Planning to buy a new iPod?

You might want to read this first

Idea for a "Projector-Laptop"

This one came up a couple of days ago during a presentation (involving a conventional Projector) at work, and applies a breakthrough technology (not yet deployed as products) to another area.

I came accross this article a while ago, reporting that Seimens Researchers have developed a cell phone with a built-in projector . This surely is a super cool invention that promises to make life a heck of a lot easier for those busy business guys constantly having to setup bulky projectors, and my hats off two the guys at Seimens. But, I was just wondering if this might be one of those scenarios where the value of an invention is increased by simple re-using the technology in a different application.

In short, if it is possible to integrate a projector with a cell phone without significantly increasing its size or sacrificing portability, couldn't the same be done for Laptops?. I think yes! (Listening laptop makers? Maybe whose names start with a "D" and have 2 "L's" ;)).

As always, please feel free to beat the crap out of me, on this one ;-)

This time its for real

Yep... I hope to stick to my promise this time and resolve to try and post something new more frequently. For those interested in knowing, I've been preoccupied with way too many things over the last few months, but when all the dust settled (!) I had ended up in a new job ( one that I have always hoped to work as ) in the company I've always dreamt of working at and in the place I've always wanted to live in . This will be my second job outa school and allows me to apply as many of my skills as possible.

Well, enough of that, with all the basics in place, its time to get back to the more serious stuff :P(Notice, I've already changed my location information here from Santa Barbara to San Diego)

Wish me luck! :)

Aaaaaaand.... I'm back

Its 2:05 pm, PST on a very very rainy day. I am sitting at San Fransisco Airport, waiting for the boarding call for my flight back to Santa Barbara. I woke up at 5am this morning to catch my flight at 630 out of Portland (OR) Int't airport and made it into SFO on time by 8:10. I was scheduled to be on the 8:55am flight out to SB, which was cancelled and then the subsequent flight to SB has been delayed over and over and over again... I just heard the announcer say some like ".. Attention Santa Barbara passengers... you're flight is here and is CIRCLING THE AIRPORT..."

ROCK ON UNITED AIRLINES!!!!

Thanks to tmobile's wireless broadband service at SFO, I have enough time to ponder about the various things I have been neglecting (this blog) for some time now.

Thanks to everyone who read my blog and encouraged me to get back to being regular again... :)

-AM

A time to rest....

Phew.... I finally have a weekend of rest at home after almost 4 weeks/ weekends on non stop activity! So, what have I been upto? A WHOLE bunch of things. And thats my excuse for not being able to post anything new here for a month. So, to make up for that I plan to make the next two/ three posts about my "weekend adventures". Also, I plan to re-track the dates on the next three posts, so they will show up as earlier posts (May, 05)

Hearst Castle

I spent this weekend (or atleast the whole of Sunday) visiting "Hearst Castle" . This was a very different and interesting experience, in comparison with the various places I have visited in the (nearly) 3 years that I have lived in the US/ California.

If you have some idea of the Geography of the United States, you probably know that Santa Barbara (the place I live at) is kinda in the central cost of California, about 100 miles N or Los Angeles. With that as a reference, Hearst Castle is located at a place called "San Simeon" about 150 miles N of SB, beyond San Luis Obispo.

Hearst castle was built by William Randolph Hearst , an extremely wealthy business tycoon in the publishing business. Hearst had a passion for collecting antiques and art from around the world (primarily Europe), which he developed while on a tour of Europe, as a kid, with his mother.

The tour of Hearst Castle is very well organized. The castle is located on a mountain and visitors drive to the base and park at the tourist center. Buses, drive tourists up a very scenic drive with beautiful views of the pacific ocean. The castle itself is so huge that there are about 4-5 different tours that visitors can choose from, each of which show about 20-25% of the whole castle.

The drive to Hearst Castle from Santa Barbara (or LA) is very beautiful too. The first 100 miles till San Luis Obispo are covered on the US-101 and the last 50 miles take you on a drive on the famout CA-1 (or better known as the Pacific Coast Highway or PCH). Its a drive just along the pacific ocean, with Vista points (points where you can pull over and enjoy the views before moving on) all along. Some of the cool places to look out for along the way include the famous "Morro Bay Big Rock" , which is this huge rock sticking out in the middle of the ocean, and the extremely beautiful pismo beach with its characteristicly long pier, extending into the ocean.

