http://www.saketvora.com there's always a siren, steering you to shipwreck... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:06:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en On last Monday night I headed up with a bunch of friends to see Fanfarlo in concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. I wrote about this wonderful band earlier, and if you haven't checked them out yet I encourage you to do so -- got all ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/03/05/fanfarlo-the-great-american-music-hall/ Here's one that I should have added a while ago -- my friend Melih's blog. He redesigned it a while back (it looks terrific) and its regularly updated. Don't let its visage betray the sincerity and honesty of Melih's writing though - he's a lot more daring than I.  Having ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/23/blogroll-addition-melihs-thoughts/ .....that is kinda nice. So after driving a rental car (Chevy HHR) for a couple weeks, I had to just go and check a new car. My head said to go get a Japanese car (hey what can I say, I'm from an Indian family) but my heart was keen ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/21/my-new-ride/ What a simply delightful sound! Jónsi, the lead singer of Sigur Rós, is coming out with a solo effort and here's the first single, "Go Do." And he's singing in English! This music makes me happy. Go sing too loud Make your voice break - Sing it out Go scream do shout Make an earthquake... You ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/18/go-do/ A while back, I posed a question about what songs you like that have a characteristic of something that suddenly appears in the song but somehow completes it -- an unexpected but welcomed element. I wrote then about the song Fake Empire by The National: What I love about this song ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/18/hey-im-not-the-only-one/ Super Bowl Sunday turned out to be not just a shining day for the Saints, but for the Bay Area too. After weeks of rainy days, the sun came out and warmed the bay up. I went up to the City for the day, first to visit Alcatraz with Nishu ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/17/alcatraz-the-super-bowl/ New music on the street! Joseph recommended their new album Odd Blood to me on Monday, and I just bought it that night off Amazon for $4. I had never heard of Yeasayer before, but I had a lot of fun exploring this album. It's kinda like you if you ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/13/yeasayer/ Last weekend Troy suggested we head up to Point Reyes National Seashore, a park area north of the Bay Area near Stinson Beach. Though our group's numbers started to fall precipitously the days leading up to it, I wanted to go no matter what -- I was feeling a strong ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/08/point-reyes-national-seashore/ 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/07/blogroll-addition-backspace-prologue/ The view from my hotel room window: 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. ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/07/my-trip/ In the aftermath of my car crash incident, Nader took an opportunity to dramatize it by way of intertwining its events with an on-going narrative of him delivering the $125 he owes to our friend (and my colleague) Chrissy for booking the ski lodge the weekend before. He gave me ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/06/my-car-crash-a-novella/ Honestly, it's just been a tiring few weeks. After getting back from China, I kept crashing between 5 and 6pm everyday (right during key meetings), which didn't use to happen before. Jet lag maybe? I've been dealing with the totaled car and insurance company information on the side, and being ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/02/06/now-back-to-your-regularly-scheduled-programming/ Yesterday wasn't your typical sunshine and clear skies day in the Bay. It was raining hard and visibility poor, and on my way southbound on I-280 to work all of us were going 5 to 10 mph below the speed limit. About a mile from my exit, while in the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/19/a-bad-case-of-the-mondays/ 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/13/skiing-at-squaw-valley/ 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 :) http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/08/weekend-in-tahoe/ As we were getting ready to graduate from NC State, a classmate and close friend of mine (from out of state) pronounced "I will never come back to Raleigh." Flash forward nearly three years later, and now it's "I love Raleigh." A remarkable difference, to be sure. Raleigh -- the "City ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/04/the-new-city-of-oaks/ Two years ago, I wrote a month-by-month recap of 2007, but so much happened that year it felt appropriate. While 2009 witnessed an important milestone for me, I'll take a more casual approach. Upon returning from winter break, the realization that my time at Stanford was just six months away truly ... http://www.saketvora.com/2010/01/01/year-in-review-2009/ Avatar is making it's way through the country, and a number of you have already seen experienced it. As a film enthusiastic who is fascinated with the creation process, I thought I'd add a few of my thoughts to a much-hyped film that has already seen many yards of newsprint. ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/31/avatar/ Eat, drink, and be merry! http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/30/update-pictures-from-the-two-five/ Just had an amazing night in downtown Raleigh with some of my closest friends to celebrate the birthday. I feel like i'm the luckiest guy in the world to call these people my friends. I love them all. To all those I didn't see tonight, you know who you are ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/29/the-two-five/ While skimming through some "top N" lists of favorite music of 2009, I saw a band called Fanfarlo pop up a few times and the description of their music was enough to warrant a listen. I used Lala and its 25 free credits for new users to check out their ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/27/fanfarlo/ Recently, my colleagues Dan and Dave went on a weekend snowboarding trip to the Kirkwood mountain resort in Lake Tahoe. They brought along some of the new iPod nanos, and used the video cameras in them to record some of their runs down the slopes. The nanos are small enough ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/27/snowboarding-with-nanos/ After a final dash at work to winter break, I was on my way home to North Carolina for the holidays. Figuring I didn't have to be home for Christmas morning, I decided to fly out the 25th morning. Started the day at 4:30am because I had to take a ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/27/home-for-winter-break/ Back on Thanksgiving day, I found an article exploring NPR listener's best music picks of 2009 at the year's halfway point. I recognized several names on the list and laughed a little, remarking to Michael, Karla, and Troy how we sorta fit right into the NPR demographic. They saw the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/20/two-songs-for-the-stretch/ In a marked departure from the past many weeks, not a sound of ping pong was heard at our yellow house in the Alameda. Yeah, it's been that kind of week. Troy is working his poor fingers raw pounding out chapters to his book (deadline: Sunday night), and Michael has ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/12/a-week-without-ping-pong/ This past Saturday, Melih and Matt came over to Palo Alto. We met at the Stanford driving range, where Melih was to show off the tricks he learned during his golf lessons at Harding Park (what a nice present by Micky). I really needed to brush off the cobwebs a ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/09/gameday-saturday-sf-sunday/ I got an email from Chrissy earlier this week inviting me to a small gig that a band she knows (ie, she knows the lead singer as a friend-of-a-friend) would be playing at Stanford on Friday. I had never heard of the band before -- Shaimus -- but they would ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/05/shaimus-at-stanford/ Saw an intriguing Mark Bittman article in the New York Times last weekend about risotto style pasta with types other than orzo. The idea is to cook the pasta in a skillet slowly, in small amounts of liquid until it's ready, versus straight up boiling the pasta al dente in ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/02/slow-cooked-penne-with-mushrooms/ Over last weekend Mike showed me an insanely addictive interactive music tool called the ToneMatrix. While it isn't hot off the press, it was the first time I had seen it and immediately loved what I saw. I have no real innate musical talent, so tools where I can put ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/12/01/building-a-beat/ Last night, I went up to the City with the Nicks, Steve and Egle, and Sarah to see the Books, by far the most experimental musical artist I've seen. Nick has been following the Books for years now, and it turns out that he and Sarah were actually at the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/29/the-books-in-concert/ I had zero plans for Black Friday. I awoke to see a text from my good friend Peyton, asking "are you still in the Bay Area?" I replied that I was still living near Stanford. I was delighted to discover that Peyton was actually in town -- he and his ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/28/peyton-in-san-francisco/ I got a great album recommendation by Sara, one of our group's interns: It's Blitz by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This came out in late March but didn't really come onto my radar until now. The album has variety -- rock with an intensity similar to Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/27/sounds-and-sights/ Had a truly lovely evening with Michael's family and his family's friends. Got to also meet Karla's uncle and aunt who live in Los Altos out here beforehand too. Plenty of great food, plus almost same amount of delicious desserts. Michael and Karla's butternut squash lasagna with basil cream sauce ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/27/thanksgiving-part-deux/ I'm spending this Thanksgiving out in California. The family will have to delay reunion plans until winter break; Sachi is visiting Sapana in Chicago and Mom and Dad are at home in NC. My housemate Mike graciously invited