Life is beautiful

this pops up on fb every day

2011-09-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

XYZ degree/diploma: has been chosen as the (this is what gets your attention) TOUGHEST course among all d courses including B COM (yes, they even bothered to include it in the list of the 'TOUGHEST' courses ever),CA,IAS,IPS n MBBS; by d (holy shit!) Guinness Book of World Records, on (this is what makes it sound authentic maxx) 18Aug2011. It has 58 university exams+ 130 series exams + 174 assignments (that's why you love your degree so much no?) within 4......years (max 750 workings days) - (obviously you slogged out for all those 750 working days).

All random dudes post dis on ur wall 4 at least 2hrs (perhaps they ran some complex simulation program, being the recipients of the TOUGHEST degree ever, to come to this number of 2hrs) & b proud to be a spammer!.. :) finally someone realized our pain n effort! ;-) (encore.)

if you ever posted this, please note: i do sympathize, sometimes.

share trading is not entrepreneurial

2011-04-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

Recently some team members in IIT Madras' e-cell suggested that we start an online share trading platform. Might get us back on track with events.

It used to surprise me in my second year that not a single e-cell in India actually focuses on product development. Including the e-cells of all the IITs. Most of us have got into the rut of business plan competitions and then almost every year somebody (these-a-days more than some) comes ahead with the above idea.

Sure most of us might feel that entrepreneurship is very MBAish and since we often talk about funding and investors hence commodities trading and futures are the next logical extensions.

They really are not.

Entrepreneurship is about the thrill of starting a new company. Identifying a problem, an opportunity and then working towards solving it. And it's not all social either. Most of the companies are indeed aimed towards generating more revenues. And that is what a e-cell should try and work on. Any event which focuses on idea generation, product development, market analysis, customer identification, selling (read: selling your product. not derivatives), structuring a young company, expansion, bootstrapping etc. should be encouraged.

All of the above points involve you as an entrepreneur sweating it out for something you made or believed in. Not living of somebody else's work.

I do not personally have anything against share trading and some such. It is required that you understand it if you are investing in the market. Hell today one would be stupid to not spend some time learning that. But, that it not what entrepreneurship is about. We should not be educating institute students about something which has no relation with them being entrepreneurial. In fact a person who does not believe in creating something and rather enjoys building money from money should ideally never opt to become an entrepreneur.

I ideally should not be talking about this, since I am still no entrepreneur. But hearing the same stuff year after year, I wanted to put my thoughts down. And most of the actual entrepreneurs are way too busy to write down about such mundane stuff anyways :)

Let's leave such interesting events and initiatives for more interested orgs in our institutes, shall we?

Bloody recession

2010-03-11T04:48:00.001-08:00

-->Turn off your TV! - according to the plunging cable ratings, many of you already have.
-->Don't use that guzzling engine - the latest figures indicate that many of you already don't have a car.
-->Travel light, reduce the carbon footprint - new turist arrival rates indicate that any footprints would be welcome!

Now that's what i call a recession! Yeh.. :P

Dilbert

2009-09-09T09:46:00.001-07:00

Library

2009-09-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since i posted anything.

Evidence: this post comes from a few of my fb updates :P

Prof: "Please, the library isn't near the coffee outlet, it is the other way around!"

Speaking of library, its been ages i have been there for reading, and by the looks of it, i might never be going back there..

Google's starting another majaar project (the usual way => profits from search invested into another biz, which will definitely flop, or prove to be economically unviable)

Read about it: here

Die World Die!

2009-07-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Clarkson while testing the: Ferrari Enzo, Jaguar XJ220, Pagani Zonda, McLaren F1, Ferrari F40, Porche Carrera GT (all togeather)

"Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert......all that before they nicked all the oil in the world."

