Sachin Agarwal: February 2005

The coolest ones here are the new 6gb mini, and the 30gb photo. 30GB is perfect for me since I have 25gb of music, and with a new cable apple is shipping next month you can download pictures from your camera and view them immediately on the ipod. And the new 30gb is a single platter hard drive so it's thinner and lighter then previous models.

Here's an article about how evil ad companies have figured out how to get around popup blockers in web browsers. So all of a sudden pop ups are popping up again! Hopefully the browsers will be updated to stop this soon.

To sumamrize the current state of spam in my life:
Safari popup block (hopefully updated soon)
PithHelmet which blocks almost all the ads on web pages, banners, etc. Websites looks totally different (better) without all the ugly ads around them
TiVo for ad-free TV
Netflix for ad-free movies
Phone spam: Dave recently gave me the idea for telemarketers. Talk to them for a minute, then tell them to hold as you "talk to your wife" and then go back to sleep/work. Wastes a few cell phone minutes, but so worth it.
Snail mail spam: I've started filling business reply mail envelopes with random crap and sending it back to the credit cards (with the blank application so they know it's from me)

Finally, I think it's interesting that Mac OS Rumors is asking for donations to reduce the amount of advertising on their sites.

I have always wanted a system where you can click a small icon on a website you enjoy to donate $0.25 or whatever. I would rather do that than look at banners. Sadly, I don't think they could actually make enough money that way.

Infineon Raceway: Another great track event at Infineon Raceway. It's great living in the Bay Area so close to good driving tracks. It's sorta strange at 6am when you're driving to the track and there are too many racecars on the road for it to be normal.

Overall it was a great day with lots of track time. I am improving and almost ready to move up to group 3. Two things I need to work on are shifting more aggressively in order to go faster, and accelerating through turns strategically so I can pass cars with more horsepower than me.

Rose Floats 2005: On New Year's Day we went to see the floats after the Tournament of Roses parade. I stopped watching the parade many years ago, but you really have to see the floats up close to appreciate their beauty and all the time people put into them.

Chris' birthday: Chris' 25th birthday party at Newcastle, including a Karaoke machine!

Weekly dinner: Pictures from a weekly dinner Aki, Nikhil, Becca and I do.

Becca's birthday: Pictures from Becca's 25th birthday party in Walnut Creek.

SF trolley drinking: Al's friend Dan's birthday. They rented a trolley and we went drinking all over San Francisco.

Apple pictures: Other random pictures of Apple that I took recently.

Macworld 2005: A few pictures from Macworld 2005.

Cousins in SF: My cousin, Manish, and his wife, Swati, visit SF.

Berkeley Dance Competition: We went to an Indian Berkeley Dance competition in the city, and then drinking afterwards. We were a couple tickets short. Luckily the hand stamps were "transferrable"

San Luis Obispo: My dad just got back from India so I went to visit him in SLO. All his stories make me want to go back so bad. He's learning to play the guitar! Living 6 months in India, 6 months in SLO. It's perfect.

Founder's Day 2005: Phi Psi Founder's Day dinner at the Phi Psi house at Stanford.




I used iPhoto and these directions to print this 20x30 poster of 98 of my best pictures.

George Dicker directed me to this.

Go to Google Images and search for "Noe Valley." Check out the fifth image.

Or just click here.

Today Google released Google maps. It's really cool. The maps are by far the nicest of any site out there, your route outline is easy to read, and you can zoom and move the map very easily. And it's really, really fast.

Once they add a couple features like the Yahoo bubbles and an address book, this will be by far the best maps service out there.

It's really awesome when you have a great day.

I went to the BMW dealership in San Mateo today to extend the free maintainance on my car (comes with 4 years 50k miles, extended to 6 years, 100k). It's a really good deal and includes all oil changes, inspections, brake pads and rotors, and everything else your car will ever need.

Everyone at the dealership was really, really nice. Along with the free coffee and wireless internet, they provided great, friendly service, and the best price for what I was looking for. They definitely went the extra step to make me very happy and they really set me up for a great day.

Along with that was a good day at work where a lot got done. And we had a presentation by some guys who wrote a book on old school video special effects. They used to do modern blue screen type effects by painting images on glass. The camera would shoot through the glass such that you could see the actors beyond the glass, along with the scenery painted on the glass, in one flat image. It was used way more than I ever thought. Very cool stuff.

They there was great music on my drive home, which always makes me happy. And great food and drinks with great friends.

It's just amazing how someone being nice can make your whole day really good. And it makes you want to be extra nice to people so they feel good. It makes the whole world a better place.

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66460,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

They're doing competitive analysis. All 16,000 of them.