so I dropped by their apartment where he and Micky were babysitting little Ben, whom I saw in an adorable monkey outfit at Melih’s halloween party. Later that night, his friend David came over and the four of us had dinner at Kezar’s Pub in Cole Valley (not too far from Zazie, the incredible brunch place that Terrell, Tim, and I went to during the weekend of Outside Lands back in 2008). By this time it was cold and raining, but Melih was kind enough to drop me off near by car down by Dolores Park. Though the weather wasn’t stellar, when you got great friends to laugh and chat with, everything turns out ok.

Shaimus rocks out at Stanford University

And boy am I glad I went! The graduate student council brought the (free) beer, and Shaimus brought the rock. The music was great and the band performed admirably playing to a bunch of grad students in a hall where yoga lessons are usually held. During the mid-show break, we spoke to the guitarist and he said that some of the band members knew Harmonix, the makers of Guitar Hero, back when they were in Boston and heard about the call for local indie acts to include in the game. They submitted a song they had recently finished, and it was included in the game. Shaimus isn’t signed to a record label yet, but they have a publisher to get their stuff featured in various medium. Genre is indie alt rock, and I’m not sure if it was just the result of seeing them perform up close in a small room, but honestly they sounded better and more polished than more semi-famous acts I’ve seen featured on late night shows.

They played up the crowd too, with the guitarist shouting “#@% the Bears!” and “Toby for Heisman!”, and then some of the students even started a mosh pit (not sure it was really warranted though…) near the end. They came back for one more song, doing a cover of the Beatles’ “Something” by George Harrison that got the whole room singing along to.

I picked up their two CDs to show my support, and a big tip of the hat to Chrissy for the heads up on this fun show.

The recipe is simple, but does need some attention. Chop a small onion and some fresh garlic, saute in a large skillet with sliced mushrooms (I just used a whole carton) over medium heat in some oil. After mushrooms start to brown in ~10 minutes, add in 1/2 pound of dry penne pasta and stir to coat evenly. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add a bit of salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of white wine. Let the liquid bubble away. Then, add in 1/2 cup of vegetable (or chicken) stock and stir. Let the pasta cook over medium heat until the stock has been incorporated, then add 1/2 cup more stock. Repeat for about 10 to 15 minutes, and taste the pasta after the second 1/2 cup to test if done. You want to keep the mixture wet, but never soupy. I ended up using just over one can of stock before I thought the pasta was done. Season to your liking, and serve. Freshly grated parmesan goes really well.

I felt like the pasta retained more of its starch and overall flavor, and the whole dish felt moist without ever appearing dressed in a lot of sauce. Give it a try!

Gotta run, I think the banana bread with walnuts and chocolate chips is getting a little toasty inside the oven….

What’s great about the ToneMatrix is that you can copy and paste your tone patterns to share with others. To see the following samples live, open up ToneMatrix in a new window, copy the numeric codes in the post below, then paste (crtl+v) them into the ToneMatrix square. It’s a nice visualization.

Mike showed me some base templates, and I experimented in adding new melodies to them. When I was showing it to Karla and Mike, I just doodled in the following blocks to see what it would do:

0,0,0,0,0,2048,0,512,0,512,131070,0,0,0,0,17476

Starting from this, I broke up the vertical bar and spaced out some tones.

0,0,0,0,0,2080,0,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

Then added some rhythm to it, in the bottom left.

8192,49152,16384,33152,0,18464,16384,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

I then added just a couple of squares in the upper left side to change the tempo of the melody.

8192,49154,16386,33152,0,18464,16384,512,0,512,6690,0,0,32,512,50244

Building upon that, I add several more squares in that area to further define the melody.

8192,49154,16390,33156,8,18480,16392,512,32,560,6658,0,0,32,512,50244

And then just a few more tweaks to the melody and I was happy with it.

8192,49156,16386,33154,4,18480,16392,544,16,520,6690,0,2,4,544,50248

I listened to this loop for 3 minutes straight and what I found is that my brain would switch between focusing on the melody (the top half of the square) and the underlying beat (the bottom half of the square).

Seeing my excitement with the ToneMatrix, Troy showed me a project that a student in the iPhone development class had done (Troy was a TA for it) where a ToneMatrix was made for the iPhone. Troy then played for us a song he had made in GarageBand over last winter break, and it was really good! Karla and Mike got interested, so I envision some GarageBand experiment evenings in the near future.

The concert was part of the San Francisco Lively Arts nonprofit group, and they rent out space at the Noe Valley Ministry, a Presbyterian Church. We had dinner some blocks away in southern Noe Valley beforehand.

The opening act was actually an instrumental trio of piano, flute, and electric bass guitar. The bass guitar used an interesting effect like a sustain with reverb, reminding me actually of some sounds I’ve heard in Sigur Ros songs. The pianist had some interest “fusion” pieces, such as “ragtime and science fiction” or “bebop and dinosaurs”….yeah. Kinda neat though overall. Something different.

The Books show was an audio/visual presentation. They’ve put together these strange and varied video and picture montages and then play in front of it. One has a guitar, the other has an e-cello. I had never seen an e-cello before, so that was pretty neat.

Peyton and I were apartment mates during our senior year of college at NC State. He’s halfway through his 3rd year of medical school at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Justin, a fellow NC State alum as well, is a graduate student at Stanford in applied physics, but his advisor works at IBM Almaden research center here in the Bay Area, so Justin doesn’t really go near campus now. He’s working on vanadium oxide substrates for new forms of semiconductors (sorry Justin if I butchered that). Cool guy.

They picked me up en route to the City, and we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, drove down Lombard Street, and enjoyed sourdough bread bowls at Fisherman’s Wharf, had a sundae at Ghiradelli square, and saw the seals during sunset at Pier 39. The weather stayed a bit dreary during the morning, but the sun broke in the afternoon and it turned into a great day.

It was so great to catch up with Peyton!

‘Hysteric’ is one of my favorite songs off It’s Blitz.

What have people been watching on the TV? There has been a several good shows lately, heavy on comedy in particular. There are the stalwarts The Daily Show and Colbert Report, 30 Rock, South Park. I still like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But some other shows that I’m following now: Lie to Me (gotta hand it to Tim Roth, plus great casting), Castle (Nathan Fillon!), Glee (though the last two episodes have almost been unwatchable), and just recently Modern Family (witty writing). Any good ones that I’ve been missing?

What world-aware, engaged, and interesting dinner company! What a wonderful evening.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year, but most meaningful to me are my family and friends — both back home and out here in my new home-away-from-home. You all enrich my life more than any job, place, gadget, or gift could.

Thank you.

My housemate Mike graciously invited Troy and I to the  Thanksgiving dinner that his family and their neighborhoods hold. I’m bringing along an apple pie — I spent last night getting a pie crust made from scratch, and this afternoon got the apple filling made; reducing down the natural juices of the apples to create a glaze. I experimented with a lattice like top for the pie, and here’s how it came out:

The glaze came out a bit splotchy, but overall I’m pretty pleased. The lattice top looks a lot better post-baking than pre-baking. Just need some vanilla ice cream and it’s heaven.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This past Saturday was the Big Game — Stanford vs Cal. It’s the one game of the year that the entire Stanford campus actually gears up for — ready for blood. And I mean it. A conversation from earlier that week:

nimur2008: well
nimur2008: the band just ritually killed the cal bear
nimur2008: so much gore
nimur2008: so much blood
Saket Vora: YES>
Saket Vora: is it on youtube?
nimur2008: not yet
nimur2008: give it a few minutes
nimur2008: it literally just happened minutes ago
Saket Vora: where
nimur2008: white plaza
Saket Vora: is the fountain red?
nimur2008: not yet
nimur2008: when the bear’s blood reaches it
nimur2008: it will be
nimur2008: he’s still gushing
Saket Vora: ….
Saket Vora: what do you mean
nimur2008: they took a bear
nimur2008: slammed it onto the claw
nimur2008: blood spurt
nimur2008: blood everywhere
nimur2008: tree and dollies dancing all over
nimur2008: it was anarchy
Saket Vora: so they got like a stuffed teddy bear and sewed a blood bag into t?
nimur2008: no a real bear
nimur2008: real blood
Saket Vora: hah right
nimur2008: I WAS THERE

Nader is referring of course, to when the Band impales a teddy bear onto the claw fountain in White Plaza, turning it into this:

There will be blood.

This was a resurrection year for Stanford football. We just defeated the #1 and #2 teams in the Pac-10 (and #8 and #9 nationally), including a record breaking demolition of USC away in LA. The 55 points we put on USC is the most they have ever allowed at home, and was their worst loss since 1966. Stanford went from having zero Top 25 votes to 14th in just two weeks. For the first time in nearly 8 years, we were the favored team going into the Big Game.

I got on campus early for some tailgating with friends from Apple. What a gorgeous day for football — perfect fall weather.

AT&T’s data plan promptly failed once. And everyone had iPhones at our tailgate, except Nader. Who refused to check scores for us.

Got into the stadium half an hour early and was surprised to see the Red Zone already full with students. Our group was up on the 2nd level, but none of us sat in our ticketed seats; we moved around as the real ticket holders arrived. But whatever. Everyone does it.

The Red Zone student section.

The Cal Band took the field first and was boring, but the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band took the field and all was right again. The entire drum section was decked out in full body stormtrooper attire. Awesome.

The game got underway and on the 2nd play from scrimmage, Heisman-worthy and the nation’s best running back Toby Gerhart broke free for a TD. It was soon 14-0 by Toby Gerhart again.

Then the breakdowns started coming. Our defense because extremely porous, with the Cal running backs picking up first downs from the line of scrimmage per carry. Cal quickly took the lead soon after halftime, and we were down by 10. Oh yeah, Tiger Woods was on hand to be inducted into the Stanford Hall of Fame, and was an honorary captain for the football team. Even the Cal fans were booing him. Come on!

The last 8 minutes of the game was pure agony. We got within a touchdown. Our play calling became totally passwhacky. On the next possession, we tried three passes (two of them long 40+ yard bombs) that all dropped incomplete. Then proceeded to go for it on 4th and 8 on our own 20-something yard line. Another incomplete pass. Cal got the ball, but our defense miraculously held. We would get the ball back with just under two minutes to play. Again, passwhacky. Toby Gerhart then gets a dump off from the QB and runs 40 yards up the sideline, through traffic, to the Cal 13. Whoa. 1:30 left in the, 1st and 10 on the Cal 13, down by a touchdown. First play, a pass in the flat outside, incomplete. And then it happens.

The pass over the middle. In heavy traffic. The interception. And Cal just knees the ball until 0:00, when the Cal fans rushed our field.

Sigh. Shellshocked. Speechless. The burning question: why on earth, when you have the best running back in the country on your team — who has already rushed for 136 yards and 4 touchdowns — do you not give him a chance to punch it in? In the Big Game? Game on the line? In his senior year?

I absolutely love what Coach Harbaugh has done for Stanford — he’s a terrific coach and I’m fully behind him. But boy do I wish we had some different playcalls on that last game.

Chrissy and Dave were kind enough to get me back home, but I headed back out with Troy to downtown PA for some dinner with Mike, Karla, Lauren (who went to USC), and Gregg (Mike’s friend from HS). After dinner Lauren invited us to her house to try some WAFFLE COOKIES. I write them in all caps because they are deserving of it.

This was shared on Google Reader just days ago by Kelly,  and now I got to try them! Absolutely delicious. At least it was a good night.

]]> http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/25/shellshocked-at-the-big-game/feed/ 0 http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/25/apartment-hunting/ http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/25/apartment-hunting/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:04:48 +0000 Saket http://www.saketvora.com/?p=1206 The past few weekends I’ve taken the hunt for an apartment up in the City more seriously. One Saturday I went up and just walked around the neighborhoods south of Market. As all major cities, SF has a lot of neighborhoods with unique personalities. Because the areas south of Market St (a main avenue cutting across the City) make the most sense for me commuting via the Apple shuttle (free Wi-Fi enabled coach service to and from Cupertino), I focused my attention there. You have the denser Mission District, with a panoply of good Mexican food, bars, and nightlife. As you walk west, you enter Mission Dolores by the pretty Dolores Park, and the vibe swings a little more upward, if not a little hipstery. Nice restaurants here. Continuing west of Dolores Park is the Castro District, and then the large neighborhood south of Castro is Noe Valley. After my initial scouting weekend, I felt most comfortable in Noe Valley, but Mission Dolores was nice too. What can I say? I’ve lived in the suburbs all my life.

This past Sunday, I scoured the Craigslist posting and lined up a dozen apartments to see. On the drive up 280-N, a good sign appeared:

The luck continued. The first apartment was owned by a Stanford alum. The second one of the day was a friendly fellow who works at Google (and later I discovered was on the Google PowerMeter team) who had a beautiful apartment. Then, I got a call from someone who said I could come by right now if I was free — turns out I was just two blocks away. Score! I had a free timeslot at 3pm and called up another place to schedule a viewing, and they said “Can you come at 3pm?” before I even said anything. I even had half an hour to enjoy the sun at Dolores Park. After a morning of drizzle, the sun finally broke and lit up the SF skyline.

Note: this is from an earlier visit but captures the same view. The iPhone’s camera doesn’t dynamic range well at all.

