ajit verghese

"Join up with the Crips or the Bloods… It doesn’t matter how good your content is if no..."

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:39:57 -0500

“Join up with the Crips or the Bloods… It doesn’t matter how good your content is if no one is going to see it.”

- Jonathan Klein - CNN’s President re: smaller brands aligning themselves with larger players

"Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that..."

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:41:45 -0400

“

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned:
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don’t turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won’t make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,

”

- Leonard Cohen - Sisters of Mercy

I woke up with this song in my head. I’ll try and convert the audio to mp3 format. Perfect for the rainy day in Boston today.

mikehudack: stevewyshywaniuk: Chandrayaan-1 — which means...

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:38:55 -0400

mikehudack:

stevewyshywaniuk:

Chandrayaan-1 — which means “Moon Craft” in ancient Sanskrit — launched from the Sriharikota space center in southern India early Wednesday morning in a two-year mission aimed at laying the groundwork for further Indian space expeditions.

Way to go India!

Que Sera Sera.

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:09:08 -0400

Emphasis added by me.

mikehudack:

“Real money is made at major market bottoms. So I am slowly accumulating a lot of these beaten-down non-financial companies in my long-term account, like Warren Buffett. The key is to stay disciplined, don’t bite off more risk than you can afford. You can profit in this market. But I can’t tell you what happens next. No one can. If the world is really coming to an end, it’s out of my hands and yours.”

—

Ask a Trader - Serge Milman of Ronin Asset Management — New York Magazine

Can lightning strike twice?

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:24:31 -0400

Can lightning strike twice?

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:46:32 -0400

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

- Samuel Beckett - Worstword Ho

"Usually the Big Gorilla wins the fight in the cage"

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:20:13 -0400

“Usually the Big Gorilla wins the fight in the cage”

- Prof. Mulvaney re: Strategic buyers in M&A

Many feel that Obama’s speeches contain an inherent beauty...

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:37:03 -0400

Many feel that Obama’s speeches contain an inherent beauty not seen since the days of JFK. I agree. The Wordle visualization of his speech at the Democratic National Convention (via Wired.com) is itself art.

This would make a great t-shirt.

Dan Black - “HYPNTZ” (via Listening Post) For...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:52:39 -0400

Dan Black - “HYPNTZ” (via Listening Post)

For Friday’s trip down memory lane, a great Biggie cover by “a skinny white Englishman”.

Description from Listening Post:

Take a listen to Dan Black’s “HYPNTZ,” in which Black sings Biggie’s lyrics from “Hypnotize” over the beat from Rihanna’s ubiquitous “Umbrella” and bits of audio from Jack Nitzsche’s score for the movie Starman. His heartfelt presentation evades the usual ironic “indie guy covers rap hit” shtick by seeming actually to care about what he’s singing. You can hear the homage, but also the sound of something new and potentially “hott” in the parlance of our times.

Hott indeed.

There Goes My Baby - The Walkmen I was happy to see the Walkmen...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:18:00 -0400

There Goes My Baby - The Walkmen

I was happy to see the Walkmen pop up on Tumblr via Fred Wilson. I went to high school many of them in DC and remember listening to them in their previous incarnatations. I think I may even have that tape lying around here somewhere! Love their sound and happy to see them continue to make good music. Rock on.

fred-wilson:

There Goes My Baby - The Walkmen

It’s cover day again. And I’m going with another song from the Stubbs The Zombie videogame soundtrack. I’ve never played the videogame, but I’ve played the soundtrack a bunch.

Stone Temple Pilots @ Virgin Mobile Festival - 8/10/08

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:41:06 -0400

Stone Temple Pilots @ Virgin Mobile Festival - 8/10/08

‘No Me Dejan Salir’ by Charly Garcia: One of the...

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:31:00 -0400

‘No Me Dejan Salir’ by Charly Garcia: One of the Greatest Artists that I have ever heard

Charly Garcia is an Argentinian Rock God - one that my Chilean friend Sebastian was more than happy to introduce me to.

Awesome stuff. I recommend partaking in a bottle of Pisco during your listening, however either way you will be better for it.

John Mayer covering Jimi Hendrix - “Wait Till...

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:16:02 -0400

John Mayer covering Jimi Hendrix - “Wait Till Tomorrow” with Steve Jordan and Pino Pallidino in LA - from the live concert DVD “- Where the Light Is”

Steve Jordan and Pino Pallidino rock on this CD - too bad they are only playing one set of this three set show. Cool thing is there is a random NRBQ connection - Jordan and Joey Spampinato both played with Keith Richards on Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll - the documentary celebrating Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday….

this is a pretty good version of that Hendrix tune tho. New found respect for Jmayer.

