$12.95

Do you like wearing glasses? I do not. Thankfully, it was never utmost necessary for me to wear glasses. See, my prescription is a mere -0.75 and -0.50 on the two eyes. This means I can get a driver's license w/o restrictions, I can read almost all that I need to from a respectable distance. I can get by with little trouble and no one ever suspects that I cannot see clearly from a distance. Yes, there is some trouble when I am seated in the very back row of a room and the presenter is particularly merciless to backbenchers. There is some trouble reading road names and road signs from a very long distance. But none of this ever bothered me. Despite my calm over my short sightedness, sometimes, I did get frustrated at not being able to see. On one such frustrating day, I went to lenscrafters to get my glasses made. The optometrist came back with the un-surprising result. She recommended me to use glasses if I want to - as usual. I looked at some of the frames they had on the wall. The frames I liked were close to $200 a pop. I asked the lady at the counter for lens options and found out that with anti-glare coating, anti-scratch coating and high-density lenses, my total expense would be close to $400 and then they would apply a discount to land me a pair of unnecessary see through holes in a metal frame for about $325. Sears optical had a buy one get one free and I could get something similar for $275 or $300. I decided, as usual, to drop the idea.
On a lark, I searched for the term "glasses" on google. The second link from the top (in the sponsored links) was Zenni Optical. This is the best e-commerce business to happen to folks who have prescription glasses! One look at the link will tell you what I mean. The cheapest glasses you can get from them costs - get ready for this - $12.95 shipped to your mailbox. The most expensive set with all the bells and whistles would probably be under $80. Now thats a bargain.
This website has a left hand side vertical panel that organizes its catalog with price, fashion and material with which the frames are made. The way you order is to first choose a frame from their catalog and then enter all information from your optometrist's prescription into the website. When I entered my info, there was no ambiguity on what was required. The terms used on this site and the terms on my lenscrafter prescription were exactly the same. The only metric missing was "pupillary distance". As you must have guessed, its the distance between your pupils when you re looking straight ahead. As per the website and as per wikipedia, the pupillary distance can be measured simply by holding a ruler in front of your eyes and getting a physical measurement in millimeters. You can be off the mark by as much as a couple mm or more - it is OK. Then you choose the lens type, any coatings you want and then you pay via credit card or whatever they accept and thats it. Just wait for the glasses to arrive in your mail. Mine came in a week. I am thrilled with what I got. For $12.95, I think the glasses I am wearing are a STEAL. The lens comes with anti-scratch coating, UV protection within the cost. Best part is that I am going to place an order for at least three more pairs. One for parties, one very light one for travel and the third one as an spare pair. I'll get an upgrade to 1.67 RI glass for $37 and a premium anti-reflective coating for $4.95. That will be just cool!
Here is some more very interesting reading on this topic: glassy eyes.

Fire vs Revolution

I had a solid fun-filled weekend. Really. I had a blowout Friday & Saturday. I attended the TiECon 2007 event at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago. They started with a couple of speeches and a discussion of the main topic between Howard Tullman and Glen Tullman. Two Chicago area entrepreneurs. It was funny because the Tullmans kept hitting each other with funny comments while back tracking their lives (as much as they could in an hour) as entrepreneurs for us to learn from. Then there were 4 hours of panel discussions on relevant topics. It was nice to hear the panelists talk, however, I was surprised by the questions the audience asked. Many questions ought to have been in finishing school for entrepreneurs or just in school. Not that I am an expert already. But it felt too straightforward. Anyway, that conference was not the blowout part (am not that old yet!). Later, I caught up with a friend and hit Duke of Perth in the north side. Thats one hot scotch bar. I got one of their samplers. The name was - get ready - "The Kilt Warmer". I told the waitress, I really gotta have that right now. (It did not sound as cheap as it sounds while I am writing this!). They had selections across the board in all types of hues and blends of scotch. I like scotch and I think I could have all the scotch I wanted there. I am surely going to visit that place again. And still later, we caught up with another friend and hit Kingston Mines. Thats a really hot blues bar. That night, the groups playing were real good. We drank and did music, then drank again and then heard more music. It was great! Now, thats still not the blowout part! The best part of the weekend was that I got to see the Chicago Fire play against New England Revolution on Saturday night! Wow! It was very good. Fire made two goals against New England's one. What made it even better was that I hooked up with a group that plays soccer by Montrose harbor. These guys had hooked up with the Fire team to sell "50/50 Raffle" tickets at the stadium. So, I showed up at the stadium 1:30 hours before the game began with the whole family and they gave me some singles, one roll of tickets and a yellow vest (not to forget the ID card to get me in and out of the stadium and a placard about the charity which the raffle was about). I went around the stadium holding up the placard shouting like a peanut vendor. "Raffle Tickets" "Raffle Tickets". It was fun! All this was followed with a Sunday morning at the "Frontier Park" at Naperville. They have 12 Soccer grounds there! Imagine that. I've decided to field a team in Spring - either a kids team or an adult team. We will see how that goes.