After killing some time in a coffee shop (otherwise quite nice but ruined by allowing that horrible Miley Cyrus song to be played), I saw the last place up on a hill on Noe St…an enormous three bedroom house that looked like a mansion compared to the other apartments I saw that day. Stunning though — huge entertaining friendly kitchen large deck, a real yard, big rooms. Too bad it’d come out to ~$2000 per month. Per person. Oh, and street parking if you can find it nearby. Another observation: I think it’s a requirement to own a dog if you live in Noe Valley. I must have seen over a hundred dogs being walked. Crazy.

I was dead tired by then, so I bailed on dinner and headed home. Michael and Karla arrived home with full shopping bags, and so for the next few hours while they made a butternut squash lasagna with fresh creamy pesto sauce, we enjoyed a long and meandering conversation that touched upon healthcare reform, the limits of capitalism, the psychology of difficult decisions, literature, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Michael’s trip overseas to Israel then India, the glorious thunderstorms Karla and I remember from Texas, Mike’s account of seeing a car get struck by lightning on a road trip with his dad, then onto an REU he did researching sprites (upper atmospheric lightning phenomenon only very recently discovered and pretty freaky) which actually tied back to my two weeks up in Alaska for the PARS summer school. There were other detours in there somewhere, but I’ve forgotten them already.

None of the apartments will work (the wonderful apartment of the Google guy was already taken that very night), but I have a better idea of what to expect now.

The reason she told Jad and Robert about this was that in order to keep him still to treat his scrapes, she put on an episode of Radiolab on her iPod, the one about parasites. And he lay there…completely transfixed. And he understood everything he heard. Her little boy seems to listen well to these podcasts but doesn’t understand it when his mother tries to lecture him about consequences. So Jad and Robert record a lesson with her explaining how one should always think things through to the end. And then they put their wonderful Radiolab spin on it and elevate it to something entirely new.

There was a smile on my face for the whole segment. Jad says:

..there is something about this story that just gets to the whole point of why we do this. Here you’ve got this kid who is obviously in a lot of pain, and he just sits still and listens to a story on parasites?

What we’re trying to do here is to tell stories that move you, or keep you still in this case, but stories that draw you in, and make you think differently about the world, even if just a little bit.

I’m so happy this exists. It makes me feel like a kid again with a whole world waiting to be explored.

This was going to be a huge game for Stanford, coming off a huge upset win over #8 Oregon. Winning this game would not only knock out #9 USC’s BCS hopes, but would put the rest of the football world on notice: Stanford is real and you better watch out! And what a game! Our whole team clicking — Heisman-deserving running back Toby Gerhart dropped 175+ yards and 3 touchdowns on USC, while our defense came up with 3 interceptions, all which ended up in touchdowns. Redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Luck outplayed the freshman USC quarterback. The result, a 55-21 demolition,  was the most points ever allowed by USC at home. The last time anyone had gotten close to do this to USC was Notre Dame putting up 51 points…in 1966. In the last 49 games at home, USC has lost twice. Both to Stanford. And this was USC’s homecoming game.With 91,000 fans in attendance. Glorious. Hail, Stanford, Hail.

Chrissy broke out her Stanford cupcakes and immediately after our cornerback Richard Sherman picked off USC’s QB in the 4th quarter for a touchdown. Go Cardinal!

After savoring the victory, I dropped off my friends back at Stanford, perused the shopping mall a bit, then headed back home to watching some more football with Troy. Saturdays = college football!

At night, I had my experience of Settlers of Catan, a game I heard a lot about from friends back home. The Nicks were hosting a game night, and for the next several hours Bill, Sarah, Alex, Cindy, and I were engrossed in our game while the Nicks and others played other board games.

While some delicious homemade chocolate bourbon pecan pie (heavy on the bourbon…) was enjoyed, a lack of isopropyl alcohol stymied the wielding of Alex’s flaming throwing knives, but that’ll be for another night (some months ago, the Nicks and Alex launched some flaming projectiles with their trebuchet, captured to great effect with long-exposure photography). It also looks like the group will be headed up to see the Books play in San Francisco over Thanksgiving weekend.

And to top it off, I got an email late at night saying that my $25 Kiva loan has been fully repaid, so I lent it out again to another worthy entrepreneur; this time in the Philippines. Nice!

In an attempt to get healthier and fitter — and being inspired by Melih’s public-personal challenges — I’m going to set some goals for myself over these winter months and provide monthly updates here on my progress. While losing some more pounds would be well received (my aggressive target would be 168lbs, down from my current 180lbs), I’m really trying to aim for overall improved fitness. I’m also cognizant of the plateauing of my ultimate frisbee performance, especially after this summer. While I think my ultimate “I.Q.” has improved, I put my team at a disadvantage because I’m not able to execute what I know needs to be done. I need to become faster to jump on potential interceptions or blocked passes, and I need more endurance so I can stick with my man for the whole play.

I’m as far from a fitness expert as you can get, but I’m looking at these four metrics:

1. “40 yard” dash — or rather, the time to complete a sprint down an ultimate field, or to chase a runner going deep.
2. 2km erg session — inspired by my rowing friends (Greg, Donny, and Ben), this is the time it takes to complete 2km on an ergometer, which is used to train for rowing. It’s a drill that requires constant focus because of the sequence of events you must do to execute a proper stroke, and works your arms, traps, and legs.
3. 5km run — pretty standard fare, 3.1 miles. The only related benchmark I can offer: in my senior year of undergrad, we had to do a 3 mile run and the best time I clocked in was 24.5 minutes.
4. # of Pushups in 1 minute — figure I should work in an upper body strength metric somewhere. not entirely sure about this one, but I’ll keep it for now.

The idea is to get a starting datapoint for each of these metrics now then re-do them every 30 days until next summer rolls around. The Apple gym is just across the parking lot from my building, so I’ll start using it and work out three times a week before heading home. This is going to get harder if I really do end up moving up to San Francisco in January, but it’ll just mean I’ll have to be more diligent with my time — squeeze in workouts by taking an earlier shuttle in the morning or during lunch. Let’s see how this goes for now…updates to come.

Thanks to Greg and Ben for the rowing info.

Learned another lesson in the importance of peer review. With Joseph tending to more important things on paternity leave, Brian has re-emphasized frequent peer-review among our team. Me and a colleague were working all this week on something, and we thought we had it wrapped up. But before sealing it up, we did a peer review and the perspectives of the other team members revealed a more optimal solution. It wasn’t so much that our theory was flawed, but that previous experiences had shifted the risk assessments of our peers to different levels. Peer review early and often!

The other thing that I’m appreciating now is a new lens on analog circuits that I’m learning more about, especially from the analog team. In school, you first start off learning simple things like circuit networks with resistors, capacitors, inductors (RLC circuits) which leads to some linear systems stuff. Then you throw in operational amplifiers, and typically analyze them in their steady state. Even in more focused analog circuits courses with multiple transistors, you have two “lens” onto a circuit: large signal and small signal. In the large signal view, you focus on making sure the circuit is “biased” in the right mode of operation. After this condition is set, you then dive into the small signal view and assume the amplification properties are practically linear.

However, while this can be useful for integrated circuit design, but it doesn’t tell the whole story; especially at the level that we use components. I’m learning a new way of looking at these components, in which you observe the state of all the components at incremental time steps with respect to specific inputs. It’s this kind of approach that best helps me understand why a particular component is placed at a particular point….something that isn’t always intuitively obvious on a first look.

It’s just one of the many ways that “real-world engineering” can differ quite a bit from what we learn in the classroom.

I’m fuzzy on the dates, but I think Larry started at Apple very early, in the early 1980s. He was part of the first Mac team and I think he worked on a wide variety of projects. He was part of the iPod team when it first started, bringing expertise in audio electronics in particular. To celebrate, Dan organized a group outing to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It was my first time visiting, and I couldn’t think of a better visit. The other young members of our group just followed Larry, Doug, and Wendell around and listened to their stories. It’s amazing, they still knew the designs of the artifacts in the museum, knew the people who made them, and heck — even built some of the computers on display.

Larry points to the original Mac laptop he worked on.

Before we left, we got to see Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2. Babbage built the first mechanical computers, and the Computer History Museum is fortunate to have one of two working replicas ever built in the world. It’s a stunning work. The scale is hard to see, but this is as tall as I am.

Back in Cupertino, we had a small party at BJ’s to toast Larry. There, Doug unveiled one of the most stunning plaques I’ve ever seen. We were all wondering what Doug was up to — getting our pictures and signatures the past week, and mysteriously going around rounding up old iPods. Everyone in the room was amazed by it…

Larry worked on every single iPod the team put out.

That’s how the iPod Hardware Engineering Team sends off one of its own. Be well and enjoy your retirement, Larry!

After catching some morning college football games, I headed over to Castro St. in downtown Mountain View to have lunch with Melih and Matt, my two friends who went to the President’s Cup golf tournament a few weekends ago. We munched on sandwiches in a sports tavern (or rather, what passes as a sports tavern in Mountain View, jeez) while watching the Penn State vs Michigan game (yawn) and having a free ranging discussion about college football (of course!), technology, monetary policy, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury department, state of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the visible impact of America’s huge trade deficit with China. Matt described seeing the trains go by while growing up in Oklahoma, and how two decades what used to be grain and wheat was slowly replaced by finished goods from Chinese, with all the trains being full going east and all empty coming back west.

We then headed to a nearby Turkish cafe (where, when I asked if it was kosher to add cream to Turkish coffee Melih responded with “why don’t you just desecrate my culture and steal my property?”) to brainstorm ideas for our submission to the NYC Big Apps contest. Melih told me about this contest, in which the New York City is encouraging people to aid its transparency and openness by building apps using its public data archives. It’s a fun outlet for us to try something new and get the creative juices flowing. This should keep us occupied over the next few weeks.

On the way home, I picked up an immersion blender that has a mini-food processor attachment. It’s a nice multi-tasker in the kitchen, and it’s handy having a chopper around. A brief stop at the Milk Pail, a European style open-air market got me a fill of fresh fruits and vegetables. I was planning on cooking something for dinner, but Mike arrived and we walked a few blocks down to the nearby Dutch Goose, where over burgers and drinks we enjoyed the Stanford football game against Arizona State. It was homecoming weekend, so spirits were high and Stanford played great! We’ve got a terrific football team this year. Mike’s high school friend Greg also dropped by.

Sunday was quieter — spent most of the day finishing up some volunteer work for the California Clean Tech Open, taking care of some errands, and cooking. I made some salsa with my new blender, but put in one too many habanero peppers. Boy it can burn! Dinner was some Japanese eggplant, red bell pepper, and garlic with sauteed baked tofu. Mike and Karla prepared some excellent pasta with butternut squash sauce, also giving the blender for a spin. Butternut squash is rather amazing…it has such a dominating nice taste that you’re often not sure what else you should add to make it taste good. I want to start using it more.

And finally, some really great news! Joseph and Heidi’s baby — Henry Isaac Fisher — was born early Saturday morning. The whole family is doing great. Congratulations Joseph and Heidi!

For me, this is especially true with photos. While photo managers like Picasa, iPhoto, Lightroom, and Aperture all have nice methods for organizing photos into albums, I find it important to keep order with original files and folders. This is especially useful when you want to select some photos to put online. Having left my Thinkpad in California, I thought I’d just use my MacBook to transfer my recent Diwali photos online.

In Windows, I use Windows Live Photo Gallery to import my photos, which allows me to quickly enter desired destination folder and filenames for different batches of photos (separated by time taken), all in one dialog box. That way my photos are automatically given a human-readable filename like “diwali 002″ instead of “IMG_9982.” To my dismay, I discovered that iPhoto doesn’t support the ability to rename the photo filenames upon import. Neither does Picasa for Mac. Nor does the built-in Image Capture utility in Mac OS X. So I found a freeware batch file re-namer and fixed the files after importing.

This makes me wonder: Am I just weird for refusing to simply accept photo filenames like IMG_5429.JPG? How come these hugely popular programs lack what I consider to be a necessary feature? I mean heck, the simple baked-in image importer utility in Windows XP had the functionality I desire, and yet Windows Vista decided to cripple it by not letting you rename the files on import. Fortunately the free Windows Live Photo Gallery not only restored it, but improved it. I think I must just be weird.

“What’s your most radical belief?”

My friends know that I can be rather loquacious, but it’s been a day since seeing this question and I still don’t know my answer.

My mind finds itself wandering between many lobes. Platitudes or statement of beliefs grounded in political or moral theory? A pithy quote from a favorite thinker, author, or figure? A number of “quasi-conspiracy” theories that I have varying degrees of stock in? A vision of a new product/system/solution that will change the world?

Beliefs are deemed “radical” in the context of the society they emerge from. In some parts of the world, the belief that everyone should be given the opportunity to receive an education would be “radical” enough to warrant violence. In another part of the world, the belief that a wealthy prosperous nation should have the moral decency to provide universal access to essential healthcare is deemed “radical”.

What would be “radical” for me – a product of a two-parent financially stable upper-middle class family with an entirely absent period of adolescent rebellion that has enjoyed the opportunity of a world class graduate education with international experience, surrounded by a widely selfless, encouraging, and loyal network of friends and mentors, and now enjoying a professional career in an affluent liberal city while stereotypically drinking my french-pressed coffee, listening to NPR, reading high brow periodicals, while having the luxury to think and blog about big thoughts like the one I’m writing about right now?

