Happy Halloween 2007

Wish you all a very Happy Halloween 2007. We celebrated Halloween at Kosmix this morning and it was lot of fun. Besides the usual monster/scary looking costumes, there were few really innovative costumes - Raavan, Facebook, Myspace, Sushi, American Dude 2, iPhone etc. I was surprised by the efforts people put in for dressing up. I was very lazy to do anything special for the day and I took the same mask that I am using for the last three Halloweens :-). Btw, I borrowed this mask from my roommate at Stanford few years ago. So, I don't know how many Halloweens this mask has celebrated ;-)

Please check out the photographs below or online album. It was a great event for Kosmix as everybody came together after a long time to celebrate Halloween 2007. Kosmix is really a fun place to work for!

Outside our office

Cool dudes

Note: I am wearing a red mask in the middle of the picture.

View more pictures here

Jalebi - the vintage ad of 1990s

Vaibhav, Nihir, Janhavi, Aditya, Vivek and I went to Sunnyvale temple today to celebrate Dussehra. I was surprised by the turnout of the people at the temple - around 300 people during the lunch time. We waited for 30 mins in the queue for the 'free' food. The wait was well worth it as the food was really delicious. The way Janhavi asked me for 'extra' Jalebi reminded me of the kid in the classic Dhaara Oil ad of 1990s. It is among my favorite TV ads along with Cadbury's ads.

 

Look at the new ad when the original kid (Krish Chawla) is tempting his little brother with Jalebis (please forward the first minute of this video. There is some problem in the uploaded file):

 

Few other memorable TV ads - a trip down memory lane:

Cadbury's Chocolate
I love you Rasna
'Vicks ki Goli lo'
Fevicol Ad
Preity Zinta's Perk Ad

If you have link to some other classic ad, please send me the link and I will post it here. Thanks!

Think Different

A classic video from the most innovative company in the technology industry in the last three decades. Can you guess the name??? If you don't get it, check out the last few seconds of this video!

Check out making of "Think Different" video also.

What is the relationship between 14khz music and Google?

  Can anyone guess the relationship between 14 KHz music and Google? I know it is a weird question. We can certainly use Google to find the music (most often free!) but can we find it's "frequency"? I found the answer to this question on Kevin Kelly's blog today.

According to Wikipedia, frequency is the measurement of the number of occurrences of a repeated event per unit of time.  Therefore, frequency can be calculated as (# of occurrences) / (total time taken).

 

Total # of seconds in a year:
Seconds in a day = 24 hrs * 60 mins * 60 sec = 86,400 sec
Seconds in a year = 86,400 sec * 365 days = 31.536 million

Total # of Google searches in a year worldwide:
# of Google searches / month = 37.1 billions (according to Comscore)
# of Google searches / year = 37.1 b * 12 = 445.2  b

 

So, frequency of search = 445.2b /31.563m = 14110 or 14.11k. This means that people conduct 14.11 searches every second in a year.

If every Google user clicks on the mouse / keyboard button for searching, then the sound that will be produced will be of 14khz. Hence, the relationship of 14khz and Google :-).

Based on similar lines, frequency of total web search is 23 KHz (Comscore reports that total web search per month is ~61 billions).

Stanford Reunion in San Francisco

On Friday night, I met lot of my old friends from MS&E at Stanford - class of 2005 and 2006. I am in touch with few friends and meet them quite regularly. However, I was happy to see Arthur whom I have never met in the last two years. I was outside the country when he graduated in 2005 and after that, I didn't get a chance to meet him as he was working in Amsterdam. He is one of the most intelligent yet modest person I have ever met - no wonder why he got the best student award for 2005. I wish him all the success in his new life as PhD student. I hope Kenny (another PhD student) and Arthur can solve lot of energy problems that we are facing today :-).

It's great to know that everybody is doing so well in their career after graduating from Stanford. Here is one of the photographs that we took after the dinner at Grand Pu Bah in San Francisco.

People from left to right (I forgot few names):

Front row: Ankit, Caroline, ...
Middle row: Oznur, Ankur. Vaibhav, Maher, Juliette, Susan, Rami
Back row: Arthur, Kenny, Abeer, Aman, Jon, Sameer, Abid

Few more pictures - 1, 2, 3 and 4

Btw, I should thank Maher for taking initiative in organizing this get-together. He is an awesome guy and fun to talk to. One thing that I really like about him is his smile!

One paragraph that explains life!

I received an email from Vinod Uncle today and I was quite moved by the message of the email. I am including the full content here:

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983. From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed:

"Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease"?

To this Arthur Ashe replied:

The world over -- 5 million children start playing tennis, 500 thousand learn to play tennis, 50 thousand learn professional tennis, 5,000 come to the circuit, 500 reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals,

When I was holding a cup I never asked GOD "Why me?".

And today in pain I should not be asking GOD "Why me?"

The email ends with a wonderful short poem:

Happiness keeps u Sweet,
Trials keep u Strong,
Sorrow keeps u Human,
Failure Keeps u Humble,
Success keeps u Glowing,
But only God Keeps u Going.....

Keep Going.....

"The Keg Party"

Yesterday, Nihir, Janhavi, Gaurav and I organized a beer party at our house! It was a special party because Nihir discovered that Heineken has started selling five liters keg. He can come up with any excuse for drinking :-) Appropriately, he named the party as "The Keg Party".

Lot of people showed up for the party and as expected, beer flowed freely. By the time, we finished up (around 4am), 12-15 liters of beer were over. There was Diet Coke for people like me who don't drink alcohol and lot of snacks - samosas from Rajjot Sweets & Snacks, crackers, chips etc.

Some people played poker where Poker pro (Nihir) lost all his money and Abhas made lot of money (thanks to beginner's luck). There was intense political discussion going on the sides. Although I was busy playing games on Sony Play Station, I heard words like World War II, India-Pakistan War etc. I don't know who started the discussion but Vivek was completely bored by this. Janhavi was in awesome form and she was easily winning in the fighting game on our PS2. I guess her boxing lessons helped her - she is pro in boxing and once gave a bloody nose to her boxing coach.

For people who couldn't join us last night: we will organize another party soon. We hope to see you in our next beer bash!