Crowdifornia...

Driving home from work this evening, I couldnt help take notice of a sticker on the back of a car stopped in front of me at a red signal. The sticker read:



I don't know if it was the fact that I've always held a strong belief that California, is the most beautiful state of "sunshine throughout the year", and the "L" in the Land of opportunities, if you will (and if you consider the US that, even now that is ;-) ).... or it was the simple reason that I cant get my mind off a catchy phrase or some creative writing when I see one, but I just had to type the words into google, while I caught up with my nightly surfing for the day.

So, it is interesting to note that California does have a serious population explosion problem. So much so, that this website reports the following statistics:

Quick Fact
California's population increased by 539,000 last year to total over 36.8 million. California's growth rate is higher than that of India.
(Sources: California Department of Finance, United Nations Population Division)

Some stuff to ponder about I guess.... so ponder away to glory :P

From skates to blades!

Its been a while since I scribbled away to glory.... 22 days to be precise, the longest I have gone without posting anything since I started this blog. Well, its been a pretty hectic few weeks with "product releases" and "deadlines" all over the place so I haven't had much time for anything besides the basic routine stuff and, more importantly, I havent been "observing" stuff (remember my blogs "mission statement" ? :P)

Hmm... well... its the end of the weekend and in keeping with my resolution to try my hand at something new from time to time, I decided to take a shot at ROLLER BLADING yesterday. I used to be a pretty avid roller skater when I was in high school (6th grade tp 10th grade to be precise). I am not sure if I gave it up because roller blading in India (thats where I spent the first 22 years of my life) has always been considered a kids hobby/ sport or because I simply got bored of it. Anyways, its been on my mind for a while to try out this distant cousin of the roller skate ;-). For those of you who are wondering what the difference is, essentially, they both have 4 wheels on each leg but in skates, the wheels are arranged in 2 parallel rows while blades have em all in one single row (kinda like ice skating)

So, before I knew it I and a buddy had spent almost 2 hours roller blading and covered nearly 10 miles on the beautiful Santa Barbara beach. And I enjoyed it so much that I decided to get myself my own pair of blades (I had rented blades for todays "trial run"). The best part was that I didn't suck at it as much as I thought I would. The only part that I thought was a little tricky (and that people had warned me about) was "braking". And this is one important difference between blades and skates - while traditional skates have brakes in the front, and on both legs, in roller blades there is only one brake provided on the rear end of the right leg. I haven't really gotten the hang of braking yet, but I realized that if you look ahead and adjust speed accordingly, you seldom need to use the break. But, I do plan to research into finding the right way!

The Coolest Comment to my Blog Posts so far!!!

I thought this was the coolest comment to any of my posts so far. The comment comes from an "Anonymous Reader" and in response to my post titled "My Idea for a source of Energy" . S/he has an alias name of "ask me about it" and I thought I wouldn't be doing it enough justice if I didn't post the comment as a separate blog. So, here it is:

Ask me about it. said...

Energy can be classified into two types.. energy that can be "stored/transmitted/used else where" and energy that can be "used where it is produced". For the stored/transmitted/ used else where type of energy a good source is justified based on three aspects... reliability, cost and environmental impact. It might be interesting to note that environmental impact and reliability rank as the best parameters besides cost (although reliability and environmental impact can also contribute to costs as maintainance and remediation issues) in comparing the various energy sources. So unless you have a gym where bikes are running non-stop(with bonded labour from some asian / african nation i presume....) this is not a viable option for reliability purposes (assuming energy is transmitted for use as it is generated). For purposes of storing energy and then using it elsewhere the accepted method is converting mechanical energy to electrical energy and storing this in chemical storage devices or electrical storage devices (devices like flywheel type energy storage where inertial energy is stored are also available). For storing in these type of devices the obvious problem is storing enough energy before you can remove the storage device and use it else where... if you generate very small amounts (like those that you would generate during ur two hour work out) the losses are significant as compared to the generated energy. Again you would need a dedicated workforce to generate enough storage energy. (a good question to ask would be where do we see people exerting energy solely for the sake of spending it.. like they do in a gym) To talk of the obvious, dynamo installed on the cycles (remember HERO cycles??) is an application of "use where you produce" type of energy. Hope I didnt bore you.. nice blog though.