Throughout my life, I have continually self-selected myself to be around like minded peers — whether in school, in my social life, or in my professional life. In such a context…

Am I even capable of having a radical belief?

Smarter power. Smarter cities. Smarter traffic. Smart computing. Smarter healthcare.

I find them dynamic. Unabashedly diverse and global. These ads deeply resonate with me. I think “hey, that’s what I want to do!” It makes me excited at the promise the future holds, especially because my experiences over the last couple of years – immersed in a community of entrepreneurs and scholars who are keenly aware of the intersection of technology and society – makes me aware that this indeed is the future. At least, it’s the future we must strive towards if we are to achieve a better planet for ourselves and for our children.

Once again, the push emphasizes again the role that IBM seeks in this new, meta-knowledge economy. A decade of intense development of information technology infrastructure has put elements of our world into play for advances in innovation that was merely a dream 20 years ago. The realization of Moore’s Law, the ubiquity of connectivity, and the software to manage and harness vast amounts of information have made a smarter planet possible, but not a guarantee. It’s up to business, communities, governments, and ultimately ourselves to deliver on its promise.

I don’t have the skills yet to play the role I desire. But I’m learning them. When the opportunity comes, I aim to be ready for it.

The visit was wonderful, as expected. I took Friday and Monday off work to make the most of the moment. Mom had all the best food lined up waiting to go, we spent time together as a family, and I got to see some of my closest friends again.

On Saturday the family dressed up in our “Sunday best” and took some family photos. They came out rather nice!

Mother and daughter.

I also took iLife’s PhotoBooth application for a spin with Ba and the family. I must say…I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so excited and happy using a piece of software as PhotoBooth. Tip of the hat to Apple. Check out the goofy pictures here. Some are quite funny, others reveal the true horrors within.

I also took a moment to get Sapana up and running on her actual domain (www.sapanavora.com), after chiding her for not sharing more of her adventures and experiences in Chicago. She showed a photo of her with Jesse Jackson, gorgeous night-time photos of the Chicago skyline, visits to shows and baseball games, and amusing anecdotes about her lab and school. She promises now to be more active in blogging.

I was hoping to visit the State Fair, but weather wasn’t cooperating on Sunday so deep-fried Snickers bar will have to wait at least another year (sorry Eli in Spain). Scary fact: The Economist wrote about deep fried butter at a (Texas) state fair in a recent issue. An ominous sign to be sure, regardless whether it’s about America’s health or The Economist’s editorial oversight.

A quick sports update too: Panthers (surprise) actually won. NC State (no surprise) lost.  It’s been such a futile, spirit-crushing effort to watch this Wolfpack team this year. I blame it squarely on the defense and the receiving corps. Russell Wilson looks to be the only one on offense playing like he wants to win, but he can’t do it alone. He was given great protection by the o-line. The receiving corps were dropping open passes in the season opener, and they are still dropping open passes now. And don’t even get me started on the obscene mediocrity of the defense. It’s an utter disgrace. What’s more maddening about the situation is that Russell Wilson is a baseball player, and he’s the only one on the football team that seems to care! As my friend Mike said: “at the end of each game, the whole team should apologize to Russell Wilson for sucking so much.” Put RW on the bench so we don’t ruin his baseball career with a freak injury. Let’s get Mike Glennon a lot of snaps and start re-building for next year – right now. My roommate Troy must be happy though; his Georgia Tech team persevered over #4 Virginia Tech, and then his Falcons destroyed the 49ers. Chargers are playing the Broncos for Monday Night Football as I type this (on the airplane), and I really hope Philip Rivers can spoil Denver’s perfect season so I can poke fun at my buddy Birschbach. You know how we NC people like to jaw, right Chris?

Update: The Broncos beat the Chargers. Good game, Chris. :)

A live band called M88 from LA was playing in the amphitheater, and we all enjoyed a fine autumn evening on the lawn.

Dan seeks enlightenment at the Infinite Loop….

Sara is cameraphobic, and violently so!

This song, from an NPR concert in 2007, prompted these thoughts and feelings.

Iron & Wine – Upward Over the Mountain

Mother don’t worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed
Mother don’t worry, I’ve got some money I saved for the weekend
Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me
Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons are like birds flying upwards over the mountain

Mother I made it up from the bruise on the floor of this prison
Mother I lost it all of the fear of the Lord I was given
Mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to
Mother forgive me I sold your car for the shoes that I gave you

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons can be birds taken broken up to the mountain

Mother don’t worry I’ve got a coat and some friends on the corner
Mother don’t worry she’s got a garden we’re planting together
Mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry
Blood on the floor and the fleas in their paws
And you cried ’til the morning

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
Sons are like birds flying always over the mountain

I just can’t comprehend how mothers do it.

It’s astonishing.

I’ve never attended a golf tournament before, but this sounds like an exciting one to see!

Me: “What’s that master alarm there?”
Dan: “Well, it’s not a main bus B undervolt.”

I love my colleagues here.

I heard  two older songs I hadn’t heard much before — Upward Over the Mountain (around the 53:10 minute mark with an amazing jam at around 57:30) and Jezebel (around the 59:50  minute mark). Excited, I found them on albums and felt that the versions I had heard in the concert sounded better (I learned later that these were deliberate reimaginations). I later listened to an NPR concert of Passion Pit, to mixed results. Which of course leads to the question:

Q: Are there bands or musical artists you prefer hearing their studio sound over their live show? Vice versa?

One thing I’ve noticed is that a significant portion of my preferred music has been carefully produced and assembled in the studio in order to get the sound that I like. Others, like Nader especially, prefer the lo-fi taped-in-a-garage-on-a-single-track type sound. That being said, I almost universally prefer the sound of Dave Matthews Band in concert rather than the studio. And I vividly remember while attending a Decemberists concert in Raleigh three years ago, I felt like I was hearing some of the songs for the first time. And I know Sachi and Sapana rave about the live Nickel Creek shows. But even still, as exhilarating it was to see Sigur Rós live, if you talk about pure music quality their studio albums win out. What say you?

But you can actually change the page size, orientation, and margins from page to page inside a single Word file, like so:

click to enlarge

This doc has a letter landscape mode, letter portrait mode, followed by two tabloid sized (11″ x 17″) portrait pages with small margins for some large Excel charts, then a tabloid landscape mode for another wide chart. To do this, go to the Page Layout tab and insert a Next Page Section Break (this is different than a normal page break). Word lets you divide your doc into different sections that can be independently formatted. Modify your page size and layout, but be sure to close the section by inserting another Next Page Section Break and resume your normal formatting. Note — when using my CutePDF printer it prints the PDF in whatever page size that the doc shows, so it looks fine electronically. I don’t guarantee the same results if you try sending that to a normal paper printer.

I spotted a fall-themed potato salad recipe on Mark Bitten’s The Minimalist column in the NY Times. Instead of normal potatoes and lots of mayo, this recipe showcased roasted sweet potatoes, black beans, and a southwest style dressing of lime juice and minced jalapeno and a healthy helping of cilantro.

I’ve actually never cooked with sweet potatoes before, but they are quite nice. Bitten’s recipe showed them being orange-ish on the inside, but mine were more white. But I roasted the cubed sweet potatoes with chopped red onions on a cooking sheet drizzled with some oil, then made the dressing with some olive oil, juice of a few limes, minced jalapenos and garlic, salt + pepper, then mixed all together with chopped bell pepper and a can of black beans.

I combined this with some homemade guacamole (I’m such a sucker for guacamole), and spent the day watching college football with my housemate Troy, who is equally obsessed with college football.

We also had these freakishly large mutant seedless grapes.

These took on a new form of finger food. They’d take two bites to eat. Pretty cool. And red grapes are far superior to green grapes.

Back in late August, as I was preparing for the formal interviews at Apple, I chatted with my friend Melih, who also been thinking some big thoughts recently, as he is profoundly apt to do. He gave me an interview practice question:

“Where do you want to be in 5 years?”

We’ve all heard it before, and I started to take a step back to let the question roll around in my head. After all, this was a confusing time. Freshly minted graduate degree from one of the finest institutions in the world in my hand, an inner understanding that there is so much more to learn about, and torn between career paths and opportunities. So I parried.

“With the way that question is phrased, there is almost an implicit assumption of ‘progress’.”

What does ‘where’ refer to? A position on an org chart? Geographically in the world? Where along in a relationship? Where along in starting a family?  Perhaps its natural for us to figuratively map these factors onto the common progressions of the general order of life, and judge, like horses along a race track.

“It’s interesting — a form of that question is semantically intended to mean one thing, but the question is unintentionally tinted depending on what specific word is used. There’s the common “what do you want to be in 5 years?”, but consider the question “how do you want to be in 5 years?” How might one’s answer change? Or more intriguingly: “why do you want to be in 5 years?”

So I took a shot.

Where do you want to be in 5 years?

• Career — an influential person in a small-ish company, ideally in the greentech sector or similar.
• Location — not sure. Bay Area still? Too early to tell.
• Relationship — Ideally, married. Or at least engaged.
• Family — couple years away? Too early to tell.

What do you want to be in 5 years?

• An entrepreneur or professional engaged in the greentech/cleantech field, ideally.
• A person who gives back — to family, to friends, to the community, to society.

I don’t put words like ’successful’ or ‘respected’ or ‘rich’ here, because if I stay true to my core values, then these will come — and they’ll come from the people that matter to me.

How do you want to be in 5 years?

• Happy during the week, happy on the weekends. Excited at work, excited at home.
• Curious. Without curiosity, the world becomes a boring place.
• Motivated (or is ‘determined’ a better word?). As years go by, one can lose energy or start settling for compromises. Retaining the motivation and determination to continue to improve (at work, at home, at relationships, in society, in the world) is important. I don’t want to lose sight of that.

Why do you want to be in 5 years?

• So I can help the people I care about — hospitality, advice, career, a shoulder to lean on. If I’m gone, I can’t do that.
• To help move the ball forward in solving the problems the world is facing today. Whether it’s technological, political, or social problems; whether it’s in my backyard or halfway around the world. I believe I’m capable of playing a role in these endeavors, and I want to an opportunity to contribute.
• Because if I want to honor everything my family and friends have done for me, I’m going to need a lot more than 5 years!

So there’s my response. Let’s see how these change over the years. Thanks for reading.

Q: What song(s) do you purposefully not listen to? Why not?

For me it’s Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out) off their album The Bends. And this isn’t just because I don’t like that album compared to their later stuff, but I will go out of my way to avoid listening to that song. I’ll credit Donny and his friends Chris and Kris for this. It was the summer of 2006, and I was driving up to Philadelphia from my research stint at the University of Maryland to meet up with Donny and his New Jersey friends to attend my first Radiohead concert. On the drive up I listened to all the Radiohead albums, starting with the Bends.

The concert was great. The moments after it, not so much. See, during the show I happened to be standing next to a rather large-ish fellow who became belligerent after I told him we’d discuss how to share our photos/videos after the concert ends, rather than discuss the details during the songs. He started acting like a jerk after it ended, and to my admiration Donny’s friends immediately stuck up for me as if I were one of their own. The guy and his thuggish entourage caught the attention of some of the security guards, and we made it off into the pouring rain.

Soaking wet over greasy pizza and fine beer at a hole-in-the-wall joint near Donny’s apartment, the song Street Spirit (Fade Out) came up as a song of bad omen for Donny, Chris, and Kris. Each accounted their own stories of ill happenings. Finally,  I said: “You know, I listened to the Bends on my way up here. Including that song. And then this guy gets all in my face.” They looked me, nodding gravely.

So since the summer of 2006, I have never listened to that song again.

In other music news, I was tinkering around with the ‘Genius’ playlist generator in iTunes, which creates a playlist of songs from your music library that “sound great together.” I particularly enjoyed one of them which was seeded by Iron & Wine’s The Trapeze Swinger, and I invite you to listen to the playlist here. It’s mellow-ish, the ideal kind of music I prefer when studying or needing to focus on work. I hope you enjoy it.

I got the tickets off Craiglist and printed them out via an electronic ticket “relay” that is run by the Giants site, which looked pretty legit. When the gate agent scanned Krupali’s ticket, it flashed green but he didn’t see it, so he scanned it again and of course it showed it had already been tagged. We headed over to the ’special issues’ line and tried it again, same story. Krupali nudged me try my ticket, and it worked. We told that agent what happened, and he just told Krupali to duck under the turnstile. Score.

The seats were in the lower level by 3rd base, but kinda far under the overhang (I got the tickets that afternoon). It’s a nice ballpark.

We caught up with things, had a veggie hot dog (hey, it’s San Francisco), and I even got to see the Big Unit come out at the end to close for the Giants. The game was brisk too — the Giants had zero offense, and scored no runs.

After the game ended, we walked a few blocks north of the ball park to eat a great Thai restaurant recommended by Karthik, one of Krupali’s friends who is working at VMWare and living up in SF. I had met Karthik on Krupali’s last visit to SF, at the Wine Bar in SOMA. The three of us caught a late dinner (the food was excellent) and had a wide ranging conversation. iPhones were out for a lot of it, as Karthik was showing off a new camera app he got (he’s an excellent photographer). Krupali and I also tried out the ‘Bump’ app, where both users activate it then do a fist bump to wireless send their contact info over. Neato!

