Punjabiyaa da josh ...

Sometimes I wonder what is my identity ? Who am I if people see through their social lens ?? Am I an IITian, Am I a boring computer scientist, Am I a baniya or a regular desi in california ? What exactly is my Identity.

The question which bothers most probably is how do I see myself and what exactly I want to look like through my lens ?

What I want to be ?

In my eyes I want to be the guy who lives and dies for his passions, The passion can be a startup, a cause, a sport, a hobby, a movie, my family or whatever The only requirement I have from my life is to do whatever I wish to do with my utmost sincerity and
energy.

How do I see myself currently ?

hmm. time for some introspection, specially since 2009 is coming to an end and is a good idea to look back on last year and give yourself some marks

2009 passions I followed and its rating
1) Marathon : Started in June, suddenly I got the running bug and decided to do marathons. I think I started with great passion running my first marathon in 2 weeks of training but then I did missed out on some training sessions and didn't complete the full marathon I aimed at (2 half marathons do not cut it) , Looking at the steep miles curve I ran here and all the injuries
I endured I will give myself a descent 7/10.0


2) interIIT dramatics : August 2009 also saw return of the actor in me with the Diwali Dhamaka InterIIT competition, This was one event where passion was flowing up the brim , The energy, the fun and the passion we had for this was unparalleled and I am proud to get a 10.0/10.0 for this ... This is the kind of passion I want to have in all my endeavors.

3) PanIIT business plan competition: August 2009 was a dammn interesting month looks like, It also saw the entrepreneur bug in me, worked on a business plan and was able to arouse interest from couple of VC's .. The passion I saw there was a solid 9.0/10.0 satisfying but not great enough I think.

4) DesiPandora.com happened in Nov-Dec 2009 and am pretty happy about the effort which we saw here, learnt a lot of things and had ton of fun ... working part time after a full day of work at linkedin or sneaking up work behind wifey back .. man that is also in 9.5/10.0 category ..


so in all folks, pretty happy with the effort in later half of they year, the bad piece is not a single point to talk about in entire first half ... 2010 need to be different I need a bigger fuller and better scores through out the year :)

one more thing saw this piece somewhere, and loved every word of it ...

"Yaaran di yaari ton Sadi jaan kurban e,
Ki Karna asi Paise te Wakhave nu,
Sanu aapne yaaran te hi ena maan e,
J raab ne dita hai Phooka Paisa lookan nu,
Sanu Baksheya Emaan e,
Jina marzi ehh Kar lain Dikhawa,
PUNJAB de Munde te Kurian Di WaKhRi PehChaan AE"

Introducing www.desiPandora.com

I have been very very busy lately, I got the entrepreneur bug this September. It is one bug which doesn't keep you down but keep you up all the time, all night.This bug is one of passion and bring so much of it to you that you become stronger than superman and can do stuff in minutes which sound like crazy weeks before.

I hope this bug stays with me for throughout my life as my identity is my passion, w/o it I am just one of the rat running in the crazy rat zoo we call this world.

Enough of the emotions here, please put your hands together and help me welcome to this world www.desipandora.com

I am very big fan of Pandora.com A superb music recommendation service to play a stream of songs given your choice of song/artist/album/category. They do music genome analaysis (beats, speeds, moods, chords, vocals) to give you recommendation for similar songs/bands/music etc Their recommendations are crazy accurate and I have discovered many new bands I were totally clueless about thanks to Pandora.

Lately I have been having urges to listen to nice hindi music and that is where the pandora model breaks, the cost of adding songs to their library is significant needing music analysis plus the model is not self serving one. I cannot add my own collection of songs to add to pandora if they dont already have it. Pandora have added songs in hindi but I think their library is not fully stocked yet.

Here is where desiPandora.com comes to rescue, It rides on the biggest music library on the whole planet aka youtube. Given any keywords it searches youtube for similar songs make an initial playlist and keep playing related/recommended songs till it can.

Riding on youtube means you can query with any keywords, any language words spelt in english, song title, movie, album, artist name etc. And it will try to do the best youtube aka google search can make out of it.

I am very excited, I can finally have my own customized radio station tuned to my mood at the moment be it metallica or jagjit singh it has it all .. it knows me and loves me always :)