Some (sports) related stuff that I’d like to accomplish this year

January 12th, 2010 Comments

Am not really one for resolutions. But then, every year, I feel I should do a few things and then the year goes by. So, this time around, am going to put this out in a public forum and hopefully that will spur me on to do these things. Here they are, in no specific order and probably not comprehensive

  • CrossFit. squat 2x my body weight: Squatting is one of the best tests of one’s strength. I’ve long been a weakling, so this should be a lofty goal to aim for.
  • complete CrossFit level 1 certification
  • Figure out my diet and see what my body responds to, what works for me and stick to it.
  • complete a “sprint” triathlon: Swimming in open water, hmm. But hey, one has to try.
  • run a sub-6 minute mile: This is definitely possible.
  • run 10 miles in under 75 minutes: This one’s probably the hardest. Considering that my average running speed is about 9.5 mins per mile for 10k to 20k, and 8.5 for sub 10k, running 10 miles/16km at 7.5 mins is going to be close to impossible. but then again, where’s the fun in running slow?
  • learn to surf: Another am pretty confident about. No way am going to be doing what surfers do on TV but am definitely confident of doing the beginner stuff.
  • Ultimate: This one is a hard goal to set. A sport that I love but never play continuously. So, no goals for this just yet.

And hopefully lose most of my tummy fat along the way. What are your goals this year?

How can ManUtd rebuild their squad?

December 28th, 2009 Comments

About two summers ago, I blogged that United needed to buy Ribery. Instead, we ended up buying Nani. I never understood the logic of that. Coz they both ended up costing approximately the same amount. But on one hand, you had the finished article in Ribery. On the other, you had potential – another Ronaldo maybe. But why buy potential at that moment for that steep a price?! Especially when buying Ribery would’ve meant Benzema might’ve been tempted! Ignoring Torres was another mistake that SAF made (so did I!) but that is sorta acceptable because that could’ve gone either way. Just look at Jose Reyes etc.
Apart from the 80 million pound irreplacable hole, United has a bunch of places that need filling. So, who does Fergie buy this Jan, or this summer?
First and foremost, Marek Hamsik. We need to replace Scholesy, one of the best central midfielders of his generation. And from the little of Hamsik I’ve seen and the hype others have created, I think he is the guy! An attacking midfielder and playmaker, capable of surging runs. With Hargreaves, Fletch and Anderson, think our central midfield will be very capable with the addition of Hamsik.
Second, the wings. We need to dispose of Nani and Tosic. Even though I’ve not seen Tosic play, it is obvious he is not good enough if he has not started in almost a year. Angel Di Maria is an (expensive) option. But there are other options as well – Mesut Ozil or Juan Manuel Mata. Maybe even David Silva. But we definitely need one solid winger down the left-hand side. Obertan and Park are good back-ups.
Third, up front. We need to play around Berbatov and Rooney. Like we played around Ronaldo the last two seasons, the gaffer needs to structure the formation so Berbatov can do his magic. No signings are needed here as we have two great prospects in Macheda and Wellbeck. We just need to extract the best out of Dimi and Wazza.
Fourth, in central defense, we need another young centre-back. Giving up Pique was necessary as I felt Fergie was limiting his potential. And boy has he improved since going to Barca! In fact, he might develop into a fine libero. Fancy that! Anyways, we need a solid 19 year old to provide backup.
Full backs, probably the only position we will not need strengthening in a while.
Finally, the goalkeeper conundrum. The easiest thing would be to buy Igor Akinfeev. But I think in Tomasz Kuczsak, we have our future #1. Ben Foster, am not so sure about. But Fergie’s blind faith in him might hamper this situation and lead to Tomasz leaving, Foster failing and us eventually buying Akinfeev.
Overall, I think we are two people short of a great team and of course, a formation and style of play to extract the best from Berbatov and Rooney. So, here’s to buying Hamsik and a left winger. And Glory Glory Man United!

comparing “green” space between Madras and SF

December 23rd, 2009 Comments

One thing about the US is that land conservation and national parks are taken seriously. The amount of green within a city is pretty high. Growing up in Madras, finding an open spot to play is one of the biggest ordeals. I was lucky I grew up in an apartment complex with a ground in the middle of it. But others are not. Check out the two images, screen captured from Google Maps at the same scale. Even though the SF image has a lot of water in it, the “green” in it is substantially higher than in the pic of Madras, where it is non-existent!madras
sf

Consumption; And Design’s Role as a Behavioral Change Agent

December 8th, 2009 Comments

I recently watched this video – The Story of Stuff (YouTube link) – and while it did not say anything that I did not know already, it did jolt my memory and remind me that while I might know things, I have proceeded to forget them as well. In grad school, I became very interested in sustainability and the environment and proceeded to take a class as well as read books like Natural Capitalism and In The Bubble. My slant has always been about Design and something else (education, developing world, sustainability). But recently, I have been more focused on a side-project of mine and doing less thinking. And am glad this video gave me the jolt that I needed.

