December 23, 2006
Earlier today I exported all the posts/comments/etc. to a hosted wordpress install here:
http://distilled.adiunnithan.com
WordPress is the best blog package ever. Here’s why:
December 21, 2006
With Phil’s hosting advice, I’ve gone with serveraxis’s Xen-based virtual hosting.
December 18, 2006
Over break I’m building a home theater PC.. I figured having my computer and my TV be two separate things was kind of pointless. I might upgrade the other PC I built into a web server. Here are the stats so far for the parts I’ve bought and installed.. I’m just missing memory. All prices are displayed and rounded as: (actual/retail):
The total so far: $393.95
Amount I’ve saved: $296.03
Thanks to Black Friday and mail-in rebates.
Here’s the case!
December 11, 2006
Here are the papers that were in Bioinformatics, Volume 22, Number 21. You can check out the site on a production server at http://ifold.dokhlab.org.
Base Paper [Adobe PDF]
Supporting Information [Adobe PDF]
December 8, 2006
So, with the exception of my honors presentation/semi-completed thesis/deliverable, two finals, and another presentation… I’m 88% complete with being an undergraduate. The other day I remembered some random event and was telling a friend.. “Do you remember last year when…”. After I finished the story, she looked at me and said, “Yeah… but Adi, that was in freshman year.” I was confused; I was so sure that it happened last year.
Even though I’ve gone through almost four years of college, it still seems like C-Tops was just last week. And that scares me. I don’t want the last few experiences of college to past by like a fleeting daydream. My worst fear is sitting in an office somewhere a few years from now, looking back on these past four years and missing it all — all of it. The parties, the dance battles, the allnighters with Pokey Stix, the classes, Kamikazi, the teachers, the friends, the acquaintances, that damn pit preacher, that meditative experience of walking through the quad in a sea of people, jumping across puddles of rain in the pit, being a freshman and eating at Lenoir with random people. But I know it’ll happen. I know i’ll miss it all.
Regardless, I’m trying my best not to think of it this last semester. I was originally going to graduate in December and I know now that would have been a horrible idea. I need a semester to take it all in, to relive everything that I’ve missed and live everything that I haven’t done. I need a freaking conclusion to this four-year novel. As far as work is concerned, most of it is stuff that I’ve always wanted to do independently but never had the time or the resources.
So lots of fun, but mostly lots of relaxing before summer, travel, moving to Seattle, and starting work with Microsoft on August 13th!
November 7, 2006
I went to Boston this past weekend to pitch an idea with Phil to YCombinator, a venture firm started by Paul Graham — the guy who sold his online store to Yahoo in ‘98 for 48,000,000 dollars. The entire weekend was an incredible escape from school and work (unfortunately as I write this now I’m right back in the heart of it). We applied with a completely different idea than what we pitched. In fact, we had a few ideas so we didn’t really know what we were going to pitch until the day before. Regardless, we put our faith behind an idea that did have a lot of technical problems. While we could have touted the amazing user experience and the sheer amount of pain points that the product could have addressed, in the end we were pushing our beautiful pie-in-the-sky design that would have solved all of these technical problems. I think Robert Morris noticed that the most. Phil and I both agreed that we probably would have done a lot better if we had a demo or if we had come better prepared to tackle the technical issues… or if we had went with the idea that Paul had suggested we do!
The night before the interview we had dinner with about 10 of the teams that were interviewing. Seriously, I met some of the most diversely smart people in the bottom of that Italian restaurant. The guys who probably impressed me the most were the three-member Weebly team. They have an amazing beta of their product with an impressive userbase and a great team organization. A few days ago they were mentioned in TechCrunch and received another 2000 users.
While I was pretty disappointed in not getting YCombinator, it was still awesome getting the opportunity to meet Paul, Robert, Trevor, and Jessica. And hey, everything happens for a reason. I was always upset at the possibility of leaving my friends and abandoning my senior year to work in Mountain View on the startup — although I definitely would have done it if we were given funding from YCombinator. A few hours after Phil called me and told me the outcome I ordered Chinese for the people I was staying with. After good food and a good conversation, I opened my fortune cookie and broke a smile as it read:
“Your true wealth lies with your friends”.
October 16, 2006
CNN just published an interesting article on DJ Rekha [asx movie], a South Asian who was recently nominated for Best DJ by New York Magazine. Her real name is Rekha Malhotra — but in the US she’s pretty much known as the Queen of Bhangra. I went to NYC a year ago and my uncle and I went to SOBs. It’s a jazz/hip hop/R&B club in the heart of NYC that hosts a wide variety of popular artists every night but is known for its Basement Bhangra party every first Thursday of the month. If you ever learn about the popularity of bhangra/fusion in the U.S., Basement Bhangra will always be mentioned — and DJ Rekha founded it. It’s pretty cool to see South Asians (or anyone for that matter) coming from a traditional culture and pushing their cultural boundaries to do new and influential things in a completely different environment.. but still keeping that traditional flavor (in the case of Rekha it’d be bhangra mixed with house/reggae/hip hop). I … probably couldn’t do anything like that as a software engineer, but in anything else.. well, that’s an inspiration.
October 9, 2006
September 15, 2006
I made my decision tonight.
August, 2007: I’m moving to Seattle…!
