Author: Vele (Page 4 of 4)

We saw Tantric last night at the Theater of Living Arts (TLA) here in Philadelphia. My wife and I have been huge Tantric fans since their first album with the hit Breakdown. We have their latest album as well and we enjoy the consistent quality of rock and the clear Alice in Chains-inspired roots and original licks. The band pulled of another quality album in After We Go and we were looking forward to their performance. In addition to Tantric, we saw a couple of smaller bands: From Sattelite and 12 Stones. Both looked promising.

If you are waiting for a big BUT in this post, you are right, and not as in human anatomy but as in this concert failed on so many levels it could be part of human anatomy, which is a shame.

Where do I begin? Oh, yes, the TLA, this venue simply SUCKS! It is not too big, how could it be right on 3rd St. and South St, standing room only, but they clearly they must be used to poor attendance and so-so bands. Why would they otherwise have such horrible acustics? I’m very picky with acustics and reminds me a bit of my days long time ago in high school when I had a rock band. The acustics and sound check was so bad, 80% of the time I had no idea what was being sung, relying only on my knowledge of the songs. It sounded to me like way too much power was piped through crappy speakers. To top this off, the main mike for the singers all 3 bands was pure shit. It cut off many times, had low volume and worked sporadically. The bands may have not noticed this, having their own back firing speakers, but I could see the puzzled looks on the audience across me. I was merely 2-3 people from the stage so I could hear some of the playing and the singing and saw the potential. It was truly a shame to distort such good music.

Which brings me to the other issue: audience and the bands. The audience was pretty descent and clearly big fans of all bands, but just not enough. The concert started about 1 hour late, but looking at the less-than half filled TLA, this must have been sobering to the bands. What gives? Tantric is a very good original band that plays solid rock with consistent quality. They even did a Alice in Chains cover which sounded great, but again, you wonder: who promotes this, is Philadelphia a miss-match for Tantric, 12 Stones, etc, or are they a dying band? All of this is a shame as Tantric hasn’t received any radio play, we heard of the 12 stones in Seattle, and the rest is a mystery. Lessons in marketing all across…

I decided to compile some of my photos into a new gallery called Various Uncategorized Photos. This is an ongoing work-in-progress and may result in changes over time. Over the past couple of years, out of the thousands of photographs that I have accumulated, dozens of them have been worthy of publishing. However, I have managed to print most of them, but due to time constraints and the eternal quest for perfection, I put off the time to create a gallery. Instead of continual tinkering, I decided to pull some of my best finished work and publish it.

Among these photographs include my fall foliage tour of the Shawangunk Mountains near New Paltz, New York in the Fall of 2002. The prints from these photos are stunning with the rich colors of the region. Include is also my lucky photograph from the sunset at Big Sur. On an 11×16 print, this photograph shows incredible detail especially from my trusty D-60.

So, go over to to my site and check it out. Comments are welcome.

We have been in Seattle for almost 2 weeks and we love it! I’m just amazed at the overall beauty of the region, the geographic variety, exposure to water, high mountains, nearly cosmopolitan feel, without too little cohesiveness. It is for many of these reasons that I have always held the Bay Area and particularly San Francisco to high esteem. It held all of the metropolitan benefits — concentration of educated people, diversity, wealth both cultural and economic, and beauty of the region. It married the best of New York City in a California setting. Over the years I have grown to like Manhattan for its multitude of benefits, but I hated the fact that you couldn’t escape when you wanted to. The geography was utterly boring and the few beach-going places were packed by the people you mostly wanted to avoid. But I won’t get into that…

Anyways, we love it here in Seattle, and we have been warned that summers are the best days here, and then the fall comes…In meantime, I’m looking forward to making the best out of this place while on my internship at Microsoft.

Microsoft is a different experience onto itself. First of all, it’s a huge organization, but that’s not the obvious part. It becomes clear to you how big it is daily but the number of interaction and meetings that you have to go through to get things done. I don’t mean this in a bad way. Things get done here and people are extremely focused and dedicated to executing. My previous experience in a large organization was almost the exact opposite. At Citigroup, the largest financial conglomerates, you merely notice the size of the company by the building and the packed elevators. But, you can go on for days and weeks without feeling that size on you because most of the work was owned by no more than a few people and by that measure had controlled entrepeneurialism embodied in fiefdoms. You can get things done without too much interaction. Which is typical of a trading culture. In fact, you can sometimes get things done without any interaction at all.