Obviously he got carried away a bit by the moment.. :D

The video link (watch after 2:10)

tagged

2009-07-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

Shruti: "There is this game that I have seen people play on the blogosphere, usually when they are out of topics to rant and rave about. Called Tag, it asks you to blog about something in particular, favorite songs, disastrous dates etc and then you pass the baton on, asking others to do the same. The rules of this one are as follows:
“Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag up to 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose” "

Whatever. I, like my preceder, stick with books.

Now all that I have done in this internship of mine, is read. Read books, articles, presentations, papers and ocasionally write. So here goes my list of 15 books:

The Toyota Way: The ultimate book, if you want to understand what's the future of making stuff (i hate the word mfg.) and why toyota beat the brains out of GM, Ford, Chrysler, Renault and later even BMW, Merc, Jaguar etcetera..
Reality Check: Two words: Guy Kawasaki. The guy's brilliant, and his writing is 'brillianter' still. Explains everything abt entrepreneurship: from getting that billion dollar idea, to getting those first 1000 bucks as investment to finally managing ur own MNC. In his own words, hes a 'kick butt'
Angels and Demons: Mast fast pace thriller. Da Vinci's nthing in comparison.
Twenty Years After: From the romances of D'Artagnan, this is a very mature book about court intrigues in 17th century France. Reality dips in every line, nothing fancy, still classy.
Three Musketeers: An age old classic. Focuses on brawn more than brains. Still works because of all the honour that the musketeers attach to their words.
Lord of the Rings: Guess this should come very high in the list. HP is nothing in comparison. A very long and tiring read indeed, but the world is so carefully built, u cant help but be engrossed. PS: the level of detail. The bloke's invented languages for this, and comes with very detailed history about every tom, dick and harry (and there are several of them) that pops up in his world..
Harry Potter saga: Problems - logical inconsistencies, crappiest ending ever, every blokes already read it, analyzed it, re-read it, saw the movie, read the fan-fiction, read extra details, and a few also know more than the author.
Godfather: the book makes an offer, you cannot refuse :)
Da Vinci Code: loved it more for the historical stuff then the storyline
Sherlock Holmes: THE best detective of all times. But ofcourse, he always knows the answer, so seems far-fetched..
Brave New World: is kinda scary..
The Alchemist: transporta you to a different world altogeather
Dracula: rocks
The Dilbert Future: read it, re-read it.
Right Ho, Jeeves: u need to read P.G.Wodehouse to understand why he is considered by many as the best comedy writer of all times. The loyal Jeeves always rushes in the dying moments to save the day. Reminds u of O'Henry style of sudden change.

That's it. My part's done. I was tagged by Shruti I inturn tag: Mamme, Bhondu, DAS, Arbit, Modda, Robo, Damroo, Nichoda.

ur intern

2009-07-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

(for ganga 10th wing junta, wing wraiths)

post ur comments here

design in depression

2009-07-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

flicked this from Bruce Nussbaum's blog, who flicked it from the guys at Smart Design.

the best designs eras came in after all the historic recessions. we are heading for one now? the pic has iphone at our pointing towards a shift in design thinking..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40496231@N05/3727174110/sizes/o/

milliondollarhomepage.com

2009-07-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

Ever heard about things which are cool and appaling at the same time? No, obviously (well apart from sach ka saamna.. and umm.. rakhi ka svayamvaar.. and umm.. big boss.. ..)

Neways, stumbled on this articles on wired.com.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/posts.html?pg=2

Some bloke's just uploaded a blank page with no content and decided to sell the pixels on the page. And guess what.. people bought all the million pixels on his page!

check his page: www.milliondollarhomepage.com

connecting the dots

2009-07-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

..steve jobs called all the events in our life as small dots

used to think that most of these small events are after all insignificant in the long run. but then hit upon this literal analogy:

"its easy to discount these events or dots as small and insignificant when they are the all important links that make up the chain. its simply difference in viewing stuff..a simpler way to understand this difference is
you can have an infinity of dots in a simple line. hence, dots are insignificant. but all it takes to form that line, is 2 dots. and 2 of those, from that infinity of dots, are more than enough to form the same line." ................

open source != freeware

2009-07-13T11:22:00.001-07:00

i am doing my summer project on the topic of 'Open Innovation'. that brings me in touch with a lot of stuff like 'open source', 'freeware', 'outsourcing', 'core-competencies', 'creative commons' etc etc

wanted to hammer out my views on the following somewhere:

-->open source is a nice concept, but a concept which cannot be really copied in any other industry (products more so).