The video is really well done, simple and elegant and graspable. I want to talk about a couple of things she brings up. The first is how the era of consumption was brought on as a behavioral change (not her words exactly, but not really mine either), how the economy needed a boost after WWII and people buying a ton of stuff would really help. And it certainly did. It carried the United States this far, and of course, a lot of the other countries fell behind and everyone was happy. But where it leaves us now is obvious – global warming, rapid decline of natural habitats, over-fishing, loss of forests at an insane rate, animals running out of space to live (The movie “Over the Hedge” made me incredibly sad because that was the biggest thing that struck me about it) etc. And all of this, IMHO, has been brought about because it was designed this way, to bring about a change in the behaviour of people. Perceived and Planned Obsolescence are the terms she uses and it certainly is bang on target. We are told by ads on TV to go buy new things and are in a rapid consumption cycle.

One of the reasons we so readily go out and buy something is due to the lack of transparency of the consumption process. We do not know the REAL cost of a good. For example, the journey of a coke can(will update this once I get my hands on the book). Or the weight in materials of a laptop (approx 4000x the amount of weight in materials is utilized). If we did know the real cost, if the entire process was transparent, I am sure that a lot less consumption will happen.

And now it is time for design to bring about another change in behaviour. We need to shift from this mindset of consumption to living with a lighter footprint. We need another behavioral change, a shift in mindset. And a bit more deeply, people need to question, “What is happiness?”. We need to look beyond our lifetime. A bunch of stuff. And it has to happen. And it will happen.

tl;dr: Watch the video. Buy the book.

A kick-ass Django/Python developer

December 5th, 2009 Comments

This is a placeholder. Will update this post soon.

Briefly, looking for employee #1. Amazing programmer. Plus if you know Django. Presume you know Python. Wants to be at a startup, from the beginning. If you are one of those excited by Wipro/TCS/Infy etc., this is not the place. If you’d rather be on a bench or work on boring stuff, that’s your choice. That’s not the stuff that will happen in our trenches.

IxDA 2010

November 21st, 2009 Comments

I finally registered for the conference, to be held in Savannah, GA next February. Also registered for Indi Young’s workshop on Mental Models (was split between this and Dan Saffer’s), along with Steve Portigal’s workshop. The choices for workshops are great, I was confused about which ones to attend. Dan Saffer, Raphael Grignani and Will Evans are some of the other people with really tempting workshops.
Am hoping to meet some of these people. Weird that I have to go all the way to Savannah to meet people who are within 30 minutes of where I live.

Suzi Eszterhas: Wildlife Photographer

November 20th, 2009 Comments

Yesterday, I was lucky to listen to Suzi Eszterhas talk about her experiences and how she got into photography. Some of the things she mentioned were pretty eye-opening. The dedication of photographers is something a lot of us are aware of and are in awe of (have you not seen the ‘Planet Earth’ series?!). Still Photography is no different.

Suzi specializes in wildlife photography and she works on stories, not pictures. That is, she follows a family, watches them grow up, watches them learn to hunt, migrate – everything! She spends many months, sometimes years on a story! Briefly summarizing some of the things that stuck in my head (and of course, there are so many parallels to design or rather, principles which are applicable to design)

  • Understand your subject(user). Bears yawn when they are stressed while lions yawn when they are happy. A crucial difference to know.
  • Observe their daily routine until you see patterns and can predict.
  • Do not abuse their trust. Once you lose their trust, it is a lot harder to win it back than it was to win it in the first place.
  • Even pros make mistakes. A lot of them. But the experience and learning from mistakes helps them get over it fast.
  • She uses 1 in 1000 photos (i.e. it is an outstanding photo) and also remarked any pro who said otherwise was lying.
  • She was very unaffected and modest. Asked how she managed to capture some amazing pictures, she attributed a lot to luck, underplaying the amount of time she waited for that one shot. While on photo we see the “moment”, which is the perfect shot, there’s hours and hours of waiting, of positioning, of being aware and ready. And all her experience and knowledge from understanding her subjects play into this.

Amazing photos and talk. I highly recommend checking her site out.

Update: One of the not-for-profit organizations Suzi vets is called Wildlife Direct. The problems of poaching, wildlife endangerment, loss of biological diversity is unchecked due to lack of funding. And there are a lot of grass-roots level organizations which make many small pocket areas safe. And wildlife direct ensures that your money gets to them, without taking a cut.

