The Soapbox

As usual, it’s been another long break before i decided to fire up Windows Live Writer and post an update on what’s been happening for the handful of you that care.

First off, today’s my/our 1st anniversary.  It means my wife Ritu and I have gone through 1 entire year of marriage.  It’s been an exciting first year for us and we’ve made the most of it.  Since we tied the knot (this literally happens in Hindu marriages), we’ve experienced an entire year of occasions.  This may seem trivial (and it may end up being so), but for newlyweds, it means that you know exactly how your partner treats various events.  I know what to dodge and what to look forward to every year now!  The good news for me is that I’ve yet to add items to the prior list.  A debatable topic I know…

We’re also moving to San Francisco in March!  I remember going to school in Austin and telling myself that I’d want to settle down in the Bay Area once out of college - and now it’s finally happening.  The Bay Area rocks because you really are just a few hours from any kind of terrain- hills, mountains, plains, coast, etc.  The people are outgoing, and there are a lot of smart folks to bump into. 

What am I doing in San Francisco?  I’m joining a cool little startup called SocialMedia Networks that is building the next generating social advertising network.   I’m excited because I’ll be able to work with some smart people, learn from them, and build something along the way.  It’s a grand departure from what I’ve been doing for the past few years - running a web development company out of India but I’m looking forward to the new experience nonetheless since startup culture is a lot like working on your own but sharing the challenges with others who are willing to take them on with you.  Startups mean wearing lots of hats, dabbling in many mediums and adapting. 

What does this mean as far as this blog goes?  I think it means having more time to do so!  Let’s see if I prove myself right…

By fluke or some strange stroke of luck, I was contacted by a journalist who writes for the Economic Times about social networking and platforms that are being built on this concept.  I got a tiny mention of my name in there which you can read by clicking here.  Disclaimer: There is no Raj Niyogi.  In fact, there is no Roj Niyogi.  It’s just plain simple Surojit.

The irony?  I was contacted about the story because I maintain this blog.  Guess I should keep writing even though I end up publishing no more than 10 stories the entire year.

Every once in a while, while browsing the Internet I bump into something that makes me go “Neato!”  Not because it’s a novel idea or anything but because it combines the benefits of technology and innovation with the practicality of it’s fruits for a specific purpose.  Simply put, there are some ideas that are undeniably good.  The cell phone was a good invention. 

In this case, it is the MapmyIndia Navigator - a GPS instrument specifically for the Indian traveler.  Now, I really wouldn’t give two sh*ts for such a device in the US.  It just doesn’t mean too much to me - I am not on an expedition and most of the US has been discovered already.  I go to Google or Yahoo Maps, puch in the destination, print the directions and I’m off.  This help along with the nice and visiable street signs everywhere really is all I need to get to where I need to be.  In India? Forget it! 

No signs, few straight roads, and (for me) few English-speaking rickshaw drivers willing to tell me how to get anywhere.  Granted, I don’t drive in India yet (I have yet to learn to drive manual) - it still upsets me that there’s virtually no logic to how roads are laid in India.  Calcutta is a labyrinth of windy roads that intersect with themselves; you truly feel you aren’t getting anywhere. 

So a GPS device makes the MOST sense on roads like this with conditions I described above.  Almost as useful as a cellphone, I love the idea of being able to turn this puppy on and be my divining rod to where I need to be.  It’s a little bit on the expensive side at INR 21,000+ (although with no subscription fees to use it) but as an early adopter I can see how this could easily pay itself off - especially as one who believes that time is money. 

More about the MapmyIndia Navigator here.

A client sent a docx file.  OpenOffice couldn’t open it.  My old version of MS Office couldn’t open it.  I thought - what the hell is this thing?  Google searched and found it to be the new format used by default in MS Word 2007.  Piece of shit.

Fortunately, I ran across Zamzar.com which is one really neat file conversion site.  Way to go web services!