--> freeware is either:

-> an idea whose time never was, and is of the nobodies, by the idiots, for the selfish.

{{Obviously I use freewares. Why not use a freebee when somebody is throwing it like that? (ok, wont call them idiots probably..)}}

->or A cunning business strategy, next only to companies which allow piracy initially to gain mass markets later, because nobody can really go back.

-->IP regime (patents, trademarks, copyrights) rocks.

a thesis?

2009-06-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

me: heres my guide to entrep. :

u have an idea
u make a design
u make a prototype
u figure out whether it can be sold to any ass
u make some more prototypes
(or)
u explain ur idea to a friend, family or a fool (or it can be an investor alternatively)
u get some dough
u make some more protypes
u sell them
u earn loads
u live happy

sounds good?

6:21 PM DAS: sounds fake

good work always goes without credit :X

adjusting to an interim life

2009-05-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Finally peace.... the sound of it ... ... ...
...
...

....

Well, i give up. It is pretty dumb. Holidays are boring. Period.

This article's pretty late, damn late. Much has happened in between yawns: stanford trip, exams, nite outs, cup with interns, then some intern, giving up, taking up, a new team and so on..

Let me try and summarize all of that for the legions of my followers (under construction that) :P

1)ASES stanford summit: defintely the biggest surprise for me last semester. the surprise came in several parts. the first one was in me getting selected, the second one was when i got funded, third one was when i actually landed in san fransisco, next one was when i landed in the campus and the final one was the summit itself :D

for those who dont know about it, ASES is a stanford based student organization, which is acting as an evangelist of the "silicon valley way" in Asian economies, or let's just call it entrepreneurship. They are trying to spread it as a way of life in Asian countries by opening their chapters in places where they will have the most impact: universities and schools. Annually they organize several events and lectures in these countries through their sub chapters + 2 annual summits. The main summit is the one which happens in Stanford University during April. It's a week long summit, and they invite delegates from all their sub chapters for this. Needless to say i got lucky this time (otherwise u would be reading a bored report of IPL instead of this..)

Neways, now they dont fund these trips, and so all the delegates are left to fend for themselves.. :( All of us, once we came to know about our selection (6 of us from IIT M) starting attacking companies, PE/VC firms, philanthropic orgs, HNWI's, ur neighbourhood Joe and anybody we could lay our hands on.. And needless to say, everybody dissapointed us. It was indeed very hard for us to make them realize that parting with a couple of lakhs for students is a GOOD thing indeed. So, please try and understand my surprise when finally somebody did step forward to bail out us guys. An IIT B alum helping IIT M guys!! Let's call him the 11th hour samaritan.

So, we were on our way to California, courtesy him. Then we landed in SFO. And here was our next surprise. There were no caucasians, anywhere.

California has to have atleast 50% asians, and i havent even started talking about latinos, for such a view. It's all Indians, Chinese, Japanese and so on everywhere. Who took away the white-man? Apparently, he left on his own accord, so that the American economy could have a massive Asian pillar. California has to be also the richest state in USA. Every damn IT company, and every start-up worth his/her salt are there. They ARE running the show for the states as it tries to pull itself out of the depression caused by the financial giants in New York and the hawks in Washington.

The summit team was there to recieve us on the airport, and guided us on the bus for Stanford. After a couple of mishaps, and a lot of mess we finally landed in Stanford. And here was another surprise.