I was meaning to meet up finally with Melih, but I let the night get away from me. Another weekend Melih, another weekend. Now, I need to make a trip down south to visit Krupali in LA since she’s visited the Bay Area three times already.

Despite being a fun game, I felt like turning it off by halftime. Why? Because its not enjoyable to be bludgeoned to death by repetitive advertisements. I kept track of the online video advertisements shown to me during the 3 (three) hours that I had the video feed going:

Over 3 hours of primetime television to a user in the lucrative college educated, professional, 18-to-45 male demographic, I was shown 44 minutes of advertising and witnessed only 7 unique advertisements. Actually 5 if you don’t count NBC’s previews for the winter Olympics. I saw  the same Visa advertisement 30 times, often twice in the same commercial break. And I’ve now completely internalized the fact that Gillette can make me play like Tiger Woods, land the business deal, and score babes.

The problem? I’ve had a VISA credit card for nearly 6 years. I was a Sprint customer for 8 years before only recently switching to AT&T, for a good reason. I’m a vegetarian, so being told 15 times that Subway has a new chicken sandwich doesn’t do it for me. They had a lucrative demographic engaged to their site for 3 primetime viewing hours, and they utterly failed in providing their advertisers a return on investment.

What’s inexplicable to me is that we’re talking about the two of the biggest brands in America — the NFL and NBC. Using YouTube’s popularity as a benchmark, online video has been a ‘big deal’ for the past 3 years. The idea of online advertising has been around for over a decade. While TV represents ‘dumb’ advertising outlets that couldn’t tell advertisers who exactly they were reaching, the Internets can tell them a lot of information — even basic info like how long I’ve uniquely been watching your video feed. After all this, the concept of a “If User has seen Advertisement A more than N times, Show User Advertisement B”  seems to fail them? I often feel that I’m at  point where I’d rather just tell an advertising network what things I’m interested in, and suffer through somewhat interesting and relevant commercials rather than wanting to hammer thumbtacks into my eyes (although honestly, this year’s sports announcing crews are making that a more desirable experience anyway).

It’s no wonder then that there are a lot of online video advertising startups. It’s still amazing to me how these two huge brands can fail so spectacularly, especially since they were able to put together such a compelling online video product. Let’s see what happens next week.

Join in on the conversation on TokBox! Would love to hear your thoughts.

Came down feeling pretty ill yesterday, did some (involuntarily) fasting since then. Not sure what it is, but it sucks. Had to cancel plans. On the flip side, I came back to my office today to find a new MacBook Pro on my desk. Shiny! Really folks, it’s too much.

Q: Imagine being given the chance to direct a music video of your choosing. You have full creative direction, you can bring on any director you want and can work with any band. What song(s) would you want to make a music video for?

I ask because on the drive to work each morning, I think about how I’d shoot a video for Fold in Your Hands by Passion Pit. Can’t get enough of that song right now.

And at the risk of sounding like a broken record (see what i did there?), I’ll bring up one other thing I like about Passion Pit — the depth of their lyrics and how they’re able to wrap them in a candy coated indie pop veneer. Consider Eyes as My Candles.

Lyrics excerpt:

Some unguarded room:
a smoky figure fills me full,
makes my head swell in ruin.
My family kneels at the pew,
They nod, “We believe in what you’re doing!”
I feel it rise above me,
the western landscape’s towering,
and from my shell of a body
the flowers blossom for picking.

Why do I always need to need you when you’re fleeing?
Where do you go when I’m around?
What have I done, what have I got that’s so defeating?
And have the nerve to wear the crown?

Oh, na na na na na na, hey! hey! hey! (x4)

I’ve waited and waited for someone to take it.
Don’t fight it, don’t bother an inch for another.
Don’t listen, don’t hear them, they’re in this together.
I’ve learned well, now hear me, there’s much to be fearing.
I’m used to your absence, your faceless distraction.
I’ve painted your patterns but found them attractive.
Now I’ve been leaning towards a life far more candid,
though lead through the dark with your eyes as my candles,
and your life, and my life’s directions can render.
And all of a sudden you left me to handle
the reasons that never forbid me to step out.
And somehow or somewhere I found out the secret -
To say it alive without actually breathing.

Maybe I’m just thinking about it to hard, but I just find it so intriguing. The interweaving voices in the last stanza, the children’s voices in the background connotating the blissful ignorance of childhood, the challenging tone of the words itself. Makes me think that if you substitute the pop for folk, you’d have a Sufjan Stevens-esque song. Pretty great.

Don’t forget to answer the question at the top!

Shiny! All thanks to my parents, who tackled the Sprint folks to knock down the early termination fee…or else this would have come in March. Thanks Mom and Dad. One less thing my co-workers can make fun of me with…

As I stopped by his office this week, he offered an insightful re-framing of the idea of a ‘progress report’, an otherwise standard part of any team endeavor. Members of high performing teams typically have multiple on-going parallel projects and tasks. Prioritization of these tasks is crucial skill, but the awareness shift is that with high performing teams it is assumed that any given task will be completed, it’s simply a matter of when. So rather than provide extensive updates on the progress you’ve made on a given task, Joseph is more interested in what tasks are you’ve not made progress on.

It’s a good point, and it’s not intended to be critical either. There are only so many hours in a day, and it’s appropriate for some tasks to be delayed. Most team meetings begin by going ‘around the horn’, with people explaining what they’ve done since the last meeting. Positive news travels fast, bad news travels slow. It’s easier for us to talk about the things we’ve made progress on. But by immediately getting to the things not being addressed, a manager can more quickly begin to assess the prioritization of tasks and start to re-allocate resources.

• I’ve moved out of the wonderful Rains on-campus apartments over to a house about 1.5 miles away in Menlo Park. I’m living with two roommates, both who graduated with Master’s in computer science (focus in human computer interaction) from Stanford. Troy, who has been living in the house for a year, went to Georgia Tech undergrad. He was TAing the iPhone development class at Stanford, is working on his own iPhone app (which looks amazing, can’t wait until it’s out!), and is the one writing an iPhone development book too. Great guy. To other housemate is Michael, who lived across from me in Rains and interned in the iPod software team last summer. He’s interning at Box.net heading up their mobile applications suite — hopefully it’ll turn into a fulltime position soon. I’ve updated the contact info to reflect the new address.
• I’ve got a Google Voice number: (650) 453-VORA (VORA = 8672). It’s a Palo Alto area code. It’s just pointing to voicemail, but any voicemail gets speech-to-text processed then emailed to me. Just for fun right now.
• Since joining Apple, I’ll be using a Mac more and more as a full-time computer. Still got my 2 year old ThinkPad though, but need to get a new keyboard for it before it’s back in top form. It was neat, I was talking to Sara (one of Joseph’s interns this fall term) yesterday and she actually said that ThinkPads were her favorite computer.
• I’m trying to see the best route to getting an iPhone. My Sprint contract is due up at the end of March, but I’d really like to get one soon. There’s a termination fee involved that I’d rather want to avoid paying. It almost seems inevitable now.
• My grandmother is visiting soon from India, and there’s going to be a family reunion around mid-to-late October back in Cary to celebrate Diwali, the Indian end of the year/new year festivities.
• Currently begin seriously researching places to live in San Francisco. More on that later.

So then in July my manager from Apple, Joseph, opened up the possibility of coming back to Apple. I have a great relationship with him — he’s also an NC State grad, really interested in green building design and energy efficiency (currently designing his new home in Santa Cruz), and he understands that I have interests in startups and greentech. He and his manager liked the work I did last summer, and felt that I could add value to their team and that I can learn a lot from them. The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. And I sought advice and perspective from my network out here, and there was an overwhelming positive reaction to the offer. It is such an unusual group of people to work with — I spoke with people there who have worked at both big companies and startups and they saw their group as one with a spirit and mentality of a startup but with the resources of a big company. The teams are cross-functional, meaning I get to see all aspects of a product cycle and maybe even a trip over to China too.

But here’s the last thing: I loved coming to work everyday last summer to work with this team. And I’m realizing that finding a work environment that you truly enjoy isn’t as commonplace as it should be.

This is going to be a great experience, and an important one that continues to develop my skills and also build up some financial resources to set out of my own in the near future. I’m not sure now how long it’ll last…there is so much to learn. Don’t worry — I’m still keeping the networks going with energy stuff and all my other interests. I appreciate all the support.

After spending the previous day in Raleigh, I ended up heading back there for the college football home opener game, NC State vs. South Carolina. Mike and I headed to Chubby Tacos to meet up with Ben for dinner, where we watched the kickoff and the 1st quarter. Then we hopped over to Snookers where Jordan, Greg, and Kelly were playing as part of their pool league. Jordan and Greg had made it into a tournament, but it was amusing to see Jordan’s Red Hat books sprawled across a table and him tapping away at a terminal between turns, as he had a major exam the following day.

The game was — is it a surprise? — an embarrassment as NC State played lackluster offense for the game. It was uninspiring, not fitting for being host to ESPN’s College Gameday Kickoff on primetime TV. Oh well, our defense actually held up better than I had expected, so we’ll prep for next week.

Next couple of days were spent at home with the parents; I met up with Megha at Goodberry’s on Saturday night to catch up — she’s headed to South Korea on a English language teaching program. She was excited to learn that the Korean alphabet makes sense to someone who knows Gujarati and Megha has been a big fan of Korean TV for years now. Her accent is impeccable, and even struck up a brief conversation with a Korean family at Goodberry’s….in Korean.

On Sunday morning I headed into Chapel Hill to Naman’s house, where I met up with friends Derek and Pavak. Mike joined and we headed over a nearby middle school for a nice game of ultimate frisbee with a bunch of Naman’s friends and friends of friends from UNC med school and graduate school. Met a lot of people for the first time (like Kamal, Sapana’s friend who has a huge crush on Carl Kasell from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me) and afterward we all gathered back at Naman’s house for Sunday brunch. What a bustling lively crowd — people moving about cooking over a dozen dishes, the kitchen table covered with goodies, etc. Really nice way to spend a Sunday morning; I’m jealous.

Last full day in Cary! The whole family made one last trip to Goodberry’s with Mike and Naman joining us, then I did some packing for my 7am flight back to the Bay. What a fulfilling a trip this was. Makes me truly appreciate what astonishingly great people I have the pleasure of calling friends.

After lunch I meandered over to Poe and met up with Keith — one of my best friends from high school who took a surprising direction (to almost everyone who knew him) and pursued psychology/sociology at Appalachian State before getting his MA in the same subject at Wake Forest. He’s working as a lab assistant at NC State for a bit before going back to grad school. He was headed to lunch, so I opted for a second lunch with a slice of pizza at I Heart NY Pizza. I haven’t seen Keith in nearly 4 years, but it was so remarkable to see the same mannerisms and expressions pop up — except now in conversations about agent rationality or applied statistics in state policy instead of conversations about Counter-Strike or Photoshop.

I made my way down to Tally Student Center (pleased to see the fountain operational) and had a coffee with Ben at the new gym complex and walked over with him as he got his new student ID (he’s starting a grad program in materials science). It was nice to hear his work with the crew team and how busy his summer was.

By half past three I was back on east campus where I visited the Park Scholarships Office. I greeted the ever present and ever gracious Rosalyn, met the new staff members Joy and Holly, and caught up with Eva (now the director). I brought along the tassel I wore to Stanford’s graduation and a little Stanford pennant as a gift — a small token of appreciation for how the Park program helped me reach that moment. The latest class of Park Scholars (c/o 2013) was about to have their weekly meeting, so Eva invited me along to say a few words to the class. I got to meet the new Park Faculty Scholars who were cool, and the other Park staff member Bob. I’m going to try to work with him over the next month or so to host a virtual ‘networking/grad school’ info session — to try to give some advice from recent alums to those interested in post-baccalaureate endeavors in academia.

After bidding the Parkies farewell, I finally made it over to Centennial Campus and Engineering Building 2 — home to the electrical engineering department. John — a fellow Apple intern from the spring and summer was there and I hung out with him and his friend, a bigger John.Fun guys. EB3 looks almost complete too — wow. John was headed to EEP (the same senior design track I took) so I tagged along and poked my head into Dr. Walsh’s office — we spoke briefly, and scheduled coffee for tomorrow morning at his house.

I left campus and headed deeper into Raleigh, to Greg and Kelly’s apartment. After much confusion (Greg swore I’d visited before) he found me and we caught up for a bit before the three of us headed out to Jordan’s house for an evening cookout, with a pit stop at Whole Foods to pick up food and drink. At Kelly’s suggestion, I gave these tofurkey beer brats a try. The cookout and Jordan’s home went great — we all pitched and gifted the grill to him as a housewarming present. Really nice home too. Mike came by, Ben and Will stopped over, and John came too. Jordan “the NC drill” Price was stuck at work later than expected, but made his entrance just in time to enjoy bourbon chocolate pecan pie. Mmmmm.

