Sachin Agarwal: June 2005

While working on a new project, I came across Audio Scrobbler which looks at the music you are listening to (via plugins to your mp3 player) and then recommends new music for you to listen to.

*THEN* they take those recommendations, and at last.fm you can listen to a radio stream created just for you. You can skip songs, rate them up, and more. It's like Yahoo launchcast except much better because it works on the mac, and it plays through a normal mp3 stream so it plays in iTunes (and through an Airport Express).

Check it out!

Black and white 35mm pictures Here are a bunch of pictures I took with my Nikon film camera. As is usually the case with 35mm prints, they have been in a closet for a while. I finally got picture CDs made (only $2.99 at Walgreens!). There are pictures from Brazil, New York, Santa Cruz, and Napa.

Best pictures. I created an albums of some of the best pictures I have taken. This album will continue to grow as I take more pictures!

I just got back from a Phi Psi trip to Cabo San Lucas. One of the UCLA Phi Psi alums owns a huge compound in Cabo, as well as several other hotels and bars. Phi Psis are VIPs there. There were 25 of us in the Stanford group in Cabo, and we got a great section of his compound with an infinity pool, and a gorgeous living room and kitchen overlooking the ocean.

Besides having fun and relaxing, we discussed Phi Psi business and plans for the future. It was a great kick in the butt for me to get excited about Phi Psi again. I was really into Phi Psi as an undergrad, and I now I want to do more as VP of the alumni association, planning social and service events.

Cabo has some of the best food I've ever had. I highly recommend: Mi Casa, Tropicana in San Jose, O Mole Mio

Click here for all the pictures.

Yesterday Aki began the Aids Lifecycle ride. He is biking from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness and money to end this disease.

It's not too late to donate to him. Click here to donate to Aids LifeCycle through Aki.

Here are pictures from the opening event and ride out. Try to find Aki in as many pictures as you can.



Good luck, Aki!

Unbelievable. This was one of the most ridiculous announcements Apple has ever made. Not in a bad way. It's just a huge transition, and it's going against what Apple has said for many years, that IBM RISC processors were the future.

I think it's the right move. Whether Intel or IBM makes faster chips, I feel a lot more confident sticking with Intel and the rest of the industry than taking a chance with IBM. Especially now that IBM is making chips for all the gaming consoles, they probably won't care about Apple as much.

Hopefully this will lead to faster desktops, and especially, faster laptops with better battery life. One total bit of speculation (that would be amazing) is if Apple can now easily make a Palm like handheld device. Most of those devices run on Intel XScale processors, and now that Mac OS X and the applications publicly run on Intel processors, it will be much easier for Apple to make such a device.

Some interesting facts about the transition:
Mac OS X (and iLife) has run on Intel machines since day 1. Apple secretly kept that going "just in case"
Most Cocoa and Carbon apps will only need a small bit of code to be changed and recompiled
Some apps will need a more significant overhaul
All old (PowerPC) apps will run on the Intel boxes using something called Rosetta which will be fast (enough)
Eventually all apps will be shipped as Universal Binaries that run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs

So while transitioning to an all new processor family will not be easy, Apple has made it as good as it gets. Developers can get an Intel Mac and dev tools within weeks.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini spoke at the keynote as well. He's an incredible speaker and gave a great presentation of Apple and Intels history, and how "The world's most innovative computer company has teamed up with the most innovative chip company."

He also played the Apple Think Different "Toasted Bunnies" ad which Apple ran a few years ago, showing Intel engineers in bunny suits set on fire.

Click here to see the toasted bunnies ad
Click here to see the Pentium snail ad

I'm planning on taking a 15 day road trip in the beginning of August. I want to drive the Miata from San Francisco to British Columbia, stopping everywhere along the way. Nik told me about a speaker who was going to be at Cody's Books in Berkeley. Thanks Nik!

I went there tonight and met Mike Marriner of road trip nation. His whole thing is to travel around the US and interview people. They pre schedule interviews with famous people like CEOs and founders of companies, and then meet other random people along the way. The point is to find out what drives these people and how they got to be where they are now.

The fear is that what we learn in school does not exactly correlate to opportunities in the real world. If you want to be a cartoonist, there is no "cartoon" major in school. To be a cartoonist, you have to break from the standard path of high school, college, job, and actually follow your passion. This means struggling for a while, working multiple jobs, but hopefully at some point you make it at doing what you are really passionate about.

