ajit verghese

Lunch with my brother Tom in midtown. Like being at my parents house.

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:13:39 -0500

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Untitled

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:49:20 -0500

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Everything is bigger in Texas. Note the 7 pillows on the bed and the Big Lone Star in the headboard. The Star is a tad bit excessive.

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:25:39 -0500

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xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:53:59 -0500

via xkcd.com

Love me some MicroSD. Especially with my M3 DS Simply and my Nintendo DS. Geek alert!

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Apparently there is mobile based tickets on AA?

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:31:56 -0500

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Apparently there is mobile based tickets on AA?

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:03:50 -0500

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While this is an old article from 2007, it is a fascinating read...

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:07:44 -0500

While this is an old article from 2007, it is a fascinating read about the study of language, the focus and adherence to mental models and long standing traditions and our desire to explain away the outlier as opposed to investigate it.

The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? by John Colapinto

One morning last July, in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, Dan Everett, an American linguistics professor, and I stepped from the pontoon of a Cessna floatplane onto the beach bordering the Maici River, a narrow, sharply meandering tributary of the Amazon. On the bank above us were some thirty people—short, dark-skinned men, women, and children—some clutching bows and arrows, others with infants on their hips. The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations. It is a language so confounding to non-natives that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had succeeded in mastering it. Everett eventually abandoned Christianity, but he and Keren have spent the past thirty years, on and off, living with the tribe, and in that time they have learned Pirahã as no other Westerners have

Benjamin Zander on music and passion

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:37:29 -0500

via ted.com

This is a great Ted talk - they all are - but this one has a special place in my heart. I grew up a classically trained pianist. From the age of 5 till I was 18 I took lessons and performed recitals. Chopin was a mainstay of my teenage years and while I am still intimately involved with writing and performing music, I stopped intense classical performance when I went to college.I spent this past Christmas getting reacquainted with Chopin and old recital pieces from my younger days - specifically Prelude No. 15 in D flat. Zander is a great and energetic speaker - and its worth 20 minutes of your time. Chopin was the Leonard Cohen of his time - perfectly suited for a late night, a scotch and the rain/snow/cold beating down your door.

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Notice Virgin's plane status!

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:36:42 -0500

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Boston Christmas Cavalcade for the Homeless It is getting cold...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:11:31 -0500

Boston Christmas Cavalcade for the Homeless

It is getting cold in Boston and while we may bitch and moan about so much in our lives - we should be thankful for the roof over our head, our friends and family, and the small wins. I know that I am - and there are a lot in this great city that are not as lucky as most of us. There are many that are homeless, cold and destitute. And in these trying times every little bit helps. So if you want to help the homeless and those less fortunate in this big city, AND hear some amazing music from some phenomenal and storied Boston musicians (a veritable pantheon of who’s who here folks), come out to the Cavalcade for the Homeless at Johnny D’s on Thurs, Dec 17th, 2009 at 8pm. Thankfully I don’t think it will get snowed out this year. This is going to be a lot of fun and it is a great cause. Remember: all proceeds go to the Somerville Homeless Coaltition (Any further donations encouraged at www.somervillehomelesscoalition.org or 617 623 6111.) Hope to see you there

Here’s an old commercial I put together for Radius...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:49:43 -0500

Here’s an old commercial I put together for Radius Toothbrush during my MBA internship. This was a proof-of-concept marketing idea that I wanted to experiment with. Production-wise it could use some better lighting and my voiceover didn’t come out as well as I wanted.

Overall pretty fun - I was reminded of it when my friend (and CEO-in-training) Saskia asked for a link to the video. Stop-motion techniques are great and can really work to give some life to an inanimate product. Sadly we never did anything with it…..but I will say that my Radius Scuba toothbrush was amazing. Still my favorite toothbrush of all time. You should definitely try it - www.radiustoothbrush.com

"Reformations make counterreformations as surely as right makes left; every time someone whitewashes..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:31:39 -0500

“Reformations make counterreformations as surely as right makes left; every time someone whitewashes a church in Germany, someone else paints angels on a ceiling in Rome.”

- http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/11/23/091123crat_atlarge_gopnik?printable=true

An Oldie but a goodie Mashup.The Who + Beastie Boys :: // Baba...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

An Oldie but a goodie Mashup.

The Who + Beastie Boys :: // Baba Galactic //

for @bijan

Apple's Hidden Gaming play

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

According to this article in Businessinsider.com, the iPhone will be the primary driver of growth within the mobile gaming industry by 2014 - as the PSP & Nintendo DS have reached their growth potential and the ability to purchase games on the iPhone immediately via the App Store will be the future of gaming.

As an iPhone and DS user, there is an appeal in both devices and a use for each in gaming. iPhone games are tremendously fun - and the most successful games in my opinion on the device are ones which are simple and allow you to play for a few minutes on the train during your morning commute, or while you are waiting for a few minutes. iPhone games are like Tasti D-Lite - not filling, but fleetingly delectable - and I find myself playing a game on the iPhone in just these situations.