Gandhi Jayanti

For my kids, I started lighting a lamp at the altar every morning (I confess, I have become less regular after they got the concept). For my kids, I stopped using swear words inside the house (on the phone, while talking to friends etc). So, today, I decided to tell them about Mahatma Gandhi for their bedtime story. I have two boys. One is 5 and the other 2. I was surprised how much interest the elder one took. Of course, the for the younger one it was a bed time story as any other. The elder one wanted to know more. So, we got out of bed and I looked up Gandhi videos on video.goolge.com. Showed him a couple of small parts of the movie and then showed him a few photos from images.google.com! Thanks to technology for all this. Coming back to the point: me and my wife told him about MK Gandhi's birth place, his education for barrister in London, his apartheid experience in S Africa, his non-violence concept, British Raj, independence and stuff like that. All this in 10 or 15 odd minutes. Very good intro to Gandhi and some part of our old culture. Afterwards, my wife and I discussed how Bharat came into being.

Anyway, if you have kids and you have the chance, please tell them about Gandhi and his ideals. Some of his ideals are applicable in all walks of life whether in USA, England or in India (or wherever else in the world). Please introduce your children to some of the good values that Gandhi represented.

Finally, they are showing the movie Gandhi on cable in Aurora, IL. So, if you are reading this at about 9:38 PM on Monday Oct 1st central time, stop reading and turn to channel 40 on TV.

Good night.

Photography

I recently did a long overdue meeting with a friend of mine. Actually, he is a friend by default. His mother and my mother are real good friends from their childhood. So, goes a long way huh? Anyway, it was a real pleasure meeting Abhijeet Patil. He works in Torrance California. He is only minutes away from a couple of real nice beaches. He took me their to eat Mexican food on the beach-front and then we had a short walk on the beach before returning to our work. Very good guy. His other facet is that he is a wonderful photographer. He has uploaded all his photos on flickr here. I shared his online photo album with my friends via email. That set off a conversation that surely needs to be broadcasted. I have planted the one email from Abhijeet that tells a lot to a photography newbie. Without much further ado, I give you this:

Kartik, I am a relative n00b myself, so not sure if I have anything of major insight. But I can surely share a few of my learnings over the past year and a half or so.

To begin with, here is my set up:

Nikon D80

Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (kit lens which came with the camera - really handy "walking-around" lens)

Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 super wide-angle lens (by far my favorite lens)

Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 macro/telephoto (definitely should have spent more money and gotten a better lens)

For me Internet in general and Wikipedia in particular have been an invaluable resource in understanding the basics of photography. These three pages in particular:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_speed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_%28photography%29

Even with elementary understanding of these 3 components, you can improve your shots dramatically.

Taking a photo pretty much boils down to how effectively you use the light in any shot and how you manipulate light to get the effect you want. I would recommend that you start shooting in manual mode. Keep a close eye on the camera meter -- in case you aren't familiar with it, the last diagram on this page shows you where to look for it: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/NikonD40/page3.asp. The "0" indicates "correct exposure".

As you take more photos, you will realize that the camera is not always correct. For instance, in a scene which comprises of both brightly lit areas and areas with deep shadows, you will have to make a choice which area you want to accentuate in the shot. If you expose for the shadow, the bright areas in the shot run the risk of being washed-out. Similarly, if you expose for the brighter spots, the darker areas might turn almost pitch dark and you'll loose detail in those sections.

I mostly operate in manual or in "aperture priority" mode -- especially in bright daylight. AP is where you control the aperture (f stop) and let the camera determine the shutter speed. Aperture is very useful in determining the DOF, or depth of field. If you want a shallow DOF (main subject in focus and background blurry), use a larger f stop (smaller number). And if you want a deep DOF (sharp photo with most visible detail), use a smaller f stop (larger number). With your lens, the largest f stop number at 18mm is f/3.5 and smallest is f/22; and f/5.6 - f/38 at 55 mm. Typically for a lens of this range, the sharpest photos come out between f5.6 - f8.