3:42 PM

The DOT COM Start - Up Worthy Idea...

Alright, first of all my apologies for not being able to do this yesterday! I was a little surprised I got just ONE caustic comment to my last post :P

Anyways, without further do, here it is. The idea that came up during a conversation with my brother is, to develop a search engine that would take in a zip code (and possibly a given mile radius) as input and return a list of gas stations in that area.

What use would that be? Well... here's the real deal. The search engine would have to organize the gas stations is ascending order of gas prices on that particular day!!! Some add-ons could include providing the user with the option of ordering the results either by gas price or by distance from the source zip.

So.... now for the ground work.... WHAT's IT GONNA TAKE? Hmmm... off of my head, I can think of a few scenarios:

1. Have people drive around gas stations on a daily basis and send back information to a central database. Simple, but not the most economical and certainly not scalable.

2. Have a "tie-up" with gas stations (thinking on the lines of mobile phone manufacturers tieing up with service providers) and have them send information to your database. Slightly better and more scalable.

3. (This assumes the existance of networkable databases in gas station systems) Have automated programs (WEB SERVICES, SOAP, XML, WSDL, if you will) extract information from the gas station databases and feed them to yours. Very scalable but, a wee-bit far fetched in its assumptions!

Cool.... I'm out for now, but this thing is gonna sit in my head for SOMEtime :-) Other inputs/ criticism appreciated!

Idea for a Search Engine Start-up!!!

If you are reading this, the title of this blog has done its job well in getting you excited! Well... come to think of it, it wasnt too hard, because in today's world the words web, search engine, google, yahoo... are an instant eye catcher.

So, whats all my fuss about? Rest assured it isn't just to get you to click on my blog post. If you have been reading (or atleasting looking at) my blog now and then, you must have observed that my last post sprung out of my frustration over the ever-rising gas prices. As a Civic owner I am way better off than the sports coupe folks or SUV fans, but still, a national average of $2.15/ Gallon, does pinch!!

Speaking of gas prices, brings to mind a conversation I had with my brother a few days ago. We were comparing gas prices between Santa Barbara and Portland (OR) and we quickly realized that the rest of the nation had made bigger (in comparison to CA) strides over the last couple of months. To put things in perspective, last November ('04), when I visited Portland I noticed my brother could get gas for as low as $1.90/ Gallon. It was unbelievable, for a moment I though the prices actually went down that day. I was eager to find out, and I did as soon as I got out of SB airport, only to see the same old... $2.45/ Gallon. And now, SB stands at around $2.60/ Gallon, while Portland is at $2.45.... see what I am saying??

Well... it might sound like I am contradicting what I said earlier, but I have had my writing dose for the day and I am kinda sleepy, so I think I am gonna write about my "Start-Up" Idea tomorrow ;-) ... please be gentle on the comments :P

My Idea for a source of energy

Gas prices in the US seem to be on a steady climb nowadays. Buying a hybrid vehicle seems to be the best way to go in the present times. Thinking of this makes me realize the significance of all the research that goes into finding new and alternative sources of energy. The list of alternative sources of energy that are actually being harvested at the moment includes, Hydroelectric, Solar, Tidal, Geothermal, Wind, Biomass and Biogas.

I came up with a workable idea for a new source of electric power. It is not novel in the way power is generated, but it is in novel in the part of the available energy (remember the universal law of energy transformation?) it converts to electrical energy. It all started with me fogeting to carry my Audio Player to the gym. Since, I didn't have any music to listen to while I biked, I got thinking....!!

