Category: Uncategorized

A few years ago, I started running again and recently I’ve been pushing myself on both distance and speed. So some recent running data points:
1) Houston Half Marathon 2012, Jan 2012: this was painful, but I managed to eke out 10 minutes a mile– slightly slower than my Houston Half Marathon 2011 run, which was about 9:50.
2) Houston Rodeo Fun Run (10k), Feb 2012: personal record for the 10k at about 54:40 — about 8:50 pace!
3) Woodlands Half Marathon, March 2012: personal record for the half marathon at 2:02:03 — about 9:19 pace!

So I’m getting faster… Going to start doing weekly sprint workouts that will hopefully help me increase my pace even further.

As I was pulling into my office yesterday, I saw a bunch of these machines removing old railroad ties and replacing them with new ones. I thought the machines were pretty cool so I stopped and took a video. If you have children who like interesting specialized machines, show it to them!

I ran the Houston half-marathon yesterday and here’s an obvious idea that came to me: photographs should be crowd-sourced!

With more than 20,000 runners, I’d estimate there are probably 5,000 to 10,000 cameras shooting photographs from the sidelines– the friends and family of the runners.  The Chevron Houston Marathon should host a site where people can upload their photographs and the site would have the needed bib number recognition software to tag the photographs and make them searchable by bib#. How hard can that software be?

And the Cheveron Houston Marathon could do a *ton* of things with the photographs that are taken, for the purposes of marketing and promoting the race… Give runners the option of linking their marathon registration with their Facebook accounts and runners could check a box to allow the Marathon to post photographs of them.

And while we’re talking about it, why can’t the race organizers do a live stream of the entire run and also tie-in bib-number recognition so people can watch their friends and family run from home, from their iPhones, etc.?  Maybe a harder technical problem and a harder problem from an infrastructure standpoint (ie you’d have the codec problem of supporting all viewing platforms, and in general it’s harder to build an at scale video sharing site than a photo sharing website), but for similar reasons, it’s worth doing.

Maybe the future? Certainly a bold experiment.

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

At the same time, this is in France where the work week is legally limited to 35 hours.

I frequently make international phone calls for personal stuff and work.

And AT&T really gets you if you want to make such calls over the mobile phone network. Here are some examples of AT&T’s international calling rates:

• India – $0.32 / minute or $3.49 / minute
• United Kingdom – $0.28 / minute or $1.69 / minute
• Germany – $0.26 / minute or $1.66 / minute

Sooo, what’s the best solution? First, let me say that there are 1,001 ways to get the job done. There are calling cards, callback services, Skype, Reliance CallIndia and everything in between.

What’s worked really well for me is my Google Voice account with the Google Voice iPhone app because:
1) The rates are low
2) Calls are made using the voice network so they’re good quality
3) It’s integrated with the iPhone contacts directory, so it’s easy

Here’s how to set it all up:

1) sign up for a google voice account at http://voice.google.com (be sure and choose the option to have it do more than replace your voicemail)

2) add your mobile phone to your google voice account (this is a simple process that will involve google voice calling you and your entering a 2 digit code)

3) now over to your iPhone… Install the google voice app (get it here). Sign in with your google account and assign a number to your phone.

4) add numbers you frequently dial from your iPhone phone book to the app’s “quickdial” menu.

5) now tap the number you want to call and you’re done!

Apart from the good call quality and convenience of being able to use your iPhone’s direcory, Google Voice’s rates are cheap. Examples:

• India – $0.02 / minute
• United Kingdom – $0.02 / minute to $0.24 / minute
• Germany – $0.02 / minute or $0.10 / minute

Once you start using the service, you’ll need to add some $$ to your Google Voice account– do that from the web-based interface. Enjoy!

I’ve long wondered why more people don’t mimic the Daily Show formula of combining real news with satire, sarcasm and comedy? Why couldn’t this be applied (to great success) in lots of other areas of news from celebrity gossip to local news to finance?

