After 2 month of waiting, THE Brass Rat is finally here. It is ... visible;).
Ouch, I haven't updated my blog for almost two months now. What a busy summer. The venture idea is taking up a lot of time. Hopefully, I can have more free time soon.
Ben
Monday, August 25, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday Accounting and Beer...
The only good thing this summer is that Linda from 07 organized the Beer thing after Friday accounting class. It's good to meet SDMer at muddy.
Love it and thanks Linda.
Love it and thanks Linda.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
What have I been doing....
Oh, well, long time no post. Let me check what I have done:
1. trying to start our business (or thesis, however we want to call it) with Cynthia and the rest of the gang, a lot of coding in the 3 weeks break.
2. Summer session has officially started. Classes seem really hectic now. Homework piles on and I really want to get the coding part to a certain milestone.
3. doing a lot of reading and experiment with Automated Speech Recognition (ASR). Very interesting field. Right now, doing some model training with Sphinx. It is so much .... not-fun. Well, a lot of things need to be flushed out.
Something interesting in the process was that we (Cynthia and I) had a visit to Virage about 2 weeks ago. Their VP of research gave us some good demo about their product, eViTAP and other (blinkx is one of their product). Amazing speech recognition toolkit and machine translation capbility.
Other than these, I will remember to write more.
1. trying to start our business (or thesis, however we want to call it) with Cynthia and the rest of the gang, a lot of coding in the 3 weeks break.
2. Summer session has officially started. Classes seem really hectic now. Homework piles on and I really want to get the coding part to a certain milestone.
3. doing a lot of reading and experiment with Automated Speech Recognition (ASR). Very interesting field. Right now, doing some model training with Sphinx. It is so much .... not-fun. Well, a lot of things need to be flushed out.
Something interesting in the process was that we (Cynthia and I) had a visit to Virage about 2 weeks ago. Their VP of research gave us some good demo about their product, eViTAP and other (blinkx is one of their product). Amazing speech recognition toolkit and machine translation capbility.
Other than these, I will remember to write more.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
GPS, Buffalo, Toronto and Montreal...
On my trip to TO this weekend, I brought my trustworthy Garmin GPS along. After got the cheap economic rental car from Buffalo airport around 6:30PM, I dutifully sticked the GPS to the car window and keyed in the destination in Toronto. It all seemed well. Arrival time was 7:11. Not too bad. Buffalo to TO is quite close anyway. So, I started driving. I thought I'd hit QEW in no time.
After on the road for quite while, the road was getting smaller and smaller and it was getting wilder and wilder outside. Anyhow, I thought, my GPS has never failed on me yet.
Then I started to remember the first drive I had with Jessica from TO to Niagara Falls 8 years ago. I remembered it so clearly: it was sometime around January 2001. Well, everyone knows January in Toronto: you get really really bored since there is nothing you can do outside. Anyhow, since I just got my driver's license a month ago, we figured it would be a nice practice run to rent a car and drive to Niagara Falls. So out we went. We rented a very small Nissan. I can assure you it was very small one, since I still remember driving the car was like flying in the windy January weather.
Anyway, I started to missed Jessica so much and I dug out my cell phone to tell her that how much I was missing her.
So we exchanged our love jokes. I randomly asked what time it was. She said 7:56. I said that was impossible, since my trustworthy GPS said I'd arrive TO by 7:11. I double-checked the GPS and the screen still says arrival time is 7:11. I realized something was not right. Either I fell into a worm hole or the GPS was wrong. Since the worm hole thingy hasn't been reliable available yet, I suspect the GPS was pulling a joke on me.
After fiddled the GPS for over 5 minutes, I found out what was wrong (yes, that's MIT efficiency;)): in the navigation setting, I checked to avoid "Toll Road", which is alright for local roads. However, from Buffalo to Toronto, the only route without needing to pay for toll was to take a huge trip to Montreal/Ottawa. So, instead of 1:30 hr normal drive, the GPS was asking me to take a 12 hr drive. So basically, the 7:11 meant 7:11AM tomorrow morning, not 7:11PM today.
Gosh, what a surprise. can the device get a little smarter? I really don't mind to pay a little toll to save 10 hours.
Oh, whatever, time well wasted...
The route Garmin suggested:
After on the road for quite while, the road was getting smaller and smaller and it was getting wilder and wilder outside. Anyhow, I thought, my GPS has never failed on me yet.
Then I started to remember the first drive I had with Jessica from TO to Niagara Falls 8 years ago. I remembered it so clearly: it was sometime around January 2001. Well, everyone knows January in Toronto: you get really really bored since there is nothing you can do outside. Anyhow, since I just got my driver's license a month ago, we figured it would be a nice practice run to rent a car and drive to Niagara Falls. So out we went. We rented a very small Nissan. I can assure you it was very small one, since I still remember driving the car was like flying in the windy January weather.
Anyway, I started to missed Jessica so much and I dug out my cell phone to tell her that how much I was missing her.
