Sachin Agarwal: August 2007

I was walking back home from East Side Co Bar and decided to walk through the new Whole Foods on Bowery. The store is beautiful and there are tons of fresh food options; I need to start eating lunch there.

As I was about to leave I discovered a small room to the side just for beer! They have over 300 beers available including tons of Belgians and actual kegs for purchase. They have the Heineken mini kegs in the fridge and for only $20, much cheaper than Gristides. I don't normally like Heineken but it really is much better on tap than from a bottle. Plus it's the official beer of the US Open!

Coolest of all they have a bunch of beer on tap in the center of the room where you can purchase a growler (64 ounces) for about $8. They claim it's good for 3-7 days in your fridge (but seriously why would it need to last that long?) Unfortunately you aren't allowed to taste the beers in the store.

Whole Foods is beer heaven :)

I just can't say enough about how amazing the iPhone is. A product that is thinner than my old phone, has better battery life, an incredible keyboard, a built in iPod, web browser, email, etc etc, pretty phenomenal. Life changing. This is one of the most polished products I have ever used. Definitely the most polished 1.0 product in the history of technology. All these little touches that make it great.

So I was on the bus to Boston this past weekend watching Braveheart. A call came in so my movie stopped and it switched to the phone screen. I hit decline and it immediately went back to the movie, perfectly, nice zooming animations and all. Thirty seconds later I got the voicemail notification. I hit the home button, listened to my voicemail (which takes 2 seconds + length of message thanks to visual VM!!!!), checked my email, sent a text message, then went back to the movie where I left off. Total time: 30 seconds. Flawless execution. It's not a device that just does these things I need, but a device that is enjoyable to use!

Anyway, small thing which is truly amazing: the headphones. Regular iPod headphones so I actually use my iPhone as an iPod everywhere I go, all the time. And the tiny remote/mic on the headphones so I can play/pause and skip songs. So brilliant.

From the day the iPhone came out Swami has been IMing me about it non stop. He wanted one but couldn't justify it. Understandable. Then he "lost" his phone and needed a new one, so I used my discount and bought him one. He's so happy with it. Some comments:


dude
sticky
yo
you have officially changed my life
this thing is fucking amazing
its like getting internet for the first time
i will have a check in the mail for you shortly...as soon as i find my fucking check book
happiest check i will ever write
this thing is fucking amazing dude
i hacked it so that i could make my ring tone into tupac
it came in saturday and i didnt eat and spent 5 6 hrs fuckin with it
it totally bailed us out of traffic issues today
its the bomb
best decision yet
you are right man
the shit it do, it do well
this shit is fucking amazing
life altering
and edge is faster than i thought it'd be
surprisingly
even youtiube can stream on edge
its sweet
i love it
great work man
u tell that steve guy to keep this shit coming
u can sign me up for the next bad ass version in however many years when it comes out
apple can take all my disposable income any time


The iPhone has a 90% customer satisfaction rating, more than double all other phones and smart phones out there. People can bitch all they want about no 3G and the virtual keyboard, but only when you own it do you see how great the device really is. Just tonight I was demoing it for someone and he's like "type this sentence" and I typed out his sentence error free faster than any other keyboard could.


I also used my discount to buy an iPhone for a friend who is an engineer at Microsoft on the Windows Mobile software team. So basically he writes the software for the HTC phones and is our closest competing product (which isn't close at all). Anyway, he didn't activate his iPhone officially but hacked it so he could just swap in the SIM from his old phone. Result: Microshit doesn't know he has an iPhone and they continue to pay his cell phone bill.

This makes me very happy.

Update:

From Jackie:

iphone rocks my world. best purchase ever. kudos to steve jobs and his team of computer/phone people.

For Gary's birthday we went out on the yacht my gym owns. It's only $25 for a 3 hour cruise and cold food buffet. There was also free wine sponsored by beaujolais. For an extra $25 you can have open bar for the cruise. Of course, Joe, Gary, Josh, Nate, and I went for the open bar.

It was an incredibly fun night. The cruise was great with spectacular views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty (pictures later). After a couple Tanqueray Tonics I started ordering drinks for other friends who were not doing the open bar. At first the bar tender was like "Man, you're tearing through those gin and tonics. Gotta get your moneys worth." But then later I was ordering Malbu Pineapples with my G&Ts and he knew they weren't for me. He didn't care. "Another round of the same?" Yes! For not much money, a whole lot of people had a lot of drinks and a great time.

There was a film crew on the boat shooting a promotional video for the cruise and the wine. Somehow in the final cut (pro!!) I got more screen time than anyone else. I was pretty trashed. The funniest thing is I'm talking about how great the wine is, even though I'm holding two gin and tonics. Awesome.

I apologize for the ads. You can watch the clip below. I appear at 2 minutes and 3.5 minutes in :)

Two weeks ago I went to Baltimore for the Virgin Festival. I stumbled upon the website many months ago when I was trying to figure out where I could see the Smashing Pumpkins now that they're back together. The lineup at the festival is the best I've ever seen. I saw:

Saturday: Amy Winehouse, Incubus, Ben Harper, Beastie Boys, The Police
Sunday: Spoon, Panic! at the Disco, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Smashing Pumpkins

Everyone played their best songs and put on an incredible show. The Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins were clearly the highlights. The Police were also amazing, and it was a once in a lifetime chance to see them perform live. I'm not a huge BB fan, but seeing them live was something else entirely. Mix Master Mike was phenomenal.