If you have ever been to a gym, you have probably observed that all the cardio exercise machines, except the treadmills, do not require external power for their operation (if you discount the LED diplays). So, I wonder if it might be posible to use all the human energy that gets expended on the bikes, the elliptical machines and the stepping machines to power the treadmills, and possibly some more?

MS Walk/ Run

I plan to spend most part of tomorrow, participating in an event to raise funds for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) research. :

Feet 2 Beat MS

Apart from the monetary contribution, I will also be a part of my company's team, and I am hoping to complete a 10 Kilometer run :-)

Wish me luck!

MS is thought to be an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS). The CNS consists of the brain, spinal cord, and the optic nerves. Surrounding and protecting the nerve fibers of the CNS is a fatty tissue called myelin, which helps nerve fibers conduct electrical impulses.

In MS, myelin is lost in multiple areas, leaving scar tissue called sclerosis. These damaged areas are also known as plaques or lesions. Sometimes the nerve fiber itself is damaged or broken.

Myelin not only protects nerve fibers, but makes their job possible. When myelin or the nerve fiber is destroyed or damaged, the ability of the nerves to conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain is disrupted, and this produces the various symptoms of MS.

Conquered Montecito Peak

Today me and my Hiking Buddies hiked up to the top of Montecito Peak which, I think, is one of the highest peaks in the Santa Barbara area and also one of the toughest hikes. It was a 9 mile round trip hike and took us about 2.5 hrs to get up and about 1.5 to get down. When we reached the top, we found this book with entries by hikers who have managed to make it to the peak. We flipped through it and found entries as old as 1994 (there may have been older, but this was the oldest we caught at a glance). Here is one that I thought was cute enough to take a picture of, seems like a little kid who hiked up the trail with her dad:


A Cute Entry that caught our eye ! 

And of course we were sure enough to leave our mark...


Our Entry in the Hiker's Log ! 

Why the K??

This rather wierd and curious question just hit me a few mins ago... while watching the daily news on KCAL 9. Why do all the news channels in CA have their names starting with "K"?? I tried googling on this but couldnt get anything.... the only sensible explanation that comes to mind is, they wanted to use "C" for California, but that must have been used by some other state..... any comments??

My New Car :-)

My New Car !!! 

We actually thought of this...

I came accross this article about Samsung's new innovative ideas for their next generation mobile phones... when it hit me that I had actually thought of something similar a few months ago. Sometime ago I was chatting with a friend on the phone when she said that she really wished there was some way people could pinch or slap each other on the phone and what ensued was a discussion about the possible ways in which this can be done.... and I cant believe we actually came up with a marketable idea:

Soon, Mobile Phones will feel emotions

Trade-offs Everywhere in Life..

If you observe closely enough, you will find that there are tradeoffs in virtually everything in life. Almost every design, task, action or decision can be executed in more than one way and changing one parameter always affects the others and ultimately a tradeoff has to be made to suit our requirements/ expectations from the task, at that moment. And even more interesting is the fact that the trade-offs we make for a given task can change even if the task doesnt change... but the time is different.

I just got back from a 4 hour hike a few hours ago and I discovered yet another tradeoff... The weather today was cloudy.... there was no sun visible directly and there was also a very slight drizzle. It seemed like perfect hiking weather to me.... no sun, no sweat.... meaning far less exhaustion and more hiking for the same effort. But as always there was a tradeoff... I realized this when I reached the peak... all I could see below was a white sheet :-(


See what I am saying? 

My new Work Desktop Image

Stamp this one "Software For Work" !!! 

Understanding the problem is half the solution

Today was a pretty hectic day.... I have been trying to fix this issue for quite some time now and for some reason although, I was making good progress, there was this inkling feeling that I am not going the right way. At one point I decided I was going to put aside what I have done so far and attempt the problem afresh. So, I saved what I had done and began to go around cubicles, asking folks what they thought of it. At the end of the day I realized that I had been trying to solve a much bigger problem than I actually had to. I spent the last hour at work trying to chalk out a clear plan of action to solving this new/ smaller problem... and now I can't wait to get back to work on Monday... :-).... isn't it true... that many times in life... "Understanding what the problem is, is half the solution".