Looks like I'm getting some link love following Jeff Bezos' keynote at MIT's Emerging Technologies Conference. He put up a quote from one of my earlier posts about Mechanical Turk (the last paragraph).
As I've said before, I work for Werner Vogels in the Distributed Systems Engineering group at amazon. We work on platform components (caching, messaging, persistence, logging, etc) that many teams (including AWS) rely on.
Put another way, we build the muck that powers the muck that could power your business.
Oh. and we're hiring. :)
Friday, September 29, 2006
Sunday, September 24, 2006
better tasting veggies.
I tend not to crave capsicum (green peppers) when I'm in India because I cook it so often at home.
The other day we had a simple cauliflower and capsicum sabji for lunch and the taste and flavor of the capsicum was fantastic. It sounds a little overly dramatic, but biting into it felt like I was eating capsicum for the first time.
Just a gentle reminder that the oversized, brightly colored, genetically engineered vegetables available in American grocery stores are not all that they appear; and all that glitters is not gold.
The other day we had a simple cauliflower and capsicum sabji for lunch and the taste and flavor of the capsicum was fantastic. It sounds a little overly dramatic, but biting into it felt like I was eating capsicum for the first time.
Just a gentle reminder that the oversized, brightly colored, genetically engineered vegetables available in American grocery stores are not all that they appear; and all that glitters is not gold.
Monday, September 04, 2006
rain
mmmm.
I'm in Pune right now and it just started raining really hard after a morning/afternoon of sunshine.
I love (and missed) the smell of rain. mmm. And the sound of hard rain (vs. the seattle drizzle). And it's over before I could finish writing this.
I played golf on Friday morning and again today. Friday was great, but today I lost 7 balls. I came home more than a little dejected.
I'm in Pune right now and it just started raining really hard after a morning/afternoon of sunshine.
I love (and missed) the smell of rain. mmm. And the sound of hard rain (vs. the seattle drizzle). And it's over before I could finish writing this.
I played golf on Friday morning and again today. Friday was great, but today I lost 7 balls. I came home more than a little dejected.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Totalled by Muir
One of my friends was really enthusiastic about the two of us trying to summit Mt. Rainier this year. I was a little hesitant and committed only to doing some regular hiking with him in preparation for a summit next year.
Last week we decided to do a hike this weekend to Camp Muir, the basecamp for Rainier.
I picked him up early this morning and we were on the road by about 5:40am. We got there a little after 8am and hit the trail at 8:40am. Within an hour we had completed the first 2.2 miles and about 2000ft of elevation gain. This was on a very well-maintained trail that is actually mostly paved. The next 2 miles and 2000+ ft of elevation gain through snow took us 3 hours (3.5 for me).
The sun was painfully bright. In my mind snow is always associated with extreme cold. So I was dressed totally inappropriately. It was HOT. The high altitude (in combination with the heat/sun) caused my temples to throb and I got a slight feeling of nausea that intensified as we went up. The last hour of the ascent was quite gruelling for me because every time I got out of breath, I would also feel nausea. Coming down was somewhat fun because we would do controlled slide/steps down the snow (also known as Glissading). However, my nausea still persisted so I'd have to stop every few minutes - even though I wanted badly to get out of the sun.
It was a full 8 hour day for me; I got back to the parking lot around 5pm. In order to summit Rainier, RMI recommends that you be able to hike to Camp Muir in between 3-5 hours, with a full load on your back.
4.5 hours with a day pack is pretty pathetic but it's a checkpoint at least. At least now I know where I am vs. where I need to be in terms of my fitness level.
Last week we decided to do a hike this weekend to Camp Muir, the basecamp for Rainier.
I picked him up early this morning and we were on the road by about 5:40am. We got there a little after 8am and hit the trail at 8:40am. Within an hour we had completed the first 2.2 miles and about 2000ft of elevation gain. This was on a very well-maintained trail that is actually mostly paved. The next 2 miles and 2000+ ft of elevation gain through snow took us 3 hours (3.5 for me).
The sun was painfully bright. In my mind snow is always associated with extreme cold. So I was dressed totally inappropriately. It was HOT. The high altitude (in combination with the heat/sun) caused my temples to throb and I got a slight feeling of nausea that intensified as we went up. The last hour of the ascent was quite gruelling for me because every time I got out of breath, I would also feel nausea. Coming down was somewhat fun because we would do controlled slide/steps down the snow (also known as Glissading). However, my nausea still persisted so I'd have to stop every few minutes - even though I wanted badly to get out of the sun.
It was a full 8 hour day for me; I got back to the parking lot around 5pm. In order to summit Rainier, RMI recommends that you be able to hike to Camp Muir in between 3-5 hours, with a full load on your back.