So we exchanged our love jokes. I randomly asked what time it was. She said 7:56. I said that was impossible, since my trustworthy GPS said I'd arrive TO by 7:11. I double-checked the GPS and the screen still says arrival time is 7:11. I realized something was not right. Either I fell into a worm hole or the GPS was wrong. Since the worm hole thingy hasn't been reliable available yet, I suspect the GPS was pulling a joke on me.
After fiddled the GPS for over 5 minutes, I found out what was wrong (yes, that's MIT efficiency;)): in the navigation setting, I checked to avoid "Toll Road", which is alright for local roads. However, from Buffalo to Toronto, the only route without needing to pay for toll was to take a huge trip to Montreal/Ottawa. So, instead of 1:30 hr normal drive, the GPS was asking me to take a 12 hr drive. So basically, the 7:11 meant 7:11AM tomorrow morning, not 7:11PM today.
Gosh, what a surprise. can the device get a little smarter? I really don't mind to pay a little toll to save 10 hours.
Oh, whatever, time well wasted...
The route Garmin suggested:
Friday, May 9, 2008
PDD Presentation and Trade Show
ok, spring is officially almost over. Oh, boy, time sure flies fast. Let me check what kind of damage I have done here at MIT: well, I passed all the classes (which I think is a good sign). I am also donating time to Cognika (which is actually quite interesting). Be the boss of my own is another thing I am working on (which my wife complains that I put too much time in this). Life sure is .... challenging and .... sure is fun.
PDD presentation is pretty fun. So many idea pops up. There are some really ones with right niche. Of course, how big the niche is is another problem.
Teams so far:
Bicycle tow rack designed for a motorcycle
GearBuddy: a bicycle gear cleaner
T2GO: a tea drink lover thingy
WiMOST: a wireless ads platform?
Workhorse: a DIY garage work platform.
Zimbler: Shopping Bag holder
EMA: Elevator Maintenance Assistant
PDD presentation is pretty fun. So many idea pops up. There are some really ones with right niche. Of course, how big the niche is is another problem.
Teams so far:
Bicycle tow rack designed for a motorcycle
GearBuddy: a bicycle gear cleaner
T2GO: a tea drink lover thingy
WiMOST: a wireless ads platform?
Workhorse: a DIY garage work platform.
Zimbler: Shopping Bag holder
EMA: Elevator Maintenance Assistant
Friday, April 25, 2008
Sales, Storytelling and more
There was a very good public speaker, Craig Valentine, on the Sloan Sales Conference this afternoon. As his topic says, "Masterful Story-Telling for Better Selling", he is truly a master of storytelling. The topic, story-telling instead of just facts, has appeared in so many text, but it is still amazing to see how powerful it is when a master performs it. Oh, I love the tips on eye contact: scan and stop.
I also liked this shorten: SOFTEN
Smile
Open
Forward
Territory
Eye contact
Node
Of course, he also shared his experience when he first started public speaking.
To a broader extent, story-telling is a powerful delivery method of visioning. The way I tend to do visioning is to paint the future picture. With a story, the msg can be delivered to the audience much more vividly.
Of course, the preparation would be the key. Characters -> Conflict -> Climax -> Conclusion -> Carry out -> Your msg.
I also liked this shorten: SOFTEN
Smile
Open
Forward
Territory
Eye contact
Node
Of course, he also shared his experience when he first started public speaking.
To a broader extent, story-telling is a powerful delivery method of visioning. The way I tend to do visioning is to paint the future picture. With a story, the msg can be delivered to the audience much more vividly.
Of course, the preparation would be the key. Characters -> Conflict -> Climax -> Conclusion -> Carry out -> Your msg.
MIT Sloan Sales Conf today
Sloan sales conference today. I missed the morning part, because of my negotiation class. However, the negotiation class was well worth it. Today is a 6-party negotiation. Extremely interesting negotiation. We got some very strong character on the negotiation table: Eric Loth, Sierra Calder Towers, Andriy Ignatov, Samia A Mahjub, Yifan Zhang and ???. Sierra was in the bad position to represent the ports side. If you met her, you'd know her that she is a very strong talker. So, she tried to block the deal in any way she can (good job, Sierra;)). However, I guess she gave her intention too early and the other parties knew that the ports side had to be excluded from this deal. Anyhow, very good negotiation case and we reached deal in the end. It was quite easy for me, since I have clear instruction about what's acceptable and, more importantly, the money and the veto power;).
Back to the Sales conf. I went there for the afternoon session with jab. I was a little disappointed since I more or less wanted to see more VC there. Anyhow, not too many there. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurship: how to close your first deal was good. I also liked the storytelling session. I will share a little more tonight.
Back to the Sales conf. I went there for the afternoon session with jab. I was a little disappointed since I more or less wanted to see more VC there. Anyhow, not too many there. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurship: how to close your first deal was good. I also liked the storytelling session. I will share a little more tonight.
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