Along these lines, I read with some interest a few weeks ago that former TechCrunch writer Paul Carr’s new company’s first publication “The New Gambit” is going to try to do exactly this:

Our first publication, launching in January 2012 will be ‘The New Gambit’, a weekly news magazine that’s maybe best described as “the Economist as written by the Daily Show”. In other words, it’ll tell you everything you need to know (and maybe even think) about the week’s events, but it’ll make you laugh your ass off while it’s doing it. link

It seems every so often, I have friends that are headed to Delhi for a vacation and I’m giving them the same tips about places to shop at, eat at, etc. So here’s a permanent place on the web that I can point tp in future such situations.

NOTE: this list was put together by my amazing elder sister, Anu (who I would link to if she started a blog like I’ve been telling her to for the past 10 years… Anu, start a blog!). The shopping suggestions are expert-level, while the food and things to do lists are pretty sparse.

Shopping
1. N-Block Market in Greater Kailash I
* Mens Clothes at Ravi Bajaj
* Fab India – cotton textiles for whole family
* Corner Store- great book store and coffee shop
* Various home furnishing stores
* Anokhi–very vera bradley like (or it’s probably more accurate to say vera bradley now does stuff that’s very anokhi-like). Pencil cases, clothes, bedding, etc. Also will have a limited selection of dresses for the girls that can double as swimsuit coverups.

2. DLF Promonade and Emporio
* Couture US and European shops–not worth shopping at b/c luxury tax is 30% in India
* Book Stores with story times for kids
* Ritus for very cute western tunics and what not
* Kidology for high end kids wear (price points similar to expensive in the US but some very cute ethnic outfits–more western focused)
* Various for chappals, glasses (Dayal optical is located here and they are the ones in Delhi to go to for prescription glasses)
* DON’T MISS THIS BECAUSE IT IS LIKE A MALL IN THE STATES AND VERY KID FRIENDLY with range in price, quality, and look

3. Santushti
* Art
* Home Furnishings
* Clothes (go to Ogan)

4. Khan Market
* Kids Clothing shops–I cannot remember the names
* There’s also a Fabindia and Anokhi here
* This is supposedly Asia’s most expensive retail space per square foot!

5. Crescent
* Indian Couture/Designer outfits–Designers like Satya Pal, Manish Arora, Rohit Bal, Ritus, Musafar Ali, etc.

6. South Extention
* Heritage – best selection of kurta pajamas for men in Delhi

7. Cottage Emporium in Connaught Place
* Handicrafts from all over India that are authentic with govt controlled pricing. Great place to buy little trinkets for kids friends also have a wonderful selection of furniture, tables etc. Kids will enjoy this tremendously–ours did.
* Also a great place to get art pieces for your home, whether it’s a sculpture or a painting.

Things to do:

* Take kids to Delhi (Dilli) Hut–out door mela with stalls of handicrafts. KIDS WILL LOVE THIS. Ours went numerous times.
* Walk at India Gate at Night
* Rashtrapati Bhavan
* …various Delhi sights

Food:
Zest at DLF Emporio (great place to go as a couple–you can take kids, but I would go for an earlier dinner)
Manre

All the five stars have good food….I’m a bit dated in this department b/c things have changed so much. The two I have mentioned were wonderful! Old places that are tried and true:

1. Maurya Sheraton
2. Taj on Mansingh Road
3. Oberoi
4. Aman
5. Imperial

The grand opening of Tesla’s Houston Store is happening this weekend! Saturday October 22 from 10am to 9pm and Sunday October 23 from 11am to 7pm.

I have a Tesla Model S on reserve and I’m 1500 on the waiting list of 5000. I’m glad to see them launching a presence in Houston because it should eventually mean they’ll have some service infrastructure here. If you’re interested in learning more, I toured the new Tesla factory in Fremont a few weeks ago.

Flyer shown below…