Every once in a while, I come across something I think is just too good to not worth jumping back on this blog and giving two thumbs up.  In this case, it’s Gliffy.com which is a lightweight diagramming tool like Visio.  Following the 80/20 rule to the max, you get the 20% of features in Visio in Gliffy that you would have probably used 80% of the time.

In the age of Software-as-a-Service, I felt absolutely comfortable cracking open my wallet and putting down $20 for 1 year of diagramming goodness with this web application.  If you’re looking for a quick and painless way of creating wireframes and can’t stand bloatware (read: the stuff you install on your PC that takes 10 seconds to load and eats up 100MB of memory), try Gliffy and you won’t be disappointed.

First it was “hella” and now it seems this has been replaced by “or whatnot”.  What am I speaking of you ask?  Well, if you’re from California you may - at least the Northern parts. 

I remember going to school at UC Davis freshman year in 1998 and hearing every other person use the term “hella”.  “Did you see that new Limp Bizkit video?  That was HELLA cool!”  Having just moved from Texas, it rang in my ears - I was just too used to “y’all”. 

I visited the Bay Area last month and it was then a different word that started to ring - “whatnot”.  “Whatever” is now out-of-date I guess.  Make a statement and then append “or whatnot” to the end and you are a bona fide Californian.

Disclaimer to offended residents of California: This is a purely an observation although I could be hella wrong or whatnot. Forgive me if this is the case!

I finished The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini) while on the plane from Frankfurt to San Francisco last week and had been meaning to post my two cents on what I consider to be a real problem in the increasingly small world we live in today.

I consider myself a fairly open-minded well-traveled person - I’ve been living in India for over 3 and a half years now and have lived in Saudi Arabia and Switzerland.  I’m open to fresh cultural understanding based on my observations and how those I meet tell it to me. 

Reading this book however humbled me in a sense that I can only attempt to explain here.  I’m extremely poor at writing long and in-depth posts on whatever comes to my mind but here’s what I discovered:

20-somethings (including myself) and teenagers of this era understand Afghanistan to be a war-torn region with little to no history worthy of reckoning.  We hear of Karzai and post-Taliban reform and restructuring but most of of us fail to realize what Afghanistan might have been like before the Taliban entered.  The Kite Runner paints a vivid picture of this and humanizes the country and essentially validate the appropriate existence and residence of so many Afghani Americans living the US today.  I wonder how many must stay turtle-shelled simply to avoid having to tell the story of what it really was like decades ago and how Afghanistan != (programming speak for “not equal to”) Taliban. 

Afghanistan (and I believe Iraq in the same way) are peculiar countries to have story settings simply because of the media stigma attached to each. 

Embarrassingly, a lot of folks in my family in Kolkata watch this show called Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.   This is probably the most convoluted soap-opera/show on the planet - immortal grandmothers, miraculous recoveries from accidents, etc.   Fortunately, I don’t know enough Hindi to understand most of it. 

Instead, I can only hear the annoyingly thunderous sound track that just does not stop for the duration of the show.  

Searching on Wikipedia, I managed to land on the page for the show.   Read it yourself and tell me that’s just plain hash-smoking material.   Amazing so many people follow that show so closely - no matter how conservative their personal views may be!

I am simply testing whether or not this new Windows Live Writer utility works. 

Yahoo reports that Michael Bloomberg leaves the GOP. 

The article discusses what this means if Bloomberg were to run for President - especially how it impacts the possibilities of another Republican or Democrat President.  My take?  Anyone would be better than Bush!  I’m particularly disenchanted with American politics right now - the last 8 years have proven one thing in my opinion: American is one very resilient country and can take a beating and still survive.

I’ve lived outside American for over 3 years and I hear constant criticism of America’s foreign policy and the Man Behind The Plan (read: George Bush).   I believe that a new player (whether a Democrat, Republican, or independent candidate) will do absolutely fine.  I’ll be fine too.