We thought our campus at 650 acres was massive. Well, then gigantic is not the correct word even as you start describing the 100 year old Stanford campus. At 8,000 acres (yes, 8,000) it's world's second largest campus, and one of the oldest in the states. It's spread out (obba), confusing, and is a self-reliant town in itself. Infact, once the campus came up, a small town sprung up nearby, to support the campus. Called, Palo Alto, it is now the third most expensive place in the world, and home to every IT company in the world.

And that leads me precisely to what the summit was all about. It wasn't about attending lectures, or panel discussions, or even the much publicized company visits. and nor am i gonna delve into them. check the summit website for all of that. i would rather prefer to talk about the reason for the summit.

It was about the feel of the valley. Through their honest attempts, the summit team tried to convey us just that. In stanford, entrepreneurship is indeed a way of life, what with every second or third guy starting up on his own. Also, they have all the supporting system required for taking such risks. Profs are multi-millionaires there and have become part time investors because of all the money they have earned. Students with good ideas simply need to talk to a nice prof, he will take care of the rest. Connecting to a good investor, scheduling their studies, all that a good prof will help in. And, they have a pedigree to look upto. Google, Adobe, Apple, Dell, Orkut, Intel, Nvidia, SUN, Cisco, Intuit, Facebook etc etc all started up in Stanford, and are now happily settled in Palo Alto. We here don't have such great examples to look upto..

Anyways, all in all the summit was a great experience for me. It did change me in very subtle ways, and taught me something which I always knew: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish ;)

This was a long post (by my standards), will try and hammer down something about the rest of April, some time soon..

Month's updates in a nutshell

2009-03-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

Since I have been pretty inactive for the past 1 month (or more) lemme try and squeeze it all in this 1 post.

Saarang got over
Nothing happened
Quiz 1 got over
I got raped
Got my passport
IITM won Robocon
Got my visa
Had my first interviews. Dint speak as much as I could have, could not convey enough, had my inhibitions...basically cupped :(
ELECTIONS! majority wins ;)
Genesis gets a new look
The websites get a new look
Events in disarray. Team to the rescue!
.......

antithesis at its prime

2009-01-22T01:45:00.000-08:00

i guess i started off all wrong for the first post.

for a blog titled "Life is Beautiful" its not a great idea to start with a post which says "its a sad day"...

so to move away from this seemingly depressing state of mine, let me explain why i chose the above title:
its from "godfather". last words of vito corleone, as he lay dying in michael's arms. now dont start thinking that its again some depressing sentence. it wasn't. the entire thing is so well done, the scene, the ambience (you can visualize it all in your mind), the mood, the position in which the godfather leaves the world, what he made and what hes left.. really leaves you mesmerized. indeed as michael later says, that if you can leave the world saying the same sentence, then what the heck, all the troubles now dont matter.

tragic reminders

2009-01-22T01:42:00.000-08:00

i did not think that it could be more bad, as i wrote the last post.

it is.

as my dear friend robo reminds me it's already day 1 and not day 0 of saarang. guess i have lost track of time too.. :(

neways on a brighter side, only 5 days to go..

genesis of a blog...hmm

2009-01-22T01:31:00.000-08:00

My first post..

It's a sad day, this.

Saarang day 0. And here I am in my room whiling away my time, trying to write down something which will be MY first post in MY first ever blog. And what's the idea coming in my mind? "its a sad day!" .. indeed.

I have been never so vetti in my life. 6 solid days stand ahead of me and all i have got to do, is nothing. for the first time ever i have got nothing to do when the entire insti has immersed itself in tons of work. whatever it has been in the past, shaastra or saarang, or even genesis, i have been able to find some work and have kept myself busy. even during times when the days were officialy declared as "vetti days" somebody, somewhere gave me some work. last saarang i was in a similar state, being not so literally inclined, but at the last moment dharik saved me and made me a vol. it was not to be so this year. and the problem is that i cant blame anybody. it was me, that consciously avoided getting myself involved with any work. dont know why i wanted to be vetti during saarang....