I mentioned some of the new places in downtown Raleigh that they frequented in the summer like the Foundation bar or Boylan Bridge Brew Pub, and we decided to hit up Foundation. Awfully nice of them, considering it was a school night too! Foundation was everything they told me it was — a nice conversation oriented bourbon themed bar built into the excavated foundation of a building. Outstanding homemade sodas and tonics — actual ginger ale with fresh ginger. Mike showed off his game, Jordan and I told stories about iPod land, and Greg gave Jordan an update on where Kyma was. What a great place — it’s amazing to me how different Raleigh downtown feels.

What a day! I’m so lucky to have friends like these. NC State suffered a blow to its leadership up high this summer, but some much needed facelifts are completed across campus and big projects long discussed are finally getting underway.  Nevertheless, you get the sense that it’s a strong rebuilding year, and the best days are still ahead.

I got some strong progress made with my RTI project, doing a lot of work in MATLAB. It feels good. I also spent this week revisiting some of my favorite spots on campus, including having lunch with Nader at Bytes Cafe. When Greg and Kelly visited we had lunch here as well.

And I go back to the Y2E2 building to work on their outdoor balconies. This new science and engineering quad is going to be such  a good space when it’s finished.

In the evenings, I’ve been experimenting with homemade pizzas using a dough recipe from my friend Gaurav. I use the same rolling pin that my mom uses when making Indian bread, and I’ve been extremely pleased with the results so far. I did numerous experiments with tiny pizzas, exploring different cheeses (chevre goat cheese, monterey + colby, mozzarella) and topping choices (crimini mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes) .

I’m baking these on a saltillo (clay) tile that I bought from Home Depot for $1.15. It’s the closest to perfection I’ve come by myself. Mary and her family still hold the coveted #1 spot for homemade pizza…it’s going to be a while before I can top their mindblowing creations.

I’ll be back in the Bay Area two Monday’s from now, and I’ll be posting next when from North Carolina.

To the engineering quad

Back to my apartment

And here’s a shot of place I’d like to go study and work: The Y2E2 balcony.

I do not know Senator Kennedy well. I grew up in Texas and North Carolina, well outside the primary places of his service. Having become ‘politically aware’ only for the past decade, I never witnessed the many legislative endeavors he championed since joining the senate as a thirty year old in 1962. But anywhere I look, one cannot avoid the tremendous impact of his public service to a country for which two of his brothers gave their lives. Civil rights, the anti-apartheid movement, Americans with disabilities, AIDS and cancer research, children’s health insurance, mental health, minimum wage, public service, and many more — all enjoyed Senator Kennedy’s leadership and energy.

A month ago I wrote a post about a moving moment regarding Marquis de Lafayette, in which General Pershing led his troops to Lafayette’s grave in Paris to pay their respects. Lafayette was buried under soil from Bunker Hill, a poignant gesture to the Frenchman’s service and dedication to our young republic. I read today a similarly poignant moment from the life of Senator Kennedy, who was no stranger to grief.

“On the morning of the day before the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, Senator Ted Kennedy called the White House to inquire if it was appropriate to bring to the burial some earth from Arlington National Cemetery. The answer was essentially a shrug: Who knows? Unadvised, the senator carried a shopping bag onto the plane, filled with earth he had himself dug the afternoon before from the graves of his two murdered brothers. And at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, after waiting for the crowd and the cameras to disperse, he dropped to his hands and knees, and gently placed that earth on the grave of the murdered prime minister.

What I admire most about Kennedy was his tireless commitment  to advance the causes dear to him. He wore the label of liberal proudly on his sleeve — standing out among his timid, often feckless Democratic colleagues with passionate and fiery speeches that would shame  the opposition by calling upon our common morality and justice. One does not earn the title “Lion of the Senate” by middling around. My eyes fill with tears because I wonder if my generation will have a champion in the Senate like Ted Kennedy. A champion unafraid to speak boldly and strongly, who demands that our country strive ever higher in our ideals and to defend the poor and sick who so often can be heard as mere whispers in the marble halls of Washington. Sadly, I fear this is the end of an era.

As many point out, Ted Kennedy wasn’t a perfect man. He made mistakes in his life, some minor and some major, and endured setbacks that would cause most other men to give up and throw in the towel. For all of his shortcomings, Ted Kennedy chose to continue serving and striving for what he believed in, each and every day until cancer claimed his life. He is a man whose deeds have brought about so much more good than bad, and what more can any of us ask of a person? To conclude, I leave the words of Theodore Roosevelt – another American Lion.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

We’ll miss you Ted.

What a great time that was. I feel so lucky to have friends like these.

Back stateside in Oregon, lead developer Dieterich has been hard at work creating PatientView — Medic’s first software module for FrontlineSMS. PatientView will allow folks at the clinics see information about patients, manage the info sent in by the CHW, and much more. The aim is for PatientView to ultimately tie into OpenMRS which is a more robust open source medical record system, which Mugisha is working on this summer. Dieterich’s work has been simply extraordinary — just a couple of months ago the team was swapping ideas back and forth over a drawing mockup of the software, and the progress Dieterich has made blows our minds. I hope to write about some more specific use cases in later posts, but you can see demos of PatientView here.

Things are looking good for Medic to continue its rollout and deployments even as the school year starts up again. Hopefully we’ll have an all hands meeting this fall, which should be awesome. Lucky, Josh, and Nadim are from Stanford, Isaac and Dieterich are from Lewis and Clark University in Oregon, and Nicholas hails from Northwestern; but we’re all finding a way to work together. Boundaries just don’t stop interested people from getting involved.

Subscribe to Medic’s blog or follow it on Twitter and Facebook, and follow any of the team members by clicking on their name in this post. If you have an old phone in a drawer someone, consider recycling it through our Hope Phones campaign — the monetary value salvaged from your old phone can be used to obtain appropriate phones that can be put into the hands of community health workers in sites around the world.

I have a ton of respect for these two — they are the real deal. Back up against a wall, Chris started running a eBay business out of his dorm room in college which became  profitable enough for him to hire three employees. He’s assisted and mentored a lot of other startups too. Brian worked on ideas with a social enterprise related incubator at Cal Poly, then recently teamed up with a mechanical engineering student who devised an innovative braking solution for bicycles — in just months Brian has already made trips to Taiwan to meet with bicycle manufacturers and has given pitches to angel round investors. These guys do things.

Stanford already has a vibrant culture of entrepreneurship and strong existing infrastructure with organizations like BASES to promote entrepreneurship on campus. Chris and Brian are working almost singlehandedly to cultivate that culture at Cal Poly — a school long recognized for strong engineering talent with students that have a lot of hands-on skills but go work for large existing companies rather than try a new venture. Sound familiar? Yeah — I sympathize with their endeavor because I see a lot of parallels between Cal Poly and NC State.

So far, the two of them put on a successful business plan competition, and have been integral in the creation of InnovationQuest – an organization funded by successful Cal Poly graduates to help advise and fund early stage ventures out of Cal Poly. What’s cool is that they are showing that innovation can happen anywhere. One of the competition successes actually came out out of the wine and viticulture program — the students realized that after successive wine tastings the palate becomes saturated and later wines aren’t tasted properly. So they tinkered with pH levels and carbonation in the lab and created a liquid palate cleanser. SanTasti was born — and they already have paying customers throughout Napa Valley and the Central Valley! How cool is that?

I hope we can find ways of having BASES and Cal Poly work more closely together in the future, and I can’t wait to see what Chris and Brian are coming up with next.

However, even in traditional settings, utilities can utilize conservative programs because the 1:3 rule of thumb when it comes to electricity consumption and generation — 1 watt of power consumed requires approximately 3 watts at the generation side due to inefficiencies (see this more detailed look at this rule of thumb at The Energy Collective). Utilities operating at capacity are forced to use more expensive forms of generation to meet additional loads, which cut into profits. And if the utility is really struggling to meet demand, a new expensive generation facility might be required. Promoting electricity efficiency and conservation can be a cheaper way for utilities to reduce load requirements, which is less taxing on their equipment and helps improve overall reliability and performance.

And man, you don’t see a lot of films like this being made. It follows bureaucrats in the diplomatic arms of the English and American government, during the build up to a hypothetical war the US wants to start with a Middle Eastern country. A bumbling career bureaucrat who is minister of international development botches an interview that goes off ‘message’. This slip-up sets into motion a cascade of events — doves in DC try to use him for support in slowing the push to war, the press officer for the Prime Minister works furiously to get back on message, and meanwhile everyone and the young aids working for the ministers all squabble and fight turf wars.

Sounds boring? Well it’s actually dementedly satirical, with a script that feels more like three films of worth of dialogue and lines that might result if Quentin Tarantino copy edited a West Wing script then handed it to the production team of The Office with each of them amped up on six Red Bulls. Peter Capaldi — who plays the the Ari Gold-meets-Rahm Emmanuel invective spewing communications director – lights up every scene he’s in. I’ve never laughed this frequently during a movie, and lines (coupled with thick British accents) sometimes come rolling in too fast to catch. Disclaimer: if you aren’t comfortable with foul language, this is definitely not a film for you.

In the end, In the Loop probably runs about 15 minutes too long, but I’m so pleased to see such a film be made — a welcomed oasis growing in the wasteland of mind-numbing summer films.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

When John F. Kennedy spoke these words to Congress, it had been a mere 20 days after the first American had gone into space — not orbit, as the Soviets had done on their first attempt. Total American manned spaceflight at the time: 15 minutes. Yet Kennedy’s ambition and vision set into motion a set of events that resulted in one of the most intense eras of technical innovation and scientific exploration the world has ever witnessed.

My friend Mike pointed me to a testimony given earlier this month to the Augustine Commission by Dr. Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society. The Augustine Commission had been formed by President Obama to review manned spaceflight plans for the United States. Currently we seem to be on a path of returning to the moon by 2020 then Mars at some date in the future. Meanwhile, we will continue to staff and extend the International Space Station in Earth orbit.

I strongly recommend everyone to take a few minutes and read Zubrin’s testimony. Not only is it a good overview of what a clear minded NASA can accomplish, it also gives a concise description of a realistic Mars mission plan and more interestingly, is a salient commentary on the consequences of institutions choosing to orient themselves around questionable goals. This last part can actually be extended to any institution, particularly as it matures.

Zubrin describes two operational modes that NASA has operated in — Apollo mode between 1961 – 1973, and Shuttle mode since 1974. The former is destination-driven, whereas the latter is constituency-driven. To set the context for this distinction, Zubrin offers a comparison of NASA’s accomplishments between 1961-1973 and 1997-2009 era, two eras in which the total expenditures were roughly equal (about $18 billion in real dollars).

“Between 1961 and 1973, NASA flew the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Ranger, Surveyor, and Mariner missions, and did all the development for the Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager missions as well. In addition, the space agency developed hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines, multi-staged heavy-lift launch vehicles, nuclear rocket engines, space nuclear reactors, radioisotope power generators, spacesuits, in-space life support systems, orbital rendezvous techniques, soft landing rocket technologies, interplanetary navigation technology, deep space data transmission techniques, reentry technology, and more. In addition, such valuable institutional infrastructure as the Cape Canaveral launch complex, the Deep Space tracking network, Johnson Space Center, and JPL were all created in more or less their current form.

In contrast, during the period from 1997-2009, NASA flew forty-seven Shuttle missions allowing it to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope and partially build the International Space Station. About a dozen interplanetary probes were launched (compared to over thirty lunar and planetary probes between 1961-73). Despite innumerable “technology development” programs, no new technologies of any significance were actually developed, and no major space program operational nfrastructure was created.”

One might take exception to the idea that the ISS is not a ‘major space program operational infrastructure’, but the differences are rather significant nonetheless.  The key takeaway for me is how the operational mode chosen results in different strategies. In ‘Apollo mode’, a destination was chosen and technologies were developed according to a plan that would enable us to reach that destination. Technologies were evaluated based on how effective they were at fulfilling this objective.  In contrast, in ‘Shuttle mode’ technologies are developed at the desires of the technical communities involved then justified based on the possibility of it being useful in some indeterminate future. While I’m hesitant to claim this as a good example, but I vividly remember all the buzz surrounding Lockheed Martin’s X-33 in the late 1990s, with claims as this was the shuttle of the future and would help fill NASA’s need for a reliable way to get into orbit cheaply — it was canceled in 2001 after NASA had invested nearly $1 billion into it.

The Apollo era had a concrete goal — land a person on the Moon and bring him back safely to earth. The Shuttle era’s goal is…to do things in orbit? Without a meaningful, definite goal, NASA as an institution lost its strategic focus and allowed its constituents to control the flow of dollars. As Mike observes, while unmanned space probes have resulted in enormous contributions to science, it fails to attract public interest which helped buoy NASA’s standing in the 1960s. Dwindling public interest results in less political attention which results in ever more tightening budgets, which in turn restricts the types of projects NASA can undertake and the vicious spiral continues. Zubrin wants to bring Mars back as a goal, and to get there within a decade. Of the reasons he gives for Mars, the one concerning educational stimulus is the one I find most compelling. His words are too good, so an extended excerpt follows:

“Nations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. The challenge of a humans-to Mars program would also be an invitation to adventure to every youth in the country, sending out the powerful clarion call: “Learn your science and you can become part of pioneering a new world.” There will be over 100 million kids in our nation’s schools over the next ten years. If a Mars program were to inspire just an extra one percent of them to scientific educations, the net result would be 1 million more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers, and doctors, making technological innovations that create new industries, finding new medical cures, strengthening national defense, and generally increasing national income to an extent that utterly dwarfs the expenditures of the Mars program.

