Vikram Kone

The 3As of Awesome

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Recently watched this great TED talk by Neil Pasricha. He is the author of the wildly popular blog “1000 Awesome Things”.

In this blog, Neil chronicles one simple joy of life every weekday. As of today there are more than 670 posts on the website.

Here’s an excerpt from the TED talk

Neil Pasricha’s blog 1000 Awesome Things savors life’s simple pleasures, from free refills to clean sheets.

In this heart felt talk from TEDxToronto, he reveals the 3 secrets(all starting with A) to leading a life that’s truly awesome.

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larrson

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, I stumbled upon this book at a local Barnes and Nobles….”The Girl with Dragon Tattoo”. It was written by a relatively unheard author Stieg Larrson (unknown to me…) from Sweden. What piqued my interest apart from the cover was the fact that it sold more than 27 million copies around the world in a very short span of time and also won numerous awards viz, NY Times Best Seller. So I thought, why not..I had a long flight ahead….8 hours to be precise…from Seattle to Miami…and this seemed like a good idea to kill some time.

Long story short, I loved the book. It was brilliant. The story is based in Sweden (duh..) and revolves around 2 main characters…Mikael Blomkovist, a 40 year old financial journalist and our Protagonist Lisbeth Salanader, a 25 something girl, dragon tattooed, computer hacker ‘cum’ personal investigator. Together, they try to solve the mystery of a missing girl Harriet Vanger, niece of a well known industrialist Henry Vanger, head of a huge conglomerate…she went missing some 40 years ago during a family gathering on a private island and was presumed dead. I don’t want to give away too much about the story…but its quite entertaining and a page turner. If you like murder mysteries, and are a fan of works by Sidney sheldon’s , Dan Brown’s..then you will feel right at home.

The other 2 books in the trilogy, The Girl who played with Fire and The Girl who kicked the Hornet’s Nest…also revolve around our 2 protagonists…After reading all the 3 books this past year…I found the 2nd book a little less entertaining than the 1st..but definitely a good read and 3rd one even less entertaining than the 2nd one… May be its just me…but the 1st one has set a very high standard for the others to live upto. :)..

So if you are looking for a good read definitely give these a try!

Texas Tijuana Taco Penne Chicken Pasta

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is one of my favorite pasta recipes. It’s super easy to make and takes less than 30 min’s. Made some changes to the recipe I found online.

Ingredients

Penne Pasta - 1 lb.

Ground Chicken - 1lb

Half n Half - 2 cups (Substitute with Whipped/Heavy cream if you are a brave soul)

Taco bell Taco seasoning Mix - 1.25 Oz

Green onions - 5 no’s - chopped into small pieces

Garlic cloves - 5 no’s - minced

Cheddar cheese

Tomatoes - 1 large - cut into small pieces

Olive Oil

Bell Peppers - 2 no’s - chopped into 2” pieces

Directions:

Boil Penne pasta in water with 2 tsps. of salt and 2 teaspoons of olive oil for 15-20mins. Don’t over boil it.

While it’s boiling, in a bowl, mix ground chicken and the taco seasoning mix. Add some salt and red chilli powder if you want it spicy. Keep the mix aside.

In a sauce pan, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and fry minced garlic and bell peppers till they soften.

Now add the ground chicken mix to the pan and fry it for 10-15 mins covering it with a lid.

Drain the pasta in a colander and soak it in cold water for 30 secs. This makes the pasta less soggy!

Add half and half to the sauce pan and stir in the drained pasta. Cover for 5 mins.

Garnish with chopped tomatoes, green onions and cheddar cheese.

Serve with 2 pieces of California sour dough bread on the side :)

Enjoy!

My thoughts on the Nokia Microsoft partnership on Windows Phone

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions and views expressed in this post are my own and don’t reflect those of my current or past employers.

If you have been following the tech news lately, you may already have caught wind of the impending partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. For the uninitiated, Nokia just announced that they are going to adopt Microsoft’s mobile OS, WindowsPhone as their primary smart phone operating system going forward…dumping MeeGo their original Smart Phone OS. MeeGo was a joint effort by Intel and Nokia to develop an open source mobile operating system based on Linux. Though this was launched with much fanfare in 2008-09, it never really made it outside the Nokia/Intel’s labs.

From the outside, it looked like MeeGo was a last ditch effort made by Nokia to counter the ever growing pressure from Apple’s iOS devices and Google’s Android. It was good on paper but sadly didn’t pan out in the end. Last week, Gartner/IDC reported that Nokia lost its No.1 position in the Worldwide Smart phone market share for the first time in a long time. That might have been a serious blow to Nokia. If you haven’t already, do read the “Burning Platform” memo penned by Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop (former Microsoft exec) which was leaked to the media last week. Gist of the memo is, Nokia is losing market share in all segments left and right for the past couple of years and they don’t seem to have a credible plan in place to stop the trend. Google’s Android is selling like hot cakes all over the world and saw a 800% YoY growth in 2010. The tipping point for Nokia must have been losing the industry leader position which Nokia enjoyed for decades.

Anyhoo, coming back to the topic…why is this newly announced partnership a good thing? I’m glad you asked. In my mind, Nokia needs Microsoft as much as Microsoft needs Nokia. It’s more of a symbiotic relationship where Nokia would benefit from Microsoft’s software expertise and Microsoft benefits from Nokia’s brand image and scale. To be honest, WindowsPhone7 which was released in Oct’10 with mostly positive reviews didn’t catch on fire as I expected. Part of the problem I think is due to the uninspiring hardware dished out by OEMS like Samsung and HTC among others. None of the phones that were released could beat iPhone4 in pure hardware specs and industrial design which was the gold standard at that time…it probably still is… It’s really heartening to watch because the software was pure delight to use.

It’s a good news for mobile developers around the world. They can stop worrying about developing/porting their apps on yet another platform. Developers already are having a hard time today, developing the same app for Apple’s iOS devices using Objective-C, for Google’s Android using Java, for Palm using Web technologies, and for Blackberry using some shit like QNX which I’m pretty sure 99% of developers never heard of. By using WP7 OS on Nokia, devs can continue to leverage their .NET skills to write Silverlight apps for all WP devices including Nokia. Combined that with Visual studio which is one of the best tooling systems/IDEs available…wow what a relief!…

Nokia is known for making excellent hardware like N8 and so hopefully we will see some exciting phones coming down the pipe sooner than later with all the WP goodness in it. I have used iPhone, Android and WP for a considerable period of time and definitely feel that WP7 has a much better UX compared to Android. iPhone stills leads in overall usability and hardware fit n finish…till now…agreed that WP7 doesn’t yet have feature parity with Android and iOS which have a 2-3 yr head start…but that’s kind of a moot point now. What matters is…how fast each of them can innovate and move the industry forward. Competition is always good for customers.

I’m clearly excited about this news…and can’t wait to get my hands on a Nokia device running WP7. Ditching iPhone has been one of my NY2011 resolutions and I’ve been waiting for a decent hardware to come out with WP on it…This Nokia+WP combo seems like a perfect recipe for my next phone

Now if you excuse me I have to get back to building my 1st Windows Phone app :)

Adios 2010...Welcome 2011!

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

2011 is here. Cant believe its almost end of the decade. A new decade now begins..I’m hoping 2011 will be more awesomer than 2010. As it happens with every new year, I made some new resolutions this time around too..

Ditch iPhone (go WP7) :)
Build my personal website (this one…check )
Play badminton more regularly
Spend less time on facebook (yeah right :)…)

I guess I will be spending a lot more time on my blog this coming year..!