Troy and I to the  Thanksgiving dinner that his family and their neighborhoods ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/26/thanksgiving/ I can still see the moment in my mind where it all ended. It's crystal clear. The risky throw over the middle, the white jersey grabbing it out of the air. The sudden silence of the crowd. My head in my hands. This past Saturday was the Big Game -- Stanford ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/25/shellshocked-at-the-big-game/ 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/25/apartment-hunting/ Many of my close friends, if not all, have a burning curiosity for the world that truly comes from within. Indeed, that is why I love being their friend. And I like to see such a trait in other people and stories. Radiolab brings a short but sweet (adorable!) story ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/18/telling-stories-that-move-you/ What a glorious day! Woke up early and over coffee whipped up a five avocado bowl of guacamole while watching part of the Georgia Tech vs Duke game with Troy. By 11am, I was over at Stanford picking up Nader, Amit, and Catherine (my TA for EE 414) and we ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/15/smashing-good-saturday/ There has been some semblance of routine now in my life. Get to work between 9:30am and 10am, leave work around 9pm. On weekends I run errands, see friends, or head into the City. But this isn't really doing much for physical activity. At least while on Stanford I was ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/12/winter-training/ It was a long but good week. Scheduled my first meeting for a preliminary review of something I'm working on, so there were a couple of late late nights because I wanted to do a good job for it. It went well, though I got some flak for scheduling it ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/07/peer-review-and-a-new-lens-on-analog/ This past Friday was Larry Heyl's last day at Apple. Larry's one of the veteran engineers in our group. I never had the chance of working closely with Larry, but it was clear the stature he had in our team. He, Doug, and Wendell were our brain trust -- three ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/11/01/larrys-send-off/ Set against the backdrop of some stunningly beautiful fall weather -- the warm sun, cool breeze, the tips of leaves turning colors -- this weekend would have been made perfect if I took a leisurely stroll in a new open space preserve or the Big Dish hike. After catching some morning ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/26/a-most-satisfying-weekend/ If you have ever worked with me in a group where document collaboration is important, you know that I keep a close eye on filenames. Maintaining good, descriptive file names that can work well in any environment (don't use spaces, use underscores!) isn't hard to do and can save a ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/25/photo-import-fail/ My friend Mike Hsu, a fellow Raleigh-ite (insert requisite shout out to Enloe HS!) who graduated with me from Stanford and is now working at a startup in San Francisco, recently tweeted a very poignant question: “What's your most radical belief?” My friends know that I can be rather loquacious, but it’s ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/23/a-poignant-question/ I remember back in the mid-to-late 1990s, IBM ran a marketing campaign based around the motto “Solutions for a Small Planet.” It was timely because the rapid expansion of the Internet was truly accelerating the shrinking of the world from a business and market opportunity sense, and it seemed to ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/21/a-smarter-marketing-campaign/ This past weekend I was back home in North Carolina for the Indian New Year, Diwali. It was a special family re-union, with Sapana coming in from Chicago and Sachi down from Charleston, because our grandmother Ba was visiting from India. Diwali is known as the ‘Festival of Lights’ because ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/20/diwali-weekend/ Last Friday, Apple held a party to celebrate the iPod/iTunes launch, even though it took place a month ago. As Rishabh and I approached the first beer station, I saw Spatan and Weihenstephaner on tap. After spotting Bitburger and Marzen it was easy to see the Oktoberfest theme. Inside Caffe ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/12/apple-oktoberfest/ Being so far from home is hard sometimes. It's easy, isn't it, to become so pre-occupied on what is going in our own personal lives -- the here and now -- that we forget there are loved ones still carrying on without us. I don't think I fully acknowledge the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/10/a-song-for-our-mothers/ On Saturday, it looks like I'll be spending the day up at the Harding Park golf course in Daly City for the President's Cup, a PGA event which features a team of top American golfers take on a team of top golfers from the rest of the world. This is ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/09/presidents-cup-2009/ After coming back from our weekly iPod ultimate game, I found Dan in the lab with a new piece of datalogging software. There was one large square button flashing red on the screen. Me: "What's that master alarm there?" Dan: "Well, it's not a main bus B undervolt." I love my colleagues here. http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/08/geekdom/ Once again, NPR has proved to be one of the greatest things ever. I spent much of the weekend enjoying several free concert podcasts published by NPR's All Song's Considered. Joseph, Dan and I were discussing the lineup for the weekend's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert -- a huge free weekend ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/07/question-of-the-week-11/ One thing I discovered a while back in Word is that you aren't restricted to using just one page size and orientation in your Word doc. Say, for instance, that you have a chart or table that would look a lot better in landscape mode, but you certainly don't want ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/06/tech-post-different-page-sizes-inside-one-word-doc/ Right on cue, fall has arrived in the Bay Area. It was like flipping a switch -- almost immediately the tone switched from summer to fall. And with fall, we enter a new season of food! I spotted a fall-themed potato salad recipe on Mark Bitten's The Minimalist column in the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/04/weekend-cooking-gameday-edition/ The following has been expanded upon and developed from an IM conversation. 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/10/01/________-do-you-want-to-be-in-5-years/ The QotW is making an appearance again. Not sure why this question popped into my head today, but I've got my own answer to it so here goes: 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. ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/30/question-of-the-week-10/ Last Friday I left work a few hours early (ie, 5:30pm) to catch the Caltrain up to the City. My friend Krupali was in town for a cancer conference and we were going to see the San Francisco Giants host the Chicago Cubs at AT&T park. It was my first ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/29/sf-giants-baseball-game-with-krupali/ NBC and the NFL tried out an exciting new feature to complement their well produced broadcast of Football Night in America, the Sunday night prime-time football game. ESPN has been pioneering online video feeds of college football games on its ESPN360 service, sometime I've been using religiously these past few ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/28/online-advertising-fail-by-two-of-the-biggest-brands/ My friend Melih and I have been discussing this year's college football action on TokBox. Here's my week 4 review. Join in on the conversation on TokBox! Would love to hear your thoughts. http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/27/college-football-week-4-review/ Finished up first two weeks. It feels great to be back, but frustrating to be in the 'bring up' phase where I don't feel like I'm adding as much value as I could, or feel that I should. Came down feeling pretty ill yesterday, did some (involuntarily) fasting since then. Not ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/18/two-weeks-down/ With fall concert season, maybe I'll have more questions to ask. Do you have any questions you'd like to post? Let me know! 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/15/question-of-the-week-9/ 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... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/14/yeah-i-finally-went-and-did-it/ I'm very fortunate to have Joseph as my manager and mentor because he is deeply interested in finding ways of continually increasing the effectiveness of his team --  whether it's about working better together, on optimizing processes, or allocating resources. He has four to five direct reports, plus three or ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/14/the-non-progress-report/ A few other changes: 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/13/homelife-updatesivemo/ Here's an announcement I meant to post earlier this week:  I've accepted a job offer with the iPod hardware team at Apple. It's the same group that I worked with last summer, and here's how it happened: since graduating in June, I had been aggressively seeking out opportunities in the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/12/apple/ In the morning Dad and I headed to Dr. Walsh's house in Cary. He invited us over and we got to see all the amazing remodeling work he's been working on for months and then chatted about the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, the current environment at NC State, what Dad and ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/12/the-football-game-the-frisbee-game/ Last week, I made a trip back to NC State to visit friends, see mentors, and check out some of the new construction around campus. I met Kelly for lunch at a new mediterranean restaurant (across from Marrakesh), and scoped out all the new construction along Hillsborough St. After years ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/11/last-weeks-visit-to-nc-state/ My North Carolina visit comes to a close, and I'm heading back to the Bay today. It's been a long time since I've done so much and spent time with so many people I cherish in just a week. I'll be writing en route, and will be posting more in ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/06/back-to-the-bay/ I have the best friends in the world. http://www.saketvora.com/2009/09/03/nc-visit-so-far/ My on campus apartment in Rains ends on September 1st, but I'll be taking a redeye flight from SFO tonight to visit my family and friends back in North Carolina for next week. I'll be moving today to a house nearby in Menlo Park (near the Dutch Goose) to live ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/29/last-days-on-campus-nc-visit/ As anyone who has visited Stanford will attest, the campus is pretty large. And fortunately it's pretty flat, so everyone gets around on bikes. Most of my classes were in the engineering area, which is just over a mile from my apartment (located in the southeast corner of campus). Part ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/27/a-sliver-of-my-stanford-experience/ The nation is mourning over the loss of Senator Ted Kennedy, and I too feel greatly saddened by his passing. As I read about his life in the papers and on the television, and watch the speeches he made to his Senate colleagues and to the nation as a whole, ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/26/end-of-an-era/ I'm now volunteering with the Park Alumni Society (PAS) with their fundraising committee, and I recently spent some time uploading and tagging photos from the class of 2007's senior retreat to Rocky Mountain National Park into the Park program's photo gallery. This little trip through old photo albums brought back ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/21/from-the-archives/ It's been quite a summer so far for FrontlineSMS:Medic! There are five colleagues now in the field overseeing deployments -- Josh, Lucky, and Isaac in Malawi with VillageReach, Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI), and St. Gabriel's Hospital; Nadim in Bangladesh with the Smiling Sunshine Franchise Program; and Nicholas in Rwanda for ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/15/frontlinesmsmedic-summer-update/ On Wednesday Ricky and I finally caught up with Brian and Chris over dinner on University Avenue. Ricky has been involved with BASES forever, and as he enters his senior year at Stanford he's a Co-President of BASES with big plans for the year. I met Brian - a rising ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/14/the-real-deal-from-calpoly/ A common question I hear people ask is, "why would electric utilities support conservation programs? If people use less electricity, then utilities earn less money!" Strictly, this is true if a utility's profits are tied to sales. However, electric utilities are overseen by public utilities commissions, who help set regulations ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/13/why-conservation-matters-for-utilities/ Last night a group of us went to the Aquarius (a small two-screen indie theater) in downtown Palo Alto to see In the Loop. I was intrigued by a NYTimes review and was pleased to see it grab favorable reviews 95 to 7 at Rotten Tomatoes. And man, you don't see ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/12/in-the-loop/ "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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/11/choosing-mars/ After a hazy early AM of working on my RTI paper interspersed with short naps, I got down to the farmer's market; it'd been way too long. I was placing my order of a verde tamale and memelas at the authentic Mexican kitchen when I hear a voice "you don't ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/09/a-good-pregame-for-the-week/ Been a strange past few days for me; haven't been able to fall asleep until 6am lately. Not sure what's causing it either, for I've started exercising more, I'm eating fairly healthily, etc. So here I am at 2:30am tapping away at a paper for an RTI project. Going to ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/09/unwelcomed-phase-shift/ Henry Waxman (D-CA) appeared on a great episode of the  The Daily Show last night, where Jon Stewart brought up the two major bills that Waxman has worked on in these past few months -- H.R. 2454 (the energy bill) and H.R. 3200 (the health care reform bill). Waxman is ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/05/what-really-is-a-1000-page-bill/ 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/05/sapanabear-phd-candidate/ I've spoken with much love about Radiolab and their latest episode turns its eye to the after life. What happens after we die? I was listening to this as I walked the Stanford Dish, and one part was so intriguing that I felt the focus of my consciousness contract from ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/04/a-different-type-of-death-radiolab/ I was watching the John Adams miniseries last night when I asked Mike (we have a running IM conservation that's open practically throughout the entire day) "why have there been so few films about the Gilded Age of America?" As Mike and I started brainstorming further, we truly began to wonder ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/03/the-gilded-age/ You can read a guest blog post I helped write at lenovoblogs.com about how Thinkpads were used for Nader's rocket engine test firing project at Stanford. 