This point is so critical that it is worthy of further emphasis. The wealth and the strength of a nation are based first and foremost on its intellectual capital. In this respect, the Apollo program produced a terrific return, as it doubled the number of our science graduates, at every level—high school, college, Ph.D. This paid off massively when those twelve-year-old little boy scientists of the 1960s became the forty-year-old technological entrepreneurs of the 1990s and launched the computer revolution. A humans-to-Mars program today would repay even greater dividends, because in this day and age the science and engineering professions are also open to women in a way that was simply not the case during the 1960s. Thus an Apollo-like challenge today would not only inspire into being legions of little boy scientists, but little girl scientists as well, whose ensuing research and nventions would benefit the nation, and humanity at large, for decades to come.” (emphasis mine)

When it comes to public policy decisions, I am most interested in choices that bring about institutional change — the kind that becomes baked into the fabric of society whose benefits will be enjoyed for decades and generations to come. Zubrin describes above the kind of ‘baked in’ change the Apollo era introduced into the American society, and its return on investment is almost too large to comprehend. In today’s age where change is accelerating ever more rapidly, just imagine the effect these kinds of investments made today could have on our grandchildren’s generation.

Addressing the commission, Zubrin says,

“Many options have been placed before you, but really only one fundamental choice: and that is to shun challenge or to embrace it, to choose to do things because they are easy, or because they are hard. Humans to Mars is the challenge that has been staring NASA in the face for the past forty years. It is the challenge that says to us: “Are you still a nation of pioneers? Do you still have the guts, and fortitude, and vision that your predecessors had—those brave men and women who took the risks to get you to where you are today? Are you still a nation whose great deeds will be celebrated in newspapers, or just in museums?” (emphasis mine)

It may sound cliched, but is this not the greater question at hand? A “decade goal” is a strange beast in our political consciousness — it is short-term enough to have fairly deterministic, observable results for society but long-term enough to fall outside the election cycle of any of our elected officials — and thus subject to suffer at the hands of political maneuvering. It requires a national vision, a societal appetite for risk, and a political will that transcends the current state of our politics.

Now, this is the first I’ve read about Dr. Zubrin, but his testimony nonetheless touches upon numerous critical points with regard to the general direction of science and technology in America. I’ll be the first to admit — we have national priorities right now in the realm of economic recovery and healthcare reform at a scale not seen in 80 and 60 years, respectively. But we must keep our sights to the stars and have the courage to dare to dream big. As Zubrin notes, we have the technology to do a Mars mission right now. We can do this, and it would serve us well to rekindle the kind of can do spirit that has made America great.

A big thanks to Mike for being a valuable sounding board for this post.

Had some coffee while reading the Innovator’s Dilemma (picked it up at a free book cart while showing Greg and Kelly the Stanford Law School library) then headed back to the apartment. Michael & Co brought in my pots and plates from last night’s BBQ so I went over to pick them up and we ended up having a nice chat about healthcare reform for an hour before I headed off to check out Troy’s house. Troy was a fellow CS classmate of Michael’s and is currently quite active in iPhone development. Michael and I are looking at staying at Troy’s house for 3 months to buy more time to find a decent place in the City. Ended up staying there for an hour — Troy and his friend Steve are working on a monster of an iPhone app. For all you running fans there, stay tuned.

Next week’s schedule is filling up nicely, and hopefully I can get back to some normalcy with the routine to make the most of it.

The song with the highest playcount over the past few days is M83’s We Own the Sky. I seem to be a year late to most music, oh well. M83 had a video contest and the one below was chosen to be the official music video for the song. Made by some young filmmakers out of LA.

Make sure HD is on. Wow. With talent available like this, why would a band these days spend a lot of money on their own video? Just wow.

Checking out a house nearby in Menlo Park later this afternoon; Michael and I are thinking of moving into two free rooms there (it belong’s to one of Michael’s friends in CS) for a few months to buy some time to ideally find a place up in the City. Both of us still need to lock down what we’ll be doing fulltime though.

Monday night will be a Social E-Challenge reunion at Silvia’s house in San Jose, and for Tuesday a group is slowly coalescing to check out In the Loop, a “a sharply written, fast-talking, almost dementedly articulate satire on modern statecraft” which is playing at an indie theater in downtown Palo Alto.

Stewart brought up multiple times how massive these bills have become — over a thousand pages. When Waxman tried to explain the goals of the health care reform, Stewart said “well when you put it like that, it sounds so straightforward. Why does it take a 1000 pages to do that?” Waxman gamely tried to explain all the nitty gritty details that make things more complicated — addressing rural clinic concerns, teaching hospital needs that are big in urban centers, insurance regulatory changes, etc.

Being a sort of typography nerd, I recalled that the formatting for legislative bills isn’t like that of typical reports and papers that most of us are familiar with. The margins are very wide, double spaced, font is larger than 12pt. Let me show some example pages from the health care form bill:

^ Here is pretty common looking page (pg. 629)

^ Section titles can take up a lot of space (pg. 194)

^ and sometimes whole pages are indented. (pg. 604)

So I did some number crunching. I threw all my old Technician newspaper columns into Word, removed all paragraph breaks and titles, 12pt. Times New Roman double-spaced and came out to be 342 words/page. I took some representative samples of reports with natural paragraph breaks and section titles, also 12pt. Times New Roman double-spaced, and got between 270 and 300 words/page. Online you’ll find that an average book has between 200 and 250 words/page. I even went and compiled some quick and dirty statistics on the Harry Potter books, which average 255 words/page [no, I didn't control for publishing format, just wanted some quick numbers].

For H.R. 3200, I went and found the number of words per page for 20 random pages throughout the bill. The numbers ranged from 104 word/page to 215 words/page, for an average of about 159 words/page for the 1,036 page health care bill.

If we take these figures for more commonly found page formatting (342, 300, 270, 255, 250 words/page) and translate that to the health care bill, we’d have a bill that is between 485 pages to 663 pages, for an average length of 592 pages.

The last five books in the Harry Potter series have page lengths of roughly 448, 752, 870, 652, and 784. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel hardcover clocks in at 512 pages. War and Peace is over 1200. Atlas Shrugged is about 1200 pages too.

Legislative bills aren’t like speeches or interviews, where you can just emphasize convenient 30 second sound bites. This is actual lawmaking, where you have to contend with decades of existing laws, codes, acts. Look at just a few lines of the bill:

SEC. 1201. IMPROVING ASSETS TESTS FOR MEDICARE SAVINGS PROGRAM AND LOW-INCOME SUBSIDY PROGRAM.
(a) APPLICATION OF HIGHEST LEVEL PERMITTED UNDER LIS TO ALL SUBSIDY ELIGIBLE INDIVIDUALS.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Section 1860D–14(a)(1) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395w 114(a)(1)) is amended in the matter before subparagraph (A), by inserting ‘‘(or, beginning with 2012,
paragraph (3)(E))’’ after ‘‘paragraph (3)(D)’’.
(2) ANNUAL INCREASE IN LIS RESOURCE TEST.—Section 1860D–14(a)(3)(E)(i) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1395w–114(a)(3)(E)(i)) is amended….

So let’s cut down on this “oh come on, a  1000 page bill!” obsession and instead demand that our congressional representatives do the often difficult task of governing that they signed up for and we elected them to do.

]]> http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/05/what-really-is-a-1000-page-bill/feed/ 3 http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/05/sapanabear-phd-candidate/ http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/05/sapanabear-phd-candidate/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:21:09 +0000 Saket http://www.saketvora.com/?p=963 Two special notes about Sapanabear!

She successfully passed her orals last month and is an official Ph.D candidate in Cancer Biology at the esteemed University of Chicago. Huzzah! By all accounts, she’s got it made. Her group is led by a doctor professor that any graduate student would pine to have as their PI, and her fellow labmates are a tightknit, scary smart, and light hearted cadre of friends. It is reported that others in the biological sciences department have started to refer to her lab as the ‘fun group’‘, an admirable feat at the University of Chicago, whose unofficial motto is “where fun comes to die.” Her thesis by the way?

a case-control genome-wide association study of genetic susceptibility for the development of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (t-AML)

Yeah. I tried reading her proposal last year and finally acknowledged that she’s smarter than I am.

The other news! Sapana is first author on an editorial in the soon to be published issue of Leukemia Research. It’s on “Translating genetic questions into clinical answers in acute myeloid leukemia”, and now I need to somehow figure out what that really means.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, wrote a book called Sum in which he describes 40 different visions of after-life. In one of them, Eagleman proposes three kinds of death: the death when your physical body ceases to function, the death when your body is consigned (buried, cremated, etc), and lastly, the death when your name has been spoken for the last time.

Imagine that. A room — a purgatory — in which you wait, and wait, and wait until you are no longer remembered by the living world. Eagleman describes the callers, who call out the names of those who reach this last death, and they pass through a door never to return again. And all too often, tragically, you are called the moment your loved one joins you — because they were the last one keeping your memory alive.

Imagine those would walk this room…and the weariness of those who remain. Eagleman describes a farmer who fell into a river 200 years ago, who sits there saddened, tired. A college is now built upon the land, and every week a tour guide recounts the morbid tale. He’s stuck….

“The more the story is told, the more the details drift…and that is the curse of this room. Because since we live on in the heads of those who remember us,  we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.” (Jeffrey Tambor narrates the tale)

The dead do live on in the memories of those who remain. But in what form? I suddenly recall Ramses II from world civilizations class, the Egyptian pharaoh who sought to erect grand statues and monuments across the land, seeking ‘immortality’ by never having his name fade into the dusts of the past. What would he be thinking now, waiting in that room?

How long will you wait?

As Mike and I started brainstorming further, we truly began to wonder why.

• The rise of the modern corporation
• The birth of the giant pillars of the banking industry
• Unbridled capitalism reigns as the supreme power in the country
• Barons such as Rockefeller and Carnegie conduct their sprawling industrial empires from smoke filled chamber rooms
• No law so tough it couldn’t be broken and no politician so strong he couldn’t be bought
• Accelerating disparity between the wealthy and the poor
• The corporate empires built upon the backs of poor laborers, who are just beginning to unionize, strike, petition for rights
• Growing immigrant populations — Eastern Europeans in the Northeast, Chinese in the West — start to change the landscape of cities
• Rapid urbanization of the American populace

Couldn’t you imagine this as a six or eight part HBO miniseries? As Mike commented, “Dude, why hasn’t anyone jumped on this yet?” Hey Hollywood — are you listening?

Mark Hopkins, who helps manage social media at Lenovoblogs.com, wrote a post last week about interesting uses for a Thinkpad and invited readers to share their stories. I recalled how Nader’s well traveled X31 was placed just feet from his rocket engine in order to help computer control and monitor the testing firing, and where he used my T40p to serve as a sort of ‘mission control’ to initiate the burn. Mark was kind enough to allow Nader and I to elaborate on this project on the Lenovo Blogs website.

Thanks Mark for the opportunity! Check out the post here.

Jordan: Do you like synth-pop?
Saket: Uh, what do you mean?
Jordan: Listen to this. The Reeling by Passion Pit.
Saket: It’s fine. I don’t know if I’d listen to that everyday.
Jordan: You don’t know good music, mwrah! [in Greg's voice when he mocks Jordan]

So I’m browsing someone’s shared iTunes listing when I come across Passion Pit and think what the heck I’ll just give them another try. After all, Jordan did get me listen to Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens.

And within a few days I had already bought the album. Perhaps you can credit the Sigur Rós to Loney, Dear progression to get me used to falsettos, which feature prominently in Passion Pit’s music, but I find the album to be a near irresistible complement to summertime with its upbeat tone and catchy hooks.

Passion Pit -- To Kingdom Come
The video for this single (see below) would make any geek smile with its Copernican allusions and lab beakers (can’t help it), but even the lyrics are not your usual fare:

Me, I cried out “God”
You dared me in the dark
I felt a hush fall quietly from my spark
so now I hide in piles of princely orange peels
It feels the way you told me how it’d always feel..

And here’s something with a beat you can tap your foot to:

Passion Pit -- Fold In Your Hands

feel it rain
feel it rain
we’re alive!
feel it rain

So now the question: what is a song or album that was recommended to you but you ignored it for a while, then later discovered you actually enjoyed?

As Wall Street smoldered and people everywhere took up populist rage, I aimed to refrain from throwing myself into the pitchfork mob and tried to learn as much as I could about the system. The financial system that has driven America to such astonishing economic prowess bares little resemblance to the type of finance that the vast majority of the public ever engages in.  It is an extraordinarily complex system, and rather than take sides, my position was that of system-wide blame. We as society looked the other way when this financial system let us have our dreams come true, choosing not to ask the fundamental questions that would threaten this wondrous prosperity engine. On Wall Street, for instance, the reality was that if your firm chose not to play long, your potential customers would go next door where they could happily lead on their delusion.