That’s another reason why I’m so far enjoying the experience. There is tremendous exposure to smart people which turns not only into execution but also into incredible learning opportunities. Much like being at Wharton, while you may not always like everyone you meet, I have yet to find someone from whom I cannot learn something smart and valuable. And that’s what I enjoy.

Anyway, you didn’t fall asleep so far…

Recently, I’ve been using the trial version of Onfolio a software for collecting research from your Internet browser. I installed it after reading about it on Robert Scobble’s blog. As an MBA student who constantly searches the web for important, critical and sometimes trivial time-killing info, this is an excellent tool. In fact it is so good, it should be mandatory for all MBA students. I’m done with the trial and I’ll be purchasing it. So, you will see some ideas on what’s the deal with Onfolio and how it can be made into an even greater product. The comments on Robert Scobble’s blog above indicate a lot of confusion among people about what Onfolio does. Yet, you get hooked on it after installing it and using it. This is a product that can be replaced by a feature, but a product that will gain a lot of traction from a first mover advantage. As I describe below, it needs to keep upgrading with tighter integration both on the desktop and online to become a key product for individuals/students. It may be a tougher sell for the enterprise.

First, it allows for easy capturing of information from IE into a folder of collections that you can organize. Why isn’t this a glorified Favorites folder you ask? Because Favorites suck and we all now it. Favorites would have been great if everyone followed the rule on the Internet of creating permanent links. This is rule went away with the internet bubble when session-id’s started popping up and ruining permanent links on websites. The other problem is that you often need a snippet of critical info on the web page that’s not cluttered with stylesheets, images, banners and other mindless stuff (ok, not all mindless, but usually it is). Best of all, Onfolio can save a copy of the web page, a snippet of info, or download the PDF or other documents you are viewing into its own collection. Unlike dealing with annoying file names or other ID numbers on PDFs, Onfolio lets you add your own title and Comment/Note for each item you collect. Then, search your collection, refresh your memory and browse back to what you need. It also saves the searches used to arrive at your destination page, you publish the collection on a website or as an RSS feed, etc. I can go on and on, but just try it, it’s truly worthy replacement for Favorites.

Where does Onfolio fit in? It fits into the research process that most of us, especially students, do on the Internet. It’s mo is that you spend time researching stuff, collecting info and then refer to Onfolio for retrieval when compiling your work. So, plan, research, collect, then write. This is different from other methods of research: Start writing, make brief research escapes to confirm, collect or identify info, then go back to note taking. This process follows a more random, unplanned research process. Which is where Microsoft’s OneNote would come in. [Speaking of OneNote, I’ll post my ideas on this problem. Hint: tables anyone?]

The problem with this process is that OneNote doesn’t have a browser and doesn’t collect the research I do there, so what’s the use in this method. There’s no integration between the two methods, and yet there are powerful tools for each component. Some tools need refinement, but their integration is not on level that would make it truly seamless. Onfolio could attach itself to all Microsoft Office products for easy perusal. Then it could also collect the links between it’s Collections and the documents where you are using these links, creating a sort of mini-Google on your desktop. And that’s just the beginning…

Our 2004 Wharton Technology Conference was a great success. Learn more about it here: WTC. As a Panel Manager for the Open Source Panel I invited a great group of people moderated by Kevin Bedell from LinuxWorld. It was an excellent panel where we had a very good intense discussion on the value in open source software and how companies try to commercialize o-s products. Eric Raymond had plenty to say of course and had a heated discussion with Jason Matusow, manager of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative. Without belaboring the debates, here are some links with good news coverage of the conference:

Coverage from CNet
http://news.com.com/2030-7343-5171928.html

Coverage from Knowledge@Wharton
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=whatshot

CNET’s recorded interview with Bruce Harreld, including a brief conference plug at the beginning: (?Utility computing: Overhyped??)

http://news.com.com/1380-7352-5161198.html?tag=aud_pro

Enjoy!

Just to clarify a few things. I was accepted to Wharton recently and will be moving to Philadelphia with my family for the next 2 years. This has been the end of my search for b-schools which started a few years back, and culminated this spring with a slew of acceptances. Congratulations, you say? Well, Thank you. I am looking forward to a hiatus from my days as a quant analyst and into a more challenging and rewarding career. While I have a number of options that I’m considering pursuing, I haven’t finalized anything. Tech seems to be the perennial interest so I may end up on the west coast at some point.