This is how I feel these days

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:05:25 -0400

This is how I feel these days

Remembering George Carlin

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:36:41 -0400

Remembering George Carlin:

I remember listening to George Carlin in college. My friend Liz and I would crack each other up by doing George imitations of what he might say if he encountered the random life lessons that we would go through. Our make believe monologue always started out with

“In my day……we didn’t worry about X because of Y”

and we would always do it after a bunch of drinks and in that specificly special George Carlin voice. God Bless Him. He was a truly special and funny man - and I had the pleasure today of coming across a wonderful piece about him written by Chandler Travis - of Incredible Casuals, Chandler Travis Philharmonic and general Cape Cod fame. I both love and idolize Chandler for his amazing musical talent and general joie de vivre. It has been a blessing to be in Boston and get to see him play over these many months and I consider him a friend. His piece on George is great and if you loved George - you should read it.

What a great f’ing speech. Regardless of your political...

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:47:57 -0400

What a great f’ing speech. Regardless of your political leanings, this was an amazing one. Cannot wait till the convention!

"That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow NUANCE to divide us from one another The walls..."

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:46:31 -0400

“

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow NUANCE to divide us from one another

The walls between old allies on either side of the atlantic cannot stand

The walls between the countries with the most, and those with the least cannot stand

the walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and and Muslims and Jews cannot stand.

These now are the walls we must tear down

”

- Barack Obama in Berlin

Love the Random NightsAfter a good day’s work I ended up...

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:45:59 -0400

Love the Random Nights
After a good day’s work I ended up at at The Lizard Lounge where I saw Rose Polenzani play her wonderful music with Dinty Child (of Session Americana fame). Rose is awesome - and I fell in love with her voice after hearing her sing ‘Floppy Tulips’ on the Session Americana album ‘Tabletop People Vol 1&2’. So here’s the song - ‘Floppy Tulips’. Enjoy

"There’s something wrong about the system…. The money should go to people who..."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:30:11 -0400

“

There’s something wrong about the system…. The money should go to people who perform…..

Now, with the economics where they are, the consequences if you don’t evaluate that player, you can lose a significant amount of money…..

And that money is not going to players that are performing. It’s going to a player that never makes it in the NFL. And I think that’s ridiculous.

”

- Roger Goodell last week on the salary structure of rookies in the NFL. Is it fair? I’m not sure. Let’s put it in tech terms - these rookies have a functioning site/service, small set of beta users and a business plan. The business world might say that giving them a valuation similar to Google (TBRDY) is crazy. What if there is no proven business model - no real revenue save for advertising and they can’t scale? Hmmm……

Down the Rabbit Hole he goes

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:52:35 -0400

It is always a wonder when something hits the ‘tubes and it comes across your viewfinder for the first time.

Struck by its awesomeness, perhaps you then find yourself forwarding it to friends with a short note to check out the cool/profane/kitschy/novel/time-wasting/ site/video/picture/application/song/etc

Most often, you recieve multiple missives back excoriating you for not being ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ and not knowing that the site/video/picture/application/song/ came out in 1999.

In this case though, I think I found something pretty hip, NEW and cool.

Balsamiq definitely deserves its own writeup. But today’s post is about how the wonderful nature of Tumblr, the web and the power of comments within the conversation that help web explorers make discoveries.

Let me just say that I find it funny how I ended up at Peldi Guilizzoni’s baby.

So this is how it happened:

I was reading one of my favorite tumblogs this afternoon and catching up after being unplugged for a bit.
On this tumblog, I saw that Bijan had reblogged about the original on paper concept design of twitter (originally from bryc3) . Am in the midst of (re)imagining a new site/product/service and as always, inspiration is great.
There was a link from this reblog to more examples of paper design. I read this supplmental post - watched the video example (I suggest you do too) and then as I was about to close the Firefox tab on the page….decided to read the comments quickly.
Halfway through the page I found this comment:

Peldi Guilizzoni Jun 26th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Thanks for putting this collection together, you can just feel the author’s minds spinning and creative juices flowing. I love the prototyping phase of any project, and paper is where I always started, but then I built something that I like even better: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups - I now use it for mocking up all of my software. I’d love to hear your feedback on it. I tried really hard to give it the same feeling one gets when sketching things on paper, as well as making it as fast and flexible. In case you are wondering, all of the controls in it where hand-drawn (by my lovely wife) and scanned in.

Intrigued - I ventured onwards. I clicked on the link, went to the site and read the typical marketing text. At this point I decided to watch the video and play with the online demo.
10 minutes later I had forwarded the site to a friend - and to bring it full circle - followed Balsamiq on twitter. I think their service is pretty cool - and am going to try it out on my new project.

That I was able to find this cool new service that I think might speed up my brainstorming / time to production for our new little startup via browsing my favorite Tumblr blogs is really cool to me.

This is the wonderful nature of the web - and of Tumblr. Beyond the fact that Tumblr has made it so much easier for me to engage in that writing process - the reblog function helps us take great posts and pass them along with full attribution. And great on topic comments within good posts keep me venturing further down the rabbit hole - hopefully to the other side.