wikked thoughts by Waqas Ahmed

wikked thoughts by Waqas Ahmed

yet another geek blog about Seattle, food, photography, games and the art of laziness

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Rhapsody in blue

This is from a visit to Mykonos, Greece in April 2008.

Rhapsody in blue

Mykonos is the single most photogenic spot I’ve ever visited. I’m really hoping to return to the island at some point in the future, with a 5D Mk II in my hands and a few free days.

Point Wilson Lighthouse

Point Wilson Lighthouse

Visited Fort Worden State Park over the memorial day weekend. It was a long drive back to Seattle, so I didn’t get a chance to wait for the sun to set fully and get a shot of the light itself.

Huntington Beach Pier

Orange County, California

Mosquito Warfare

Mosquito warfare

Paperspine – Netflix for books

As someone living with a serious book buying addiction, Paperspine’s beta launch caught my eye.

paperspine

$15 a month gives you unlimited access to their 15,000 book selection, with free shipping and 2 books out at a time. I’m still debating whether I should jump in at this early stage. Things that are making me hesitate:

  • 2 books out at a time with 5 days of media-mail-speed shipping doesn’t sound like a lot. Effectively you’re reading one book at a time and waiting for a week for the other book to get back to you.
  • They only have paperback books in their catalog at the moment
  • The site needs a lot of work – things I took for granted on Amazon.com and Netflix are missing, including: reviews, recommendations, cover images for every book, decent search, zeitgeist etc.
  • No integration with Amazon.com / bookmooch / iRead etc. – I want to auto import existing wish lists, see what my friends are reading etc.

Of course this is a beta launch and I’m sure much of this will be released eventually. But the bar has been set high for other media lines and considering the price of entry here, I don’t feel like I’m getting a great value quite yet.

Blogging from the iPhone

Testing while stuck in standstill traffic.

Harvard Business Review: Amazon’s strategy

Found this to be a fairly interesting read. Harvard Business Review interviews Jeff Bezos and talks about strategic bets. I’m happy to see a shout-out for Tagging in 2007.

Amazons_course

Choice tidbits: “I’ll tell you a story about an incident that I’m sure is part of the reason we are what we are. Sometime around May of 1997 we were put on a deathwatch by a well-known industry pundit. His argument was a simple one: Barnes & Noble had just launched their website, and we had only 125 employees at the time, and something like $60 million in annual sales… They had 30,000 employees at that time, and $3 billion in sales.”

Community based USCIS Green Card tracking

The coolest community site I’ve seen in a while: trackitt. Green card applicants share data to figure out historic and current processing times at each service center.

Nebraska I-485 processing times

Improve the prediction accuracy by entering your own data, watch similar cases or ask questions in the forums. Exactly everything that the official USCIS site would never provide.

Thanks, Epic Edits Weblog

Flickr Favorites for September 2007

Very happy to get a mention (two tiny ones actually) in the “favorites of the week” post on Epic Edits.

You talkin’ to me?

You talkin' to me?

Las Ventas, Madrid, May 23, 2007. This was the debut fight for the young bullfighter facing the mortally wounded bull. He was understandably cocky. The bull keeled over a couple of minutes later and there wasn’t a single scratch on the matador.

I was fortunate enough to visit Madrid during Feria de San Isidro, which meant a bullfight every day, so it was easy to get seats even at the last moment. Legend has it that Saint Isidore (patron saint of Madrid) was an impoverished farm worker who, along with his wife Santa Maria de la Cabeza, became famous for giving food to the poor. Once during a drought, he broke the earth with a scythe which brought forth a spring of water which gave sufficient water to supply all of Madrid. On another occasion their son fell into a deep well and, at the prayers of his parents, the water of the well is said to have risen miraculously to the level of the ground, bringing the child with it, alive and well. Isidore and Maria then vowed continence and lived in separate houses.

The golden hour

Yachats

Yachats, OR, September 1, 2007. The Oregon coast gets a bad rep for being fogged over most of the time. I was pretty lucky to catch it at its finest over the labor day weekend. My one takeaway from the entire trip: it’s about time I bought a tripod.

Early morning flight

Iasi Airport

Iasi, Romania, April 21, 2007. It’s very rare that I’m up at dawn. Since I had to catch this early morning flight out I thought I’d catch both the rising sun and planes taking off. I arrived at the airport to find that they severely frowned upon taking pictures. There were other tourists snapping away regardless. I managed to get off one shot, without really composing it while an elderly German tourist was being dressed down by a security guard.

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