DS games are usually more complicated - have longer game play - and are more immersive by nature. With an actual gamepad - the playability for me is unmatched. And yes you can argue that the iPhone has the ability to emulate the buttons of the the DS, however it is a totally different type of game play and I appreciate the tactile buttons when playing a game that requires more than just guiding planes down the runway.

The convenience of the iPhone and the ability to download low cost games on a whim make it compelling.

However I think that Apple MIGHT have a larger gaming play in front of them.

With the dearth of AppleTV units out there (predicted sales of 6.6 million Apple TVs by the end of 2009.^[96]) I could see Apple use this install base to create an in-home gaming platform which utilized the AppleTV to download and store the games sold via iTunes while using an iPhone as the ‘controller’. With the iPhone 3Gs, Apple could use the accelerometer + magnetometer. In theory, the accelerometer already gives both X, Y and Z location data - albeit linear information as Z values are not Yaw but whether the phone is Face up or Face down. To get true yaw in Z requires a compass value which the magnetometer can offer. (via tuaw.com ) Fear not older iPhone users - a simple add-on like the MotionPlus Wiimote accessory could solve the problem. Perhaps there is even a way to provide an accessory that would work with older iPods.

Or of course we could KISS and have a wired or wireless adapter that plugs into the USB port of the Apple TV console.

Either way, mark my words - Apple’s gaming pursuits aren’t limited to just its mobile devices.

Sublime covered by The Startups - a rocking version of the tune...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0400

Sublime covered by The Startups - a rocking version of the tune ‘Date Rape’.

How to Download & Edit Videos from Qik

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0400

(image courtesy of http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com)

Two weeks ago I attended the 2009 Babson Forum on Entrepreneurship & Innovation where I had the chance to attend many great panels and hear several wonderful keynote speakers.

I recorded and streamed the Corporate Entrepreneurship panel via Qik.com on my jailbroken T-Mobile iPhone.

The panel featured keynotes and Q&A by Mark Atkins, CEO of Invention Machine (Babson MBA alum) & Anand Vengurlekar, Managing Director of Stoic Brand Consultancy. I recorded both keynotes in one large file with the assumption that I would be able to download the video from Qik.com and edit the file to my liking. Bad assumption on my part.

I spent a portion of my day trying to download the videos - all my usual tricks didn’t work, including the always-reliable Keepvid.com. Apparently there used to be a ‘download link’ but it is not working according to the powers that be within Qik.com.

I finally stumbled on this post which gave me the beginnings of a workaround.

You can go to your RSS feed - http://qik.com/username/latest-videos. You have to enter your own username in that url to download your videos. However, at the moment only public videos can be downloaded through this RSS feed

I went to http://qik.com/averghese/latest-videos and was given an RSS list of videos in flv format. I quickly renamed and saved the flv file to my desktop and opened it up with VLC - the greatest open source video player that plays everything. The video played perfectly. I then opened up FFMPEGx, the greatest OS X video converter and tried to convert the video from the FLV format to any iMovie compatible format.

No luck.

I assumed that the video itself may have had a corrupted header, so tried to fix it by using FLVMIDI and injecting meta data into the header. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to make a difference to FFMPEGx or Sorenson Squeeze and I couldn’t convert the FLV to any other format.

A lot of research, and command line hacking ensued. Not very fun.

The solution ended up being using www.zamzar.com - an online video conversion site - which allowed me to upload my FLV file and then have it be automagically converted and then emailed to the fake Mailinator address I provided.

So I finally have a great video in .mp4 format that I am able to edit and modify. I’ll post both the videos later - but I now know how to deal with editing Qik.com videos post event. Perhaps I should have inserted a warning at the top of the post.

Are we so focused on ‘social’ that we forget about...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:34:52 -0400

Are we so focused on ‘social’ that we forget about being social?

Hmmm. Let me ask my friends on Twitter.

mikehudack:

tanya77:

marc:

kiyo:

hamandheroin:

Oh man, this is really how it’s gonna be isn’t it? (cover by Chris Ware)

So very true.

I don’t get it. It just looks like Real Life.

A absolutely brilliant ‘Flight of the Conchords’...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:23:53 -0400

A absolutely brilliant ‘Flight of the Conchords’ video on love & relationships. Its stuck in my head……. ;)

Well played Governator. Now….everyone…..GET INTO THE...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:43:25 -0400

Well played Governator.

Now….everyone…..GET INTO THE CHOPPER!!!

mikehudack:

superamit:

thegongshow:

giantrobotlasers:

hartsell:

Whoa there, Governator!

http://gov.ca.gov/pdf/press/2009bills/AB1176_Ammiano_Veto_Message.pdf

This actually happened. I love California politics.

The Startups cover ‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana....

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:41:50 -0400

The Startups cover ‘Smooth’ by Carlos Santana. Rocking it out. ;)