What prompted me to comment about the ’societal’ aspect of this is an interview with Michael Lewis by Terrance McNally. On the subject of Wall Street careers:

Lewis: You get a huge sum of money for doing something is actually socially and economically counter-productive. People made fortunes out of the sub-prime mortgage bond market. That’s insane. So our society has created this very strange economic value system, where really smart people, the leadership class, thinks it’s the done thing to go to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley and get paid three or four million dollars a year — even though you don’t actually add value in any way. Now it’s in the air we breathe.

McNally: In 1970, only about 5% of men graduating from Harvard went into finance. By 1990, 15%. And by class of 2007, 20% of the men and 10% of the woman planned to go into investment banking.

Lewis: This is a radical misallocation of human talent. And it’s caused by a sort of ‘faith in the free market’, in that “whatever the market has generated, it’s ok.”

I was never exposed to this at NC State, but I observed this phenomenon unfold first hand at Stanford. It’s impossible to avoid it — investment banks and hedge funds descend onto campus each fall with flyers all over the engineering and economics departments. They try to out duel each other with well heeled information sessions,  complete with catered warm hor d’oeuvres, beer and wine, pamphlets and stationary printed on expensive feeling stock. One firm — part supercomputer cluster, part biotech, part hedge fund — set up a chocolate fountain complete with fresh fruit and pound bread (full disclosure: it was delicious! They even had gladware for us take extras home!) You hear the chatter among peers, stories of a summer internship on the trading floor and the expensive lifestyles enjoyed in Manhattan. There is never a missed opportunity to emphasize the idea of the elite.  Stanford’s careers website for students even has a special elite track — if you agree to abide by stricter professionalism standards, you gain exclusive access to the top tier investment banks and financial firms.

“This is a radical misallocation of human talent”, Lewis says. I threw my lot in with the entrepreneurs on campus: the changemakers who talked about creating change. Some embarked on the path forged by the Web giants, some sought to create systemic improvements to the world’s disadvantaged, others strove to find ways to have their laboratory research translate to real impact in the world. And yet our societal value system rewards rapid six-figure salaries to those who plug into an investment bank whose sole mission is to earn profit not by creating some product or solution that imparts value, but to earn profit by manipulating money.

With so many real problems facing our society, it often pains me to see so many bright and capable minds go to Wall Street for purpose of making a lot of money. Because when stacked up against the other options — the energy, healthcare, education, environment — what exactly is there on Wall Street that competes except the Benjamins?

So at the end of the night I had a whole pan of baked lasagna and half  a pizza with no more appetite. It’s telling when issues like these are what occupies my mind these days, isn’t it? Heh.

On Wednesday, Michael from across the courtyard threw a well attended barbecue where I got to see friends like Jeff, Justin, and Jessica again.  I got a suggestion from Barbara on Aardvark on how to warm up the lasagna pizzas on the grill, and a freshly baked load of bread with some garlic butter was a hit. Jessica rocked out a blueberry crumble while Michael cooked up some kebabs and freshly made turkey burgers.

On Thursday I headed down to Cupertino for the weekly ultimate frisbee game with the iPod folks, and boy did we run. Played on a 7v7 field with just 4v4, and then yesterday headed up to the Devil’s Canyon Brewery with Lux for their open house night. I might not have mentioned Lux a lot here yet, but he’s become a really good friend of mine this past year. We actually met at a entrepreneurship mixer — Lux had come to Stanford EE after working  few years at LeCroy up in New York City; he had gone to Columbia for undergrad.  Very easy going, with keen insights and cognizance of political and cultural trends, he and I often track on the same wavelength for a lot of things. Two people met up with us at the brewery — one of his friends from Columbia and the friend’s roommate (works at Google and Apple, respectively), and it was a nice night.The open house atmosphere was pretty neat — no class barriers at all.

We could smell the garlic almost a mile away, though slightly. The festival was obviously oriented around garlic food — countless food stands with all kinds of food. There was a heavy arts and crafts presence, as well as music stages.  A huge success was the garlic hats — a beret style hat inspired by a garlic bulb. Krupali and Neha were rocking them out and I just had to join in.

We had: garlic fries, garlic bread, stuffed mushroom caps, and even garlic ice cream. The ice cream was the best — you could choose roasted almond, pistachio, or praline pecan. We each got a different flavor, and at first you taste the sweetness then right at the end you get a hint of the savory garlic. It was delicious! We were hoping to try some garlic wine, but they didn’t have any. Oh well. After spending some time at the amphitheater listening to live music, we headed back to the Bay. Garlic festival was a success.

I headed back to Fremont in the evening to pick up Neha and Krupali, and we headed up into the City for dinner. The microclimates were in full force – in Fremont it was pleasant, low 70s with the sun. By the time we were crossing the Bay Bridge, all we saw was a wall of thick fog. Krupali has parking good luck, and sure enough we scored a spot right in front of Osha Thai on the Embarcadero, by the Ferry Building. What a pretty part of town to be at night!  The Ferry building lit up, the towering palm trees glowing with the Bay Bridge as a background.

After dinner, we headed down to The District, a wine lounge in Soho near the ballpark. Now this is a nice place — relaxing atmosphere and conservation focused. We were joined by Karthik – a friend of Krupali’s she met as part of a core group of bloggers some years ago. Just a really great night in the City.

Oh yeah — here’s another look at the sweet garlic hat, which is now my cooking hat. :)

CutePDF – a free PDF printer that works from any program

Unlike in OS X, PDF publishing sadly is not baked into Windows or Office products. CutePDF is a no-fuss free PDF printer that works just like a normal printer, only it prompts me to save the PDF file when done. First install Ghostscript, then the CutePDF program and you’re all set.

Foxit Reader – hands down best PDF viewer available

While we’re on PDF documents, Adobe Acrobat reader is well known for being sluggish and bloated. I even disliked how they changed the interface options. Enter Foxit Reader – a free alternative that is blazing fast, supports opening PDFs in tabs, and fully featured with highlighting and note taking tools. A must have.

Launchy – quick access to programs, calculator

This is a flashy one. Launchy is a handy program launcher, file explorer, and calculator. Tap a keystroke (alt+space) to bring up launchy, and start typing the program you want to launch. Launchy indexes your start menu and brings up the program — and it learns so soon you just need to type the first few letters. I add my documents location to its indexer and now I can quickly navigate or search for files to open. More handy though is its quick calculator function. I tap alt+space and start typing some math, and it’ll give me the answer.

Photo from Lifehacker

Live Mesh – sync folders between devices, access through web

Gotta hand it to Microsoft for this. Mesh makes it dead simple for me to synchronize folders across my two laptops — without fussing with network or LAN settings. This works through the magical ‘cloud’ of the internet. In addition to syncing files, it offers 5GB of free “Live Desktop” space, so I can login to a website and access any of my folders from any computer. It also includes support for Mac, so keeping files synced across multiple platforms is simple. Mesh also includes a good implementation of Remote Desktop, so I can connect to any of my devices and control them. Dropbox does the folder sync feature as well, but you have to sync with a separate Dropbox folder. Mesh integrates with Windows, so it’s seamless. Big props to Microsoft for this.

TeraCopy – greatly improved copying of files

This is something you wish was baked into every OS. TeraCopy sits quietly behind the scenes, springing to action whenever you start copying files. It speeds up copying, has better overwrite/ignore rules, and has resume features. One of the first things I install when starting from a fresh Windows install.

Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager – four virtual desktops done right

Laptop screens can start feeling a bit small when you have a lot of programs open. Virtual desktops create multiple instances of your desktop, but Microsoft’s own tools for this often stumbles when programs run multiple instances. For instance — say you want to keep your mail client maximized on one desktop, and two Firefox windows in two other deskstops. This virtual desktop manager works like a charm, is fast, and does what I need. Just set hotkeys to switch between desktops, and it can really help create some breathing room on a laptop.

TreeSize – hunt down what is filling up your hard drive

TreeSize is a free utility that helps you determine where all your hard drive space went. I guess with 500GB hard drives shipping standard these days, it’s not as big of a deal but still handy for laptop folks.

ImgBurn -free, simple DVD/CD burning with ISO support

ImgBurn makes it easy to burn ISO files to discs, create ISOs from discs, as well as to burn files to CDs like normal. Free, and I haven’t had any problems with it.

PDF Split and Merge — exactly what it sounds like, for free.

Couldn’t help it, one last PDF one. PDF Split and Merge is a free utility that lets you easily combine PDF documents into a single PDF. Handy for compiling class notes or lecture slides.

That’s all I can think of now. Other programs I prefer using are Firefox (web browsing), Postbox (desktop e-mail client), Trillian (instant messenging), Picasa (photos), FileZilla (FTP client), iTunes (music), VLC (video player), WinRAR (file unzip/zipping), Flickr Uploader (photos), and Notepad2 (text editing).

Arc de Triomphe, using photos from my family’s European travels.

Swedish flag on boat to Ven, taken using photos from my European travels.

Naman on the beach by Route 1, southern California, using photos from the 2007 roadtrip.

Eiffel Tower panorama with Sapana in front, using photos from my family’s European travels.

Main Cathedral in Lund, using photos from my European travels.

The gardens behind the Schonborn Palace near Vienna, using photos from our European travels.

The Hoover Tower and Green Library at Stanford University, drawing from a database containing every single photo and image on my harddrive (28,700+).

Note that these photos do not necessarily include all photos in the database, although that is an option you can specify. I’m liking the results so far, I’ll continue exploring this tool.

Lafayette, a wealthy nobleman inspired by the independence movement in the Colonies, left his native France at the age of 19 to enlist in the ragtag army commanded by General George Washington, who would later consider Lafayette the son he never had. Dashing and courageous, Lafayette was adored by his men and was a trusted right hand man to Washington during the war. He was instrumental in bolstering French support for the colonials, and after the war returned to France with hopes of a democratic revolution in France. Instead, he witnessed the Reign of Terror and was imprisoned for five years when he tried to escape to America.

As Vowell describes, 80,000 people came out to greet Lafayette in New York’s harbor when he returned in 1824 (note: the population of New York at the time was 120,000). He was feted everywhere he went, with public parks, squares, roads, and cities named in his honor (Fayetteville, NC). Vowell writes about this visit in the context of the growing political unrest that would ultimately lead the Civil War:  “…Lafayette, belonging to neither North nor South, to no political party or faction, was a walking talking reminder of the sacrifices and bravery of the revolutionary generation and what they wanted this country to be. His return was not just a reunion with his beloved Americans, it was a reunion with Americans with their astonishing singular past.”

During the visit, Henry Clay toasted him calling him an ‘Apostle of Liberty’, and in response Lafayette said “To the perpetual union of the United States, it has always served us in times of storm — one day, it will save the world.”

He was the first honorary citizen of the United States, and when he died in 1834 President Andrew Jackson ordered the same funeral honors for Lafayette that was accorded to John Adams and George Washington. The people of America were asked to wear black for thirty days. When Americans returned Lafayette’s favor by helping to liberate French soil in World War I, Vowell says “General Pershing marched his troops to [Lafayette's] Paris grave, where the old soldier had been buried under soil from Bunker Hill. They placed an American flag into that American dirt. “Lafayette,” one of them said, “we are here.”

Vowell’s voice breaks as she says those last words, and I feel goosebumps up my arms. So on this Bastille Day, I choose not to celebrate the act that set in motion a period of turmoil for France, but to a Frenchman who was one of the greatest friends this country of ours has ever had.

Why the pensive mood? After the credits stopped rolling and I left the theater, I thought: there are over 140,000 American soldiers in Iraq, but when is the last time there has been a real story on any one of those men and woman over there? Have I been neglecting it? Sure, we read about the change in strategies, the pulling back from the cities, the surge of troops into Afghanistan, but where are the human stories? Yes we have a lot of domestic news to cover, but do we really need yet another segment on Michael Jackson or the Twitterevolution? These men and women will be returning home over the next five years to their families — what are we going to say to them when they return?

The film has a scene where the lead character is asked to pick up cereal at the store and finds himself staring the down the long rows with dozens of brightly colored cereal brands. His eyes are hollow, and you can feel himself silently asking “Why?” As I think about it now, it brings to mind the segment below, where comedian Lewis C.K observes that the world is amazing right now and yet nobody is happy.

How much of the world that we interact with daily is merely a mask on the real world that lies beyond? How many of these masks in front of us — the LCD screens, the brightly colored cardboard boxes, the high fructose corn syrup — are really needed by us to live the lives we wish to lead?

The recipe calls for artichoke hearts and green beans, but I didn’t have artichoke hearts so I used some broccoli florets. Fettuccine was substituted for linguine

3 large egg yolks
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup whipping cream
12 oz frozen artichoke hearts
8 z green beans, cut to 2 inch pieces
12 oz linguine
3/4 freshly grated Parmesan cheese (use fresh!)
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

Place yolks in medium bowl and gradually whisk in lemon juice and whipping cream. Boil pot with salted water and cook the vegetables in them for ~5 minutes. Remove vegetables while leaving water in pot, and once back to boil cook pasta. Put the vegetables into  a skillet. Once paste is cooked al dente, strain but retain 1/2 cup of the liquid. Whisk 3/4 cup of the liquid into yolk mixture, then add the yolk mixture + parmesan cheese + parsley to the skillet. Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens up, about 4 minutes (tongs were easier to fold pasta). Season with salt + pepper and grate some more parmesan after plating.