A good way to learn about which settings to use in what circumstances is, of course, to take a lot of photos. But you could also explore websites like Flickr and look at the "EXIF" data that a lot of photos display. A lot of times you will see a photo and wonder what setting was used to make it possible. Studying the EXIF data, which is stored as image information on almost every JPG, helps a lot. For example, this photo ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/abhijit/603679429/) taken at night and this photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/abhijit/540052578/ ) taken in bright daylight will obviously have different settings. And you can see what controls were used if you scroll down the page and click on the "more properties" link on the right hand side. For the record, almost all of my photos go through Photoshop.

Which brings me to my next point: Post Processing. I think post processing has earned a wrong reputation with the general public. Do not shy away from using post processing to retouch your photos. And here's why: I'm assuming that more often than not, you'll shoot photos in JPG. And JPG is essentially extremely good camera guess work, based on complex algorithms, on how an image should look. If you take a photo of, say, an apple, the camera is basically going to guess how red the apple is or what shade of red the apple is and compress that information into JPG format. But it will not be a 100% match. This is where post processing comes into play. Think of it as a digital darkroom. BTW, if you have Photoshop, well and good. If you don't, try Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/windows/

As for white balance, it is mostly about reproducing the correct color in any giving light. To begin with, you could just match the description on the WB setting to the conditions you're shooting in. For instance, if you are shooting in cloudy conditions, use the "cloudy" WB setting. You will mostly find it effective when you are shooting in, say, a bar lit mostly by neon lighting. With automatic WB, your photos will veer to one end of the color spectrum. But if you use the appropriate WB setting, the camera will capture truer colors.

Phew! All clear as mud? Good.

Just be careful because this hobby might just suck you in and before you know it, you'll be up till 3 in the morning working on your photographs.

Anyway, man, hope that at least 25% of this gibberish makes sense. Have fun shooting!

And so crumbles the cookie.

immigration voice rally

I was recently at a rally organized by a group called Immigration Voice that represents legal high-skilled immigrants who are trying to make a career and life in the United States. The event was held over two days Mon Sept 17 and Tue Sept 18 in the US Capital. This group had organized many meetings (about 150 of them) with senators and congressmen who were in the Capital City. About 1500 legal highly-skilled immigrants turned out for this rally from many states. Yours truly got some face time with Congressman Danny Davis (7th District Illinois), Congressman McDermott (7th district Washington state) to talk and hear about legal highly skilled immigrants. On Sept 18, the full contingent slow-marched peacefully from the Washington Memorial to the US Capitol. Congressman McDermott gave a little speech about overall immigration policy and acknowledged that the law should include issues faced by legal highly skilled immigrants. The Business Week covered this event here: http://tinyurl.com/yvd7jq, NY Times here: http://tinyurl.com/238nef and Washington post here: http://tinyurl.com/yt5h64

My capacity in this group is minimal, I happen to be a friend of a very energetic gentleman who is the Illinois chapter VP for Immigration Voice: Anil S. I do believe in the objectives of the group and have supported them with my presence at the rally and purchasing merchandise from their website. At the rally, I met the organizers: Doctor, Software Engineer, Ad Creative and other professionals - like some of us. They seemed very motivated and committed. They have done a great job in highlighting some of the issues in the US immigration process. Some folks have a lot of trouble with immigration and others do not perceive it as trouble at all. In any case, this group shows that the issues are clear and present.

I wanted to share the experience with my readers and encourage everyone to support the group in whichever way they can if they'd like to. Immigration Voice accept donations on their site, they have directions on how to reach out to your local political offices, they have cool merchandise for sale on their site and they cover most of the nationwide immigration events. Their website is: www.immigrationvoice.org.

What we do

This week, I had a short but still very important conversation with a person I worked with before. I think it is important because it embodies one of the principles of what we do at Saven. Really, as a company providing consulting, solutions and global delivery, we are our customer's partners towards business leadership. We will always focus on that goal. Over the long term, we will always strive to bring leadership to everyone we engage with. As a day-to-day guide for us, here is what we do with all customers and people we meet:

<person>, building a great business is way too much fun. I am liking it. The uncertainty, ambiguity and constant optimism is a heady combination. Plus, motivating other people to do things is both challenging and rewarding. I am realizing that sales is actually all about motivating people to change, improve or achieve something and money is a sweet side-effect.

We truly hope to lead our clients on every front towards leadership.

Labor day

Today was one of the best days of the summer. It was also the last. The Sun was out. The breeze was blowing, it was hot yet nice. I enjoyed every bit of it.