4.5 hours with a day pack is pretty pathetic but it's a checkpoint at least. At least now I know where I am vs. where I need to be in terms of my fitness level.
Friday, August 18, 2006
omakase
Amazon apparently launched Omakase recently. It's an adsense-like program that shows the user products based not only on the page-content (ala adsense) but also based on the user's preferences.
While this doesn't help sell services, it's an amazing way to sell products. Amazon knows products and it knows consumers. I know often-times on the amazon page, the products shown to you are in fact items from your own wishlist - that's probably because people are more likely to buy products for which they've already expressed interest.
Now, if I'm browsing around the web, amazon already knows what I've got in my wishlist, what I've been looking at on amazon, what "similar" people have been looking at, what they've bought, and how the site I'm looking at now might influence what I want to buy.
That's an aweful lot of information to put together. Although the current algorithms may not exploit all of this information my guess is that, as they iterate on Omakase, the recommendations will only get better.
Now if only you could ASIN-ize services...
While this doesn't help sell services, it's an amazing way to sell products. Amazon knows products and it knows consumers. I know often-times on the amazon page, the products shown to you are in fact items from your own wishlist - that's probably because people are more likely to buy products for which they've already expressed interest.
Now, if I'm browsing around the web, amazon already knows what I've got in my wishlist, what I've been looking at on amazon, what "similar" people have been looking at, what they've bought, and how the site I'm looking at now might influence what I want to buy.
That's an aweful lot of information to put together. Although the current algorithms may not exploit all of this information my guess is that, as they iterate on Omakase, the recommendations will only get better.
Now if only you could ASIN-ize services...
Thursday, August 17, 2006
never work again...
Last weekend we were at Mother's Bistro (great place!) in Portland, OR and had a very cheerful server. The table next to us must've made some comment to him about how cheerful he was... his response:
Though I'd read that before, it was great to hear someone say that about their own job.
"Find a job you love, and you'll never work again"
Though I'd read that before, it was great to hear someone say that about their own job.
Monday, August 14, 2006
windsurfing
This weekend, Nate, Sindya, and I to drove down to Hood River, OR to take windsurfing lessons. By the time we got in, it was about 2-ish. After signing waivers and swiping credit cards, we roamed around the city to looks for sunglasses for Sindya, and sunglass retainers for Nate.
The city is awesome. It reminded us of a ski town, except for water sports. There were windsurfing, kite surfing, and kayaking shops everywhere.
The windsurfing class was a lot of fun; I was able to get the hang of the basics after about 90 minutes - which left 30 minutes of confident surfing at the end :) We were in a lagoon, shielded from the strong winds. We later checked out the windsurfers on the Columbia river and man - they were flying by at absurd speeds.
Afterwards, we drove to Husum, WA to take a look at a white water kayak that I'd been eyeing on craigslist. After trying out a roll in the pool, I decided to buy it.
That evening we camped at viento state park. Since there weren't too many bugs in the air, we were able to sleep with just the rain-fly and no tent (it was cool enough at night that sleeping outside would've been a little too cold) - which was great because I could see the stars as I fell asleep and everytime I woke up.
We had planned on windsurfing some more on Sunday morning (exploiting the 1 hour free rentals that we got with the class) but there was absolutely no wind. Instead we drove into Portland and had a humungous brunch at Mother's. The line there has been too long the past few times so I was glad to make it in.
Luckily Sindya agreed to drive for the first hour after we left Portland; I was still digesting my food. The drive back was terrible. We left at 2:45 and didn't get back home until almost 8pm.
But now I have a white water kayak.
The city is awesome. It reminded us of a ski town, except for water sports. There were windsurfing, kite surfing, and kayaking shops everywhere.
The windsurfing class was a lot of fun; I was able to get the hang of the basics after about 90 minutes - which left 30 minutes of confident surfing at the end :) We were in a lagoon, shielded from the strong winds. We later checked out the windsurfers on the Columbia river and man - they were flying by at absurd speeds.
Afterwards, we drove to Husum, WA to take a look at a white water kayak that I'd been eyeing on craigslist. After trying out a roll in the pool, I decided to buy it.
That evening we camped at viento state park. Since there weren't too many bugs in the air, we were able to sleep with just the rain-fly and no tent (it was cool enough at night that sleeping outside would've been a little too cold) - which was great because I could see the stars as I fell asleep and everytime I woke up.
We had planned on windsurfing some more on Sunday morning (exploiting the 1 hour free rentals that we got with the class) but there was absolutely no wind. Instead we drove into Portland and had a humungous brunch at Mother's. The line there has been too long the past few times so I was glad to make it in.