I recently spent a wonderful Saturday in the City — coffee in the morning with Rebeca to talk about the California cleantech open, then lunch with my high school friend Dale (who is finally out of the military; he became a Navy corpsman), then the rest of the day with my friends Melih and Micky. I was describing to Micky (who works at Tokbox with Melih) about the various greentech related things I had been up to, and mentioned meeting Gary with Lunera Lighting. I was introduced to Gary through my friend Ben (they are colleagues at The Westly Group, a cleantech VC firm), and I met Ben through friends Naman and Andrew (by the way, turns out that Ben knew of Donny through the Fulbright application process). I mentioned Gary to Micky because I knew he had led sustainability efforts while at eBay, and she had worked at eBay too. It was a longshot connection with eBay being such a large company, but sure enough Micky’s eyes lit up at the mention. She indeed had worked with Gary on a project and spoke very highly of him. Small world!

As I look for opportunities in greentech, Johnson Controls pops up as a major player in building energy management systems. I decided to search Facebook and LinkedIn to see if anyone I could reach worked with them before. I came across Bryan, a graduate student at Stanford, who worked in Johnson Control’s automotive department for some years. We traded Facebook messages a few days ago, and he had mentioned that he was leaving for Africa soon. This afternoon, I heard from my friend Evan that student teams in the Design for Extreme Affordability class were giving pitches for summer extension projects. On a whim, I attended the pitch event and spotted a presenter named Bryan — who is working on a solar concentrator + pv solution for charging cell phone batteries and is traveling to Africa for market research and need finding. Same person, what a nice coincidence! We met in person and I shared some VPO (village phone operator) resources that I’ve found via the FrontlineSMS:Medic project. Another project I saw was the Pepper Eater – a device which processes dried chili peppers thus making the creation of a value-add project easier. This of course reminded me of the Universal Nut Sheller project, which my close friend Joel worked on at UNC to great success in the Carolina Challenge, and I hope to put them in touch. Small world!

Also tonight, my good friend Brent invited me to drinks with Jason, a recent Triangle area transplant (NC State master’s student in engineering and business) who along with colleagues at Duke has started Quantios, a venture that brings predictive modeling and analytics to the college application process. They competed in the Triangle area business plan competitions and got enough traction to find incubator space on Sand Hill Rd. I love how he and his team is bringing some innovation to a sector desperately in need of new ideas. We had a great discussion at Rosewood, an upscale resort club just a stone’s throw from the incubator office’s with a sunset view of the Foothills.  Jason checked me out on the internets beforehand and spotted the EEP polo I wearing, and when I mentioned the Apple internship he asked: “Do you know Jordan Price?” Startled, I replied “Absolutely!” Turned out that he and Jordan worked together at Sony Ericsson, where both had done co-ops. Commented that Jordan had a real witty sense of humor, which I can wholeheartedly attest to. An advisor to Quantios is Jason Massey, a fellow North Carolinian, Wolfpacker, and recent Bay Area VC  who is a good friend of Brent who I believe connected him to the Quantios folks. I met Jason through the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program and got to know him more as he helped out with the Social E-Challenge. Small world!

And to complete the circle, remember Rebeca whom I had coffee with at the beginning of this long and winding post? She was the former leader of the BASES Social E-Challenge and is a good friend of Jason Massey, whom she met through Gary Palin, then a professor at NC State who was a judge for the Social E-Challenge. Small world!

While there is still so much more out here to explore and learn, part of me feels this place becoming a bit smaller –but in a good way. But it drives home lessons that I only truly started to learn in grad school — build your network. Be open minded. Explore your interests. Share ideas. Help others if you can. Think outside yourself. It takes some thought and some work, but be mindful of opportunities when they arise. As is true in life, you never know where a path might lead.

Great success!

It’s a no knead bread from this recipe here: Five Minutes a Day for Fresh Baked Bread. Mine actually has some hints of sourdough, which could either mean something is weird with my water or the insides aren’t cooking through. Nonetheless, I’m quite pleased with the results and look forward to experimenting more with it. Very simple to make — just flour, salt, yeast, water, and time.

So yesterday evening I went down to join the iPod/Apple group for their weekly ultimate frisbee game at a nearby school field in Cupertino. Felt great to see and play with everyone again. After being away from it for a year, it’s just so remarkable to me the camaraderie the group has, particularly in the intern crop (I’ve now seen two years worth). They have so much fun together it’s almost not right.

John, a fellow intern from NC State who started in January, made a salient observation: one trait that is present amongst practically everyone on the team (I can speak from from interns up to director level, at least) is the ability to rapidly shift from play to work, instantly. This is particularly true of the full time folks, who have much more responsibility than the interns. But you can immediate sense it in the tone of their voice, a facial expression, or the way they walk over to your bench — you know when to keep it straight and get down to business. I’m having a hard time describing this, but the end result is a team that can have a great deal of levity and fun while still getting a lot of work done.

In other news, my roommate Charles left for Beirut on Wednesday. It was a mad dash to the airport but he made it with literally minutes to spare. It’s SFO to Dubai, then to Beirut I think. He had been up working insane hours finishing up an interesting paper on Hizballah’s actions towards the US in the Lebanese Civil War and beyond. I read a draft to help with some of the reviewing. On top of that, Charles and his good friend Valerie found a condo just off campus that they will stay in next year, and Charles has been arranging for someone to sublet it for the summer (Valerie is in the West Bank this summer…those IPS folks sure know how to travel). While Gene is in NY for most of the summer, I’ve got a new roommate taking his room. Yao did his undergrad in EE here at Stanford but will be going to UC Davis for medical school. He’s working in a cancer research lab this summer. Yao is awesome — we’ve had so many great conservations in the evenings. Just tonight we talked about cancer treatments, film, LOTR trilogy, Dune (! he has read it!), the Dune movie, NPR, and the healthcare reform crisis. He also likes to cook  and wants to learn some Indian food — a banana bread showdown is already on the calendar.

On Tuesday the four of us left for Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is the extraordinarily popular destination out here, located 4 to 5 hours from the Bay Area and on the border with Nevada.

Indeed, the state border runs right through the lake, so giant casinos and resort hotels are perched quite literally right on the border. If you are like my family,  Its the sort of border you stare at with a tinge of disappointment; a blight upon this pristine reserve. Lake Tahoe is a major winter destination for Stanford students, as nearly every undergraduate dorm organizes ski trips to Heavenly, the big ski resort in South Lake Tahoe. Yes, Stanford dollars are used to have students hit the slopes.

Being the lame studious pupil I am, I never made it out during the winter, but I didn’t feel I missed much because one doesn’t develop a baked in affinity for skiing when growing up in Austin, TX.

Anyway, we were quite excited. We stayed in South Lake Tahoe at a nice little hotel run by, you might have guessed, a nice Gujarati family. Yeah, that’s how we roll. It was cloudy and threatening to rain that day, but we trekked up part of Eagle Falls before returning to town for some pizza.

Why bother with the chain pizza places on the Nevada side when you’ve got the charming — and delicious — Lake Tahoe Pizza Company right next door? Some of the best pizza I’ve had in California.

The next morning we headed up through the state parks that line Lake Tahoe for the Cascade Falls hike. What’s interesting is that unlike Yosemite just to the south run by the National Parks Service, a jumble of state and federal agencies have jurisdiction over the variety of trails, parks, and preserves surrounding the lake. The hike was perfect for the whole group — great views, relatively short, varied landscape, and a wonderfully diverse trail end where the water forms an active rapids area before plunging over the side of the mountain.

this is the best photo of the trip — kudos to Sapana for taking it*

Next we walked down to Vikingsholm, an authentic Scandinavian castle/villa in the picturesque Emerald Bay. It’s supposedly one of the finest examples of this architecture in North America.

We somehow brought along enough food to survive for two weeks, so we had lunch back at the hotel. A lot of fresh fruit. I think the plums were conspiring against us, because it promptly knocked me out for 2 hours. Weird. Nonetheless, we ventured back for a short hike at Rubicon Point (where the deepest part of the lake is) then watched the sunset. Dinner that evening was at a unassuming Thai place just across from the hotel — where once again the food was excellent. So many vegetarian options that we were stumped (for once) what to order.

We headed out the next day and made it back to Palo Alto in surprisingly good time.  Finally good to have real internet. That evening we had our fill at the ever reliable Chaat Paradise in Mountain View, then the three of us caught a late night showing of Star Trek — what a terrific film. I was always more of a Star Wars guy growing up, but seeing this reboot of the Star Trek franchise was a delight.

*another great photo Sapana happened to take was of the American flag at Red Rocks Canyon outside Las Vegas.

Q: Do you have any foreign language songs you like to listen to? If so, what are some examples?

I often listened to Hindi Bollywood songs while growing up and visiting India, and some were quite catchy despite me not understanding what they were saying. But here’s one that my good friend Chris pointed me to as we shared ideas of fun, upbeat songs.

Yelle – Ce Jeu

Anyone understand French? I don’t. Come to think of it, this is probably the only French song I’ve ever had in my collection. I’m not sure if this is characteristic of most French music or whether its because I have not heard a lot of French, but the seemingly precise enunciation of the words in Ce Jeu is rather appealing to me.

Jonathan is a circuits ‘blood brother’ of mine — we stuck all the way through 214, 314, and 414 together. A fellow Texan (from El Paso), he also worked at Apple last summer though in the iPhone group. He’s heading to UC San Diego to continue his PhD and move more into bio.

Morris was among the first EE grad students I met — a senior leader in Nader’s VLF group. Morris got his PhD and through his researched traveled all over the world, including Alaska, Antarcita, Tunisia, tiny islands in the South Pacific, southeast Asia, Greenland, Russia, you name it. He hosted a well received Planet Earth viewing party series…on a HD projector no less.

Rafe and I shared one class, the energy efficiency in buildings one. We worked together on the final project building the model home. Along with an tremendous easy going personality, Rafe also DJ’ed the Stanford radio station and I was always amazed at the breadth of his indie/alternative music collection when he brought out his iPhone to play music during our model building sessions. Jordan has nothing on him.

Kevin was with us for Spring quarter Hindi and was a delight to have in class and for our projects. He was a champ for our last video, bringing real acting chops and musical talent to our film. Kevin did his undergrad at Berkeley, and just got his Master’s in Aero Astro. I think he’ll be starting at JPL this summer.

Mozzi (left) and I took a MEMS class together and we earned a Best Project Award in it. With his B.S. and M.S. in EE from Stanford, he’ll be headed to UC San Francisco for his MD/PhD. He’s specializing in biomedical implants. Neil (right) and I met at a going away dinner in PA for Sunish, an iPod intern last summer. Neil had gone to the same school at Sunish for undergrad, and was doing his Master’s in EE at Stanford. Very quickly we realized we had a lot of similar interests. Neil was doing research mostly under a MS&E professor. We ran into each other recently at Old Pro, where he gamefully joined us (me, Greg, Kelly, Brent) for game 7 of the Hurricanes vs his beloved Bruins.

Me with Paul. Paul and I shared entrepreneurial finance together, and sat across from the table during the negotiation exercise for that class. Paul got his Master’s in Management Science and Engineering while working at Agilent, his background is in EE. We hit it off pretty well (share the same kind of temperament), and even ran into each at a career fair where we spoke to the 42U company for nearly an hour. Really great guy.

Karla and Michael. I was walking back from work one day last summer when I ran into Michael in the courtyard outside. I thought “wait, why do I recognize him…oh yeah, he was at the intern lunch for the iPod group.” Indeed, he was interning in the same building in iPod SW. That encounter built over the past year into a good friendship. Michael did his undergrad here in EE but his Master’s in Computer Science. I’ve had wonderful meandering conversations with Michael, and we share interests in data visualization, networks, and even social change. Turns out he lives right across from me in the famous 208 building. Karla is Michael’s girlfriend and she just got her Master’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

At the EE commencement now, with Kamal. Circuits blood brother too — we went through 214, 314, and 414 together. Kamal is the real deal though — he gained a strong reputation as a great TA for many circuits classes, and he served as President of the Hindu Students Council. A real class act too — when I introduced him to my mom, he promptly bent down to touch her feet in respect, as is the proper Hindu greeting. He was paired with the ever-ready-to-laugh Andy in the 414 lab, and we shared many good times there.

My good friend Bikiran, a fellow circuits blood brother too who was with me through 214, 314, and 414. We also took an embedded systems class and were project partners. So many long hours working on our programs. Bikiran is a unique case — born in Maryland but grew up in India, and is someone that you can have all sorts of discussions with, be it politics, sports, international affairs, etc. We had many meaningful discussions about India as well. He’s up in Cambridge, MA with Analog Devices now.

Chris and I were classmates in corporate finance and Chris invited me to join his homework group. We worked well together, then discovered a deep mutual interest in football and sports during our review for the final exam. Chris took the awesome sports management and marketing sequence through the business schoool. He did EE for his undergrad in Colorado and was working at Boeing in socal before coming up to Stanford to do a Master’s in management science and engineering. Our view of the world and values are very much in line, and this crosses over into music as well, as we have swapped many songs and artists. A really strong, great friend to have.

These are just a few of the friends I’ll leave here with.

And of course….

Me and Mom. What to say? Longwinded as I am, I can’t think of anything to write here that would do justice to her love, support, and encouragement.

Headed to Tahoe for the next few days.