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April 01 EastboundIt's time. I am waiting to board my flight to Hong Kong en route to Shanghai. I cannot wait for the experiences that await me. And I pledge to finally update my space with my experiences and perspectives of living and working in what is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. And finally Jim will have a good reason to keep me on his blogroll rather than just cause I am always there when his watch says it's beer thirty. October 02 JavaScript Whiteboard DemoI took a cue from Jim Roos and decided to put together my own JavaScript demo. It's a JavaScript whiteboard that you can draw in. You can draw freeform, rectangles and circles. You can undo your changes, set color and even save drawings. The saved drawings are saved only in the DOM. I have currently no means of saving it on the server.
Here's a link to it: http://home.comcast.net/~vsardesai/whiteboard.htm
I built on top of Jim's JavaScript Graphics class. I made some mods to his class such as the ability to attach the Graphics class to an existing DOM element and also to be able to return a set of points drawn which is used for the undo functionlity. I also added a method to calculate the distance between two points on the canvas given their x and y co-ordinates.
September 25 Ask.com now has TV commercialsAsk.com has a TV commercial that I saw on NBC today. It seems they've redesigned their site and have gotten rave reviews, at least they had snippets from these "rave" reviews flash by on the screen during the commercial. Thier point is that you shouldn't just use Google just because you dont know any better.
I went over to ask.com and give it a try. Their site looks nice and clean (like most search sites do these days after Google's clean and simple UI was found to be preferred by users). Their results seem comparable to google/live. I dont know how relevant they are based on using it for 5 min. They have a very cool feature that lets you save links found in search results to something that they call My Stuff. I dont think google/live offer that. Live.com does let you drag and drop images from an image search onto a collection (just like in local.live.com).
It'll be interesting to see if people really switch to other search engines. Google brought with it a quantum leap in what search meant to users. Users are used to it and they really will continue using Google just because they may not know better. MSN Search was horrible only last year. But now, I find everything that I need on live.com and it really kicks ass. I know this and I use this because I work at Microsoft. How would other users out there discover this?
Maybe TV commercials is the right idea to get the PR machine running at full throttle! Only time will tell.
September 21 ResurfacedAfter a long hiatus, I've decided to jump start my space. Last night, I participated in my first podcast with my friends from work Jim Roos, Carlos Madrigal and Tze Lee. That's occasion enough to want to start posting. I was a guest for last night's show, but the guys think I am good enough to be a regular. You need to go to http://www.podcast404.com to download the episodes or you could just as subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. Mind you, the show is about nothing in particular. In fact we are quite proud of how we've succeeded in keeping it content-free. You never know what you'll get to hear.
Here's a picture of us before we started recording. My future's (as a podcaster) so bright that I gotta wear shades! November 18 Off to IndiaTonite I leave for Bombay. I havent been back there in more than 3 years. It's not that I decided not to make a trip. I did. Really, I did. But something came up. This time, it was all planned in advance and I am about 5 hours from leaving US soil. I have no idea what to expect. I keep hearing from people how much Bombay and India in general has changed. I am preparing myself for some culture shock in my own country. Actually I dont even know if it's my own anymore. I will like a foreigner there and I am a foreigner here in the US. I guess after a while you dont belong to a place but belong with people. Anywho, I gotta triple check my documents and stuff the fourth time now. I am going to keep this "Train of Thoughts" chugging along while I am in India with blog entries and lots of pictures.
August 20 Water, no ice pleaseWhen at a restaurant, ordering water without ice is "apparently" the Indian racial stereotype. I've had some funny experiences with this thing while ordering myself.
1. Once the waitress asked me, "why do all indian people ask for water without ice?". And then before I could answer, she tells me that someone told her it's cause there's NO ICE in India. Btw, there is ICE in India.
2. Another time at a Thai restaurant this waitress was asking me what I'd like to drink. I said water, to which she says, "No ice?". Meanwhile, another waitress has already showed up behind her with a glass of water without ice. When I ask for water with ice (one of the rare times that I did), both waitress giggle and return with my water with ice.
Now, I dont know why most Indian people get water without ice but personally the ice hurts my teeth. I could always drink it with a straw but water ceases to be enjoyable when consumed in that fashion. lol. The only thing I enjoy drinking with ice and without a straw is a scotch on the rocks.
I just thought, being Indian I had to say something about what seems to have become the Indian racial stereotype water-wise and also dispell any rumors that we cant make ice back in India. December 30 Lexus - Truly in pursuit of perfectionI am waiting at the Lexus of Stevens Creek Service Center near the San Jose airport. This facility is the best auto dealership facility I have ever seen. This place is just amazing. It has a wireless network for you to hook up laptops. Also, courtesy computers with broadband connection, so geeks like me can wait for however long they want you too..lol. (I couldnt resist blogging while I waited here). A big screen TV and it also has game consoles, PS I think. I love my car and I have almost always had a great experience at the dealership. Very good total ownership experience. Oh and btw, I am here, cause my CD player got the Error3 problem. It wont eject my CD. They are ordering me a new one, but I think I am just going to use my iPod in the car more often now.
December 26 Santana, El GrandeI got a chance to see Carlos Santana in concert this month and it was amazing. An ultimate treat to the senses. This was at Cisco's 20th Anniversary party at the HP Pavilion. My friend Ashim got a ticket for me. I couldnt thank him for this! Got to hear all the Santana classics; Black Magic Woman, Oye Como Va, etc. Also some of the newer hits from the SuperNatural album. That man is GOD. The rest of the band was pretty good too. Got to hear a lot of solos from other band members on the Saxophone, Keyboards, drums, etc. The band was tight and the vocals were pretty good too. After the concert, I was thinking of who else from the classic acts, I would have loved to see in concert. Dire Straits, Led Zepp and Pink Floyd are at the top of my list. Sadly, that's never going to happen! :-(
December 02 JatBar - Have you been there yet?So many times you want to get something to eat and you dont quite know where to go. And so you end up going to th same old subway down the street or some such place. Well, now you dont have to. Enter Jatbar.com. Jatbar is a restaurant review site (for the San Francisco Bay Area) that's been set up by two of my colleagues. It's a well done website with no ads. The owners are the main reviewers and there are a few Agent Reviewers including yours truly. There are about 200 or so restaurants already reviewed across a wide variety of cuisines. Go check it out right now!
Spaces rocks!So MSN Spaces is finally out there. I had been hearing about it for a while at work and now I can finally create my own Space. I dont plan on being a prolific blogger or anything, but this is a good "space" to point people to check out pictures that I might want to share. It looks pretty cool too. MSN is beginning to kick some ass. And that makes me quite happy, to say the least.
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