I'm fortunate that one thing I am passionate about is Apple and making good software. I love my job, but even then I sometimes wonder if I'm doing the right thing. What if I had taken some time off before starting work and discovered another passion in my life? I do feel like I should be doing something better for the world than writing professional software.

I think for me personally, the fact that I am passionate about Apple and my job means I should stick with it, and have a second activity to fill my need of doing something good for the world. At first you tend to have a job to pay the bills as you follow your passion, and at some point you make it and your passion will pay the bills.

I chatted with Mike for quite a while after he spoke (and I got an autographed book!). He gave me lots of good advice about my road-trip. In fact, he mentioned SF->BC as a good route to take even before he knew that's what I was going to do. He told me about routes and hikes to take.

I was a little worried about doing this trip on my own, but now I'm more excited than ever, and glad that it worked out this way. I think my doing it alone I'll have more time to think about stuff and figure out what I want to do long term. And it will force me to meet new people along the way.

I need to start hiking every weekend to train for this trip. Mike said there are some incredible hikes around Whistler, but I definitely need to be in good shape!

Buy Finding The Open Road here

Phi Psi alumni induction ceremony

Weekly dinner. Chow and then wine at Aki's
As always, some pictures were stolen from Nikhil's blog

Added even more picture to my SF album

At around 2:30am when Marissa Mayer's birthday party (see below) ended, we headed over to the elevators to leave. There were a lot of people in the elevator and we decided to wait for the next one. Nik insisted that we could all fit so we all crammed in. Someone leaned on the elevator buttons and a bunch of them got pressed. Many times we stopped on a floor, the door opened, closed, and continued. At around the fifth floor I noticed that no more lights were on so we would be going all the way to the Lobby.

Just before the elevator got to the botton, it stopped. The screen said 'L' for lobby, but the doors didn't open. A few seconds passed before someone realized the elevator wasn't going anywhere and we needed help. Someone hit the call button but we got a busy signal! Some people in the elevator started calling the fire department directly. Eventually we got through to the hotel lobby and they contacted the elevator company.

There were 18 people in this stuck elevator. All were from Marissa's party. None were hotel guests. There were two sets of twins. There was a hotel employee, but she freaked out first and just sat on the floor while other people handled all the communication. The elevator company (or hotel staff) had us try various things like hitting different buttons, making sure the stop buttons weren't pressed, the doors were fully closed, etc, but nothing changed. The elevator didn't move.

The windows started fogging up and it got a little uncomfortable. Some people made jokes about the elevator falling and how it was only 1 floor down, and others yelled at them that it wasn't funny and they shouldn't be joking around. Someone opened the elevator doors from the inside and we got some fresh air. We were staring at a wall but at least some air got in. It was surprising how easy it was to open those doors. I guess it makes sense since there's no where bad you can go.

The fire department showed up and we heard them opening the doors from the outside. There's no manual crank to get the elevator door, no manual lever to open the doors. They literally pried the doors open with sheer force. Some pieces of the tile around the elevator broke off. They used large blocks to hold the doors open as they pulled them apart.

The elevetor was still 8 or 10 feet too high, so there was only a two foot overlap beteen the inner and outer elevator doors. The firemen wanted to put stairs down for us, but there wasn't enough room. One by one we went down the little hole, feet first, into the arms of the firemen. It was a very crazy experience. Unfortuntely, it killed all thoughts of going to the afterparty.

Pictures from Marissa's birthday party

Friday
Tony and Kate came to town to do some wedding planning. After work I hung out at Newcastle for the first time in a long time, then we all went to Celia's for dinner.

Saturday
First Aki and I went to Millbrae to help Julie change the battery in her car. Actually, Aki helped her and I took lots of pictures.

After that we headed to Stanford so Aki could give someone his Clie that he sold on meepster. We fliered the bookstore and post office while we were there.

In the afternoon we all went to Mark Brighton's BBQ in the mission. Lots of good food and drinks.

Nikhil invited us to Marissa Mayer's 30th birthday at the Westin St Francis. Marissa is a product manager at Google, and Nikhil's manager. The party was fabulous. There was an 80s cover band (Tainted Love), dancing, open bar, and great food. It was a lot of fun. It makes me want to work at Google. :)

Sunday
We went hiking in Redwood National Park in Berkeley, but didn't see any redwoods on the hike. Then we went to dinner at a great Mexican restaurant in Walnut Creek.

Monday
Paul had a BBQ at his place. He had great beef kabobs and chicken that he marinated himself

Pictures from Marissa's birthday party (some pictures stolen from Nikhil's blog)
Other pictures from the weekend