Luckily Sindya agreed to drive for the first hour after we left Portland; I was still digesting my food. The drive back was terrible. We left at 2:45 and didn't get back home until almost 8pm.
But now I have a white water kayak.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
kayaking
Five or six years ago I tried white water rafting as well as inflatable kayaks several times but I was always jealous of the hardshell kayakers on the river.
Last year in India I tried several times to go hardshell kayaking and learn how to do the eskimo roll. My three half-day attempts at learning didn't get me anywhere.
I took a class in Seattle in June this year but couldn't attend the second of the river days. Although I was able to eskimo roll in the pool, I couldn't pull it off in the river when I took a fall.
Yesterday I took a make-up class (for the second day that I had missed in June) and went down to a river again with NWOC. It was fantastic. It was only class II rapids but I was able to get in and out of eddies, I was able to roll comfortably in still water, and I even managed to roll twice while taking a fall in the rapids.
In addition to all that, I met some prety cool people during the class and had a beer with them at the Rogue Brewery in Issaquah.
Now I just need to go buy myself a kayak.
Last year in India I tried several times to go hardshell kayaking and learn how to do the eskimo roll. My three half-day attempts at learning didn't get me anywhere.
I took a class in Seattle in June this year but couldn't attend the second of the river days. Although I was able to eskimo roll in the pool, I couldn't pull it off in the river when I took a fall.
Yesterday I took a make-up class (for the second day that I had missed in June) and went down to a river again with NWOC. It was fantastic. It was only class II rapids but I was able to get in and out of eddies, I was able to roll comfortably in still water, and I even managed to roll twice while taking a fall in the rapids.
In addition to all that, I met some prety cool people during the class and had a beer with them at the Rogue Brewery in Issaquah.
Now I just need to go buy myself a kayak.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
cpu cycles
Yesterday I was faced with a design tradeoff on a Java API: make it
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't try to design APIs that are efficient. It just means that you have to be careful how much emphasis you place on that.
- clean and easy to understand but slightly inefficient; or more efficient in the simple case but a little more complicated overall?
APIs will never get cleaner, but CPU cycles will always get cheaper
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't try to design APIs that are efficient. It just means that you have to be careful how much emphasis you place on that.
Monday, July 10, 2006
making ghee
In general, I stay away from fried and oily foods - not because I'm watching my diet but because I just don't like them (there are exceptions, of course!). But I can't give up whole milk, or ghee. Eating hot chapatis with ghee on them is one of those pleasures that I'm not going to give up anytime soon.
Making ghee is not too difficult. The core process is as follows:
It takes about 15-20 minutes from the time you put butter in a pot to when the ghee forms and as you can see, the recipe is quite straight forward.
That said, I think everyone has their secret mixins to make the ghee taste better. My mami (mom's brother's wife) puts in a Betel leaf for flavor, and some rock salt to make it more grainy when it cools (the opposite of 'grainy' ghee is 'waxy' ghee - not considered a good quality). My only mixin is a few cloves which help give it a nice color and subtle flavor.
If you have a special ghee recipe, I'd love for you to share by posting it in the comments below!
Making ghee is not too difficult. The core process is as follows:
- Start with a few sticks of unsalted butter (assuming you're not using homemade butter!)
Put it in a pot on medium heat but watch it carefully and stir it every now and then to make sure that the bottom doesn't burn. (I use a nonstick pot just in case)
Once it begins to boil, you'll see a thick froth forming on top.
My grandma told my mother to cook with her nose and not her eyes. Once the butter turns into ghee, you'll smell the unmistakable smell of ghee. If you don't smell it, or don't know what it smells like - don't worry. In addition to that fantastic smell, you see the froth will thin out a lot, and the liquid below it turn clear. That's the ghee. You will also see some grainy residue sitting at the bottom.
Take it off the heat immediately and let it cool slightly. This is where you have to be watching it carefully. If you leave it on the heat too long, you'll burn the residue and all of the ghee will acquire a burnt taste.
Carefully strain the liquid ghee into a jar while it's still warm (before it solidifies). I just use a metal tea strainer that looks something like this.
Don't throw away the solid residue! It's edible and actually has a great (albeit maybe acquired) taste.
To use up the residue and any ghee remaining in your pot, cook a cup or two of basmati rice in that pot. It'll taste fantastic!
It takes about 15-20 minutes from the time you put butter in a pot to when the ghee forms and as you can see, the recipe is quite straight forward.
