Ameet's blog

It has been more than 4 months that I turned in my badge at Tesla. By now, I have mostly gotten over the constant tick to check ercot.com for the latest market price spikes, upcoming scarcity days and check internal dashboards to track how VPP dispatched. Elasticity of brain to adapt to new work rhythms is amazing.. and so is its capacity to forget. So before I forget the lessons I learnt and cultural patterns that made Tesla hum, thought of writing those down, in order to preserve and grow them. I sincerely believe some aspects of Tesla's culture are worth emulating. This is an effort to list them without disclosing any non-public information, and capture the emotions and quiet integrity of engineers that used to run the small sliver of Tesla I had the honor to work within. I tried to organize the post below around cultural building blocks to make it easy to read. Joining Tesla I have been following Tesla since 2009, including listening in on most investor calls. The grit and sac...

 The world of work is often viewed as a sterile pursuit of checklists, project plans, meetings, coding.. the whole grind, without many emotions or drama. Those last things belong in a movie or TV soaps that we watch after returning home from work . But work does have its moments, of inspiration, serendipity and clarity.. all dramatic enough to be put in a movie, which are the breadcrumbs that show us the way to our life's calling. One such moment happened to me in Bangalore early in my career, and made me decide to pursue control design as a career path. I wanted to pen this down for a long time.. but was not sure if I could share this publicly, despite it being of no commercial value. Since it has been almost 20 years since that incident, writing it down to share an oddly satisfying science discovery and its personal impact on me, without disclosing the business context around it. Hoping it spurs others to remember what drew them to their life's work, and for others who might ...

  and you never know what you're going to get (or meet)!  A new job in bay area, required me to commute and take Amtrak both ways. After two years of pandemic, that was a rare chance to see and meet diverse people from all walks of life. One such interaction stayed in my mind . Here is what happened.. I was trying to get work done on laptop at a lower level in the train, when in rolled a burly man, in his seventies, with a mask on, on a wheelchair. His cap said he was a vietnam war veteran. He parked the wheelchair next to a wide table and started talking on phone. From the sound of it, it was clear that he really enjoyed talking. It exuded eloquence, warmth, good humor and positive vibes in general. After the call, he looked at us fellow passengers and from the corner of my eyes, it was clear he was looking for some kind of connection as a pretext to talk. After some time, he broke the ice and started talking with me and another fellow passenger. It was mostly one-way as he c...

I work in renewable wind energy industry, and saying this fills me with pride and many many memories... Memories of a roller coaster ride over last 20 years, with ups and many downs.. Wanted to write these down for a long time.. because writing can help make sense of things, discover patterns in random draws of life and separate signal from the noise. So here it goes... In 2002, fresh out of college, I joined the world of serious work at GE research center in Bangalore. It was amazing.. The whole place was buzzing with passionate people from each walk of engineering, at desks and in labs, wanting to make their mark with their hardwork, ideas, working with each others and colleagues all over the world and creating a good reputation for Indian engineers.  In the same year, as Enron scandal unfolded all over the news, GE acquired the wind turbine business from Enron at a fire sale, and lot of work came to us to learn and contribute to the new business. A German engineer came to Banga...

call for help.. (and a long post) As Rob Pirsig had said, the mind is a bundle of ghosts, ideas that exist on their own accord, evolve over time and help or hurt us. Newton's laws, common sense, and the golden rule are some of the best. They are reinforced by the affirmation from repeated experiments or experiences and by the social rewards, cooperation they enable. But there are others.. the wretched ones.. which cause the mind to go out of balance and lose its connection with reality, to lose its calm and dive into spirals of anger, hatred, doubt, cynicism, conspiracy theory, prejudices, inferiority or supremacy complexes.. the list goes on. In some sense.. the mind can become infinitely more complex than the reality it deals with.. and therein lies the rub. To be effective, the mind needs a system to reign in or weed out undue complexity and biases and have a clear north star, or values in Pirsig's words that guides its quest to make sense and forge meaning ...

Just read about apple's research on autostereoscopic displays , which lets us see a 3D image, without needing to squint :) I have been thinking about a pet idea for a long time, which is half baked, and will probably remain so.. Hence I though it might be good idea to spell it out here, so that interested people can work on it/ evaluate it. (and if blog post has any legal validity as a prior art, at least people can't patent it :) I have heard enough brickbats about it from friends, but still it charms me to envision its implementation. Here it goes :( 1. Head tracking pointing : Human computer interface has been trying to replace mouse with gaze for a long time. Usual problems associated with such are distraction and confusion, as cursor follows gaze, and gaze follows moving cursor, which follows gaze and so on. Even gaze tracking is not that accurate yet/ cheap enough to be practical. My solution is head tracking. Head is easier to track approximately, as features/ silhouttes...

My hero :P I just love this guy! One more video . His quotes .. -I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. -No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. -Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. -If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. -What do you care what other people think! (not exactly quote, but a pact between him and his wife)

A week back, I met a friend, who while reminiscing college days, said with dismay, "all is right now, but the innocence is lost." With this, I started thinking about innocence. What is it? Wikipedia articulates it so well. Innocence is a state of unknowing, where one's experience is lesser, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting a blissfully positive view of the world, in particular one where the lack of knowledge stems from a lack of wrongdoing, whereas greater knowledge comes from doing wrong. This is so intriguing! We treasure innocence, not knowing. We yearn to keep inner child alive, reminder of times when we knew nothing, were cared for, were more full of love & joy, were not so judgmental. We censor our movies, we give spoiler alert before divulging a plot. This affinity of innocence, runs counter to t...

The manhole near my lab :-) Inner cover from Mexico, outer cover from India, and outermost ring, from China :)

Well what can I say! They said they would do it, and they did it!! Hats off to them! Ratan Tata, Tata group, Engineers and designers. Here is a very good interview of Ratan Tata by Charlie Rose. Is this the beginning of manufacturing led growth in India? Now if only government steps up with infrastructure projects, India can go the China way.

HCI is Human Computer Interaction, and Johnny Lee from CMU, is making it damn cheaper and fun! And he is making all the code, tools available for hobbyists freely on the web! Now, you can turn any laptop, computer, wall projection into a touchscreen. Or you can wave your fingers at it like in Matrix, click, zoom and pan. Why limit to fixed, flat surfaces? You can take a blank paper, a tablet, an umbrella or mini clay model of a car and turn it into a movable projected display, giving it virtual skin, zoom, pan, doodle on it, move it, tilt it, twirl it! He also has figured a way to use wiimote to turn the flat, drab 2D screen into a 3D display using head tracking, offering custom views for each perspective. Now ducking and strafe from oncoming bullets in Doom, can be much more real life! And all this without the expensive price tag. All above projects are doable with access to off the shelf hardware like computer, projector, wiimote or Umbrella :-) he has also made a 14$ steadycam , whi...

All he was saaaayyying, is give peace a chance !

America is a cauldron of exotic people. Yesterday at a party celebrating my friend's completion of permanent head damage (aka Ph.D.), I had piece of delicious icecream cake on my plate, and I went into kitchen and started talking to a very warm girl doing the hardwork of shuttling pizzas in & out of oven. Considering how high up I am towards my progress in Ph.D. (read above full form again :-), absendmindedly the plate tilted in my hand, and splat! Icecream cake was on the floor. Now listen to what happened next! I was searching for tissue to grab the cake, put it in trashcan, and wipe the floor, when in swooped this young lady, picked up the remains of cake from the floor, and took it on 'her' plate