Another thing she mentioned and I am interpreting – if you want to leave a small footprint when you visit Africa, visit one of the expensive resorts. They are expensive for a reason. In East Africa, a resort might accommodate 200 beds. In these resorts, there might be 30. So, it will be more expensive. But you are not gonna torture animals by hounding them in these places, as you might in over-crowded locales. She recommends Botswana coz they do a lot of things right.

Tooth-fairy agnostic

November 17th, 2009 Comments

I grew up in a pretty religious family and was an active participant in many “holy ceremonies”. Looking back at it, it had a lot to do with what people around me were doing, and my own lack of interesting things to do or ability to think/question the things people did. Then, around the 3rd grade, my family moved into an apartment complex where I had about ten other kids my age to play with. And I was too busy playing, every day and every hour, to need an alternate activity. And thus, a gap evolved, and it was not until later that I actively embraced this and thought about it. Being a lazy procrastinator, I was agnostic for the longest time, but in reality, was a closet atheist. And I needed Richard Dawkins (how predictable) to help me stand up! So, that is what this post is about. More about the need to recognize the fact that atheists need to stand up and be counted, than be passive, non-confrontational and all that.

Why did I use “non-confrontational”? To quote Douglas Adams (a quote that Dawkins uses a lot, with good reason),

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.

We are not here by chance. And while we might not know a lot of the answers, there is absolutely no reason to use a made-up entity as the answer. Science has provided us with knowledge. Read Darwin’s theory of natural selection (I am trying to) and you will know what I mean. Of course, science does not have all the answers. But using religion and god is just you being lazy. Investigate and yearn to understand. Don’t be a lame ass and say it can’t be explained, hence it is god. This applies a lot to other things in life as well – be relentless in your pursuit!

To know why I used “tooth-fairy agnostic”, buy The God Delusion or listen to his TED talk.

And finally, I do not mean to offend anyone with this post. Relax, keep an open mind. Check this out. Either you are the first commenter or you are one of “us”.

tldr – if you are agnostic coz you are lazy, stop. stand up. regardless, have an open mind. and try to listen to the TED talk. Anything unexplained is not attributed to God, it just makes you a lazy and ignorant!

(Trying) To Get Back To Development Roots

November 14th, 2009 Comments

A few years back, I decided that I did not want to be a developer and found a calling of sorts in Interaction Design. Now, I was not that great a developer, even though I was told otherwise by two pretty darn good developers. It was just that I was never ‘in the zone’ for too long. And I felt I was making the right choice. Now, if grad school was not an eye-opening place, I would’ve probably regretted that decision I made. Thankfully, the design program at Indiana University and my peers and colleagues there made it an amazing learning experience. But sometimes I do wonder if I did not stick it out and quit too easily. And honestly, I did.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it brings me to present day, where am a reasonably competent designer. And being in the valley, wanting to try out my hand at starting something up. I have had a couple of projects in mind for a long time but never have taken them too far along due to the lack of other co-founders, especially developers. And yet again, I have tried to write some code only to give up too easily. Thankfully, I came across a couple of articles that gave me a kick up the back side and this time, I really want to put in a more valiant effort to write code.
While I sincerely believe being a designer is an amazing thing and it really gives me a lens to view things and do things that will be beyond what a developer can do, I cannot do what a developer can as well – which is churn out great, working code and turn an idea into something working on a computer.
So, here I am. Trying to write code. While I search for a great programmer (not just a good one), rather than remain stagnant, I should try and get somewhere. Of course, I am not neglecting my design side of things and will have a solid set of designs to help the project take off once the developer arrives. But until then, motion is not action.
The articles that helped
- Steve Blank: The difference between motion and action
- the other article was about a woman trying to solve a math problem for 30 minutes, not giving up and figuring it out. And how that attitude is amazing. Rather than ask for the solution, she stumbles through and finally groks it. Will update with the link as soon as I find it.

This reminds me, I need to write a post looking for a co-founder.

IxDA 2010

November 9th, 2009 Comments

It increasingly looks like going to IxDA 2010 is a real possibility. It has been a long time since I’ve been to a design conference and am really looking forward to my first IxDA.

The list of workshops has made me really indecisive and that is why am delaying my registration till the end of the month. Trying to decide between “Designing for Billions” by Raphael Grignani, “The Right Way to Wireframe” or Steve Portigal’s workshop on applying research. The morning session has Dan Saffer’s brainstorming workshop vs Indi Young’s mental models.

A decision has to be made.

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