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/03/guest-blogging-at-lenovoblogscom/ QotW returns! Over a month go, I had a conversation with Jordan that went something like this: 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, ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/02/question-of-the-week-8/ Over the past 10 months, as we've witnessed the most severe economic recession the United States has faced the Great Depression, we have heard many attempts to figure out how we got into this mess. A coherent narrative has emerged with the increasingly esoteric securitization of financial instruments, private and ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/02/economic-crisis-its-a-societal-issue/ A pretty good week -- did some phone interviews, had a 6am (!) conference call with RTI team that completely wrecked my day (had less than 3 hours of sleep before taking it), and an invigorating chat with Vincent (a research associate with Sequoia) over coffee. On Monday I made ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/08/01/a-plentiful-weekh/ This past Saturday I was at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival located about an hour southeast from Palo Alto, just outside the Bay. Gilroy, CA is one of the most prominent garlic processing centers in the world, and the three day garlic festival has been held since 1979 as a ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/27/gilroy-garlic-festival-krupali/ Over the last couple of years I've heard remarks on several occasions about the way I use my laptop, usually in a team meeting where they see what I'm doing. This post is different than the usual fare, but I thought I might comment on some of the ways that ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/19/improving-the-computing-experience/ Remember those posters in which a main photo was composed by hundreds of smaller photos that serve as crude pixels? I stumbled across a free tool that allows you to create your very own photo mosaics - Foto-Mosaik-Edda. After taking considerable time creating databases from my photo sets, the tool ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/16/fun-with-photo-mosaics/ I found myself catching up on This American Life episodes today as I went about my day, and I was struck by a Sarah Vowell segment on General Marquis de Lafayette. The episode was Reunited, where Vowell discusses the triumphant return of Lafayette to America in 1824 to celebrate the ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/14/marquis-de-lafayette/ In a pensive mood right now. I saw The Hurt Locker tonight. This was the very few films released recently (other than Moon) that genuinely had me excited to see it. Like Moon, the Hurt Locker has a laser focus -- it is about the three men of the unit ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/13/the-hurt-locker/ Tried a new dish for lunch today, a pasta dish I thought more fitting for summertime: linguine avgolemono with vegetables. I discovered Avgolemono, I discovered, is a tangy Greek sauce made with egg yolks, lemon, and whipping cream. The recipe calls for artichoke hearts and green beans, but I didn't have ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/11/summertime-pasta-linguine-avgolemono/ Many people who visit the Bay Area are often struck how big it is. Coming from the Triangle, this rings true both in physical geographic and population terms.  I know I felt that way, though it was tempered by three visits before starting at Stanford. I was fortunate to ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/08/six-degrees-or-is-this-place-getting-smaller/ Homemade artisan bread, part deux. Used a little less flour with the hope that the bread would end up more light and airy. Great success! http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/04/second-try/ This just came out of the oven: 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 ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/07/01/homemade-artisan-bread/ Days have been fairly balanced this week -- a lot of work during the day, then some good social time at night. Probably a little too much of the latter, but it's a special occasion. Ian, one of the iPod interns who was there from January to June last year, ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/06/26/visiting-the-ipod-folks-roommate-updates/ The day after graduation was spent casually around Palo Alto, with breakfast at Hobees, a requisite trip to IKEA (the nearest one to our home in NC is 4 hours away), and a lovely dinner in downtown Palo Alto with Menaka (remember, Menaka did her undergrad at UNC and they ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/06/24/lake-tahoe/ Ok, back from Tahoe and the family has departed back to Chicago and North Carolina. As I work through a backlog of other posts, I'll start off with a question of the week: Q: Do you have any foreign language songs you like to listen to? If so, what are some ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/06/21/question-of-the-week-7/ The day finally came. Time to put on the cap and gown, but this time a funny looking and strangely named "Master's hood" as well. I'll let the photos drive this one, offering a just a taste of the characters that have punctuated my time here. Jonathan is a circuits 'blood ... http://www.saketvora.com/2009/06/16/stanford-graduation/