We pretty much stayed by the main stage the whole time, both days. That worked out well because between bands we could get closed and closer to the stage. By late afternoon we were just 10 rows back from the stage, perfect position to see the headliners. The crowd was great, having lots of fun. I've never seen so many crowd surfers in my life. There must have been hundreds over the course of the weekend.

Other than music, we spent a bit of time in Baltimore. Sam let us stay with her and she chauffeured us around town. Thanks, Sam! On Sunday we had crab cake sandwiches and a bucket of whole crabs. Delicious!


It was a really really incredible weekend. I definitely plan to do it again next year. Except for that damn Chinatown bus. I'll rent a car next year.

Click here for all the pictures

After I posted my review of Little Owl, I received a comment that pointed out that the exterior shot of the Friends TV show apartment is Little Owl.

Here are shots of the intersection (Bedford and Grove) from Friends, and then from Google Street View.

Fuji has announced the FinePix F50 which from its specs looks to be the best compact digital camera on the market. These days everyone wants good low light performance and Fuji is known for being great in that respect because of their Super CCD sensor. They use a larger sensor than other compact cameras, and therefore have better picture quality and less noise in low light.

However, Fuji never had image stabilization, until now. The F50 has their super CCD AND image stabilization, which means low light photos should look great. Plus it has full manual controls (not common in compact cameras). Ships next month!


Few people look at sensor size when shopping for cameras, but it's pretty important. Cameras use smaller sensors because they are cheaper and you can use smaller lenses. But it's not all bad, smaller sensors let you build small super zoom cameras. In fact, I purchased the Panasonic TZ1 to take to the Virgin Festival last week. It has a 10x zoom and fits in my pocket!

That camera (not surprisingly) has a small 1/2.5" sensor size. What is surprising is I read it doesn't use the entire sensor! Instead of using a smaller sensor (1/2.7"), Panasonic is still using a 1/2.5" but not utilizing the entire surface area of the sensor. This could be because it works out better for them to use the same sensor across all their cameras, or because they want to be able to advertise 1/2.5" to people like me.

In any case, the best way I can tell to compare the actual sensor size used a camera is to do the math yourself. Divide:
Focal length advertised for the camera (35mm equivalent) / Focal length written on the lens itself

This gives you the "crop factor" for the camera. The higher this number, the smaller the sensor being used. For example, my Panasonic FX01 claims to be 28mm on the wide end. The lens itself is 4.6mm. That means it has a crop factor of 6.1. Some other crop factors:

Canon 5d: 1 (Full frame sensor, no crop factor)
Canon XT: 1.6
FX01: 6.1
TZ1: 6.7
Fuji F50: 4.5

These crop factors (which directly correlate to the sensor size) vary quite a bit for different cameras. So the take aways here are:

• If you want good low light performance, make sure the crop factor is not too high
• Don't trust the sensor size listed on camera specs to be an indicator of the sensor used
• The Fuji F50 looks rad

Best bar ever

A few quick reviews:

1. AT&T customer service has been amazing. I don't if it's just the iPhone 800 number (which goes straight to an agent) or the fact that I get transferred to business support since I work for Apple, but AT&T has been solid. From the initial sign up, switching plans mid month, adding services, and now combining my dad's iphone onto my family account, it's all been friendly and painless. I think they are actively trying to help their support ratings.

2. I took the China town bus to Baltimore this past weekend. Such a nightmare. The bus to Baltimore left 2 hours late because they wouldn't leave until the bus was full. The return bus arrived 45 minutes late, which was worse since we were standing in a dangerous truck stop in Baltimore at 1am. And we didn't really know if it would even show up!

The people running the service straight up lie to you and tell you what you want to hear just to sell more tickets. You can't really believe anything they say. And when you call them on it, they conveniently can't speak english.

3. My mom has Verizon FIOS which in theory is amazing. It's fiber optic internet and phone, and has an incredibly fast theoretical top speed (30mbps, or 5x a cable!) Unfortunately her service cuts in and out all the time. After she tried calling them 5 times, I tried myself. I instantly knew I had been tranferred to someone in India who knew nothing but to read from a screen. They were worthless.

This week they came out to see what the issue is. They took the FIOS wireless router and plugged it directly into my mom's imac (instead of relying on the iMac's wireless for internet). So that fixed the iMac, but what about other laptops in the house? If they are using shitty wireless routers, why don't they replace them?


Unbelievable. I can't stand stuff like this. I want to kill someone!

On the international thing: China and India are clearly growing and doing very well with export of goods and services. But I've always felt the quality from those countries is incredibly poor. Software engineers in India might be able to hack up a product, but it won't be well designed or bug free. Outsourced customer service to India is always terrible (think of Dell). And make sure you don't put any of those toys from China in your mouth since the paint may have lead in it!

They think one day I'll be buying a Chinese built car or flying in a Chinese built AIRPLANE???? Yeah right.

w00t

They are shooting the sequel to that traveling pants movie near my
house.

Guru is trashed at Pravda