That said, I think everyone has their secret mixins to make the ghee taste better. My mami (mom's brother's wife) puts in a Betel leaf for flavor, and some rock salt to make it more grainy when it cools (the opposite of 'grainy' ghee is 'waxy' ghee - not considered a good quality). My only mixin is a few cloves which help give it a nice color and subtle flavor.
If you have a special ghee recipe, I'd love for you to share by posting it in the comments below!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Mr Anderson
No, not the dude from the Matrix. But Chris Anderson of longtail fame was at amazon today to promote his new book. I took away some good nuggets, even though I used to follow his blog quite regularly.
The long tail arises from
- variety inequality network effect
When plotted on a log-log scale, the long tail is a straight line. Most sales numbers drop off from this line because of limits of
- findability inventory
We can exploit the long tail by
- democratising production making distribution more efficient improving findability
Not everyone does everything for money:
- We are entering a "reputation economy" (people blog or write books for reputation, not money) Our talents are more varied than our job functions (I love this one!).
Don't confuse limited distribution with shared taste (i.e. boxoffice hits happen because the supply of movies is limited by distribution, not because everyone necessarily loves those movies)
Everyone deviates from the 'mainstream' somewhere
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Distributed Systems Engineering
So as I've mentioned tangentially before, I work on building large scale distributed systems at amazon.com.
These are systems that power not only all of our retails websites (.com plus the various international sites), but also our affiliate sites (like target.com) and all of the cool webservices (like the Simple Storage Service, Mechanical Turk, and ECS).
Now you can finally learn more about what we do by checking out the Distributed Systems Engineering site. This is a pseudo-official site that we wanted to put up to let people know what we work on. If you have comments about the site, feel free to post them here.
These are systems that power not only all of our retails websites (.com plus the various international sites), but also our affiliate sites (like target.com) and all of the cool webservices (like the Simple Storage Service, Mechanical Turk, and ECS).
Now you can finally learn more about what we do by checking out the Distributed Systems Engineering site. This is a pseudo-official site that we wanted to put up to let people know what we work on. If you have comments about the site, feel free to post them here.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
google spreadsheet.
Google's much anticipated entry into the office-tools market has begun. They beta launched Google Spreadsheet. Wow.
Monday, May 15, 2006
service work in india
If you are of Indian Origin (aka 'brown') and have done any service work in India, then check out the call for submissions for fullcircle, an anthology of stories from people like you about their experiences.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
page 3
Last night, we watched Page 3, a Hindi/English movie about a journalist who covers "Page 3" (the page with photographs and gossip about the glitterati of a city) for a Mumbai newspaper. The journalist is played by Konkana Sen. I've seen her before in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer and 15, Park Avenue and she has been outstanding in all three.
Page 3 left me a little depressed, but I highly recommend the movie.
Page 3 left me a little depressed, but I highly recommend the movie.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
classical music
Last night I went to hear Ashwini Bhide Deshpande in concert, accompanied by Seema (Harmonium) and Vishwanath (Tabla) Shirodkar.
It was a pretty good concert although
Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I also ran into my old music teacher, as well as some fellow vocal students and some amazon collegues.
In other news, we moved out of temp. housing and into our own apartment. To my surprise, I have a partial view of Mt. Rainier along with the Seattle skyline. Since we didn't really get to use our new furniture before leaving Bangalore, we spent much of the weekend excitedly unpacking and setting up the place. Unfortunately, we imported some dust from Bangalore along with our boxes and also spent a lot of time sneezing. Played squash yesterday after a long time so now my rear end is in pain. Am starting a 6-day white-water-kayaking class today.
It was a pretty good concert although
Ashwiniji seemed to have a bit of a cold, though her singing was fantastic
Her penultimate song (a jhula) seemed to finish prematurely/abruptly; I think this was due to the tabalji going into a long improv.
To my very amateur ears/eyes, it seemed like she got off beat a few times. I feel stupid saying that because she's an extremely accomplished artiste, but I could swear that, a few times, she took the sam on the 13th maatra of a teentaal instead of on the 1st. I was relying both on my counting as well as on the tabalji's left hand playing the tin (with his palm instead of his fingers). Maybe someone can corroborate or shoot me down?
Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I also ran into my old music teacher, as well as some fellow vocal students and some amazon collegues.
In other news, we moved out of temp. housing and into our own apartment. To my surprise, I have a partial view of Mt. Rainier along with the Seattle skyline. Since we didn't really get to use our new furniture before leaving Bangalore, we spent much of the weekend excitedly unpacking and setting up the place. Unfortunately, we imported some dust from Bangalore along with our boxes and also spent a lot of time sneezing. Played squash yesterday after a long time so now my rear end is in pain. Am starting a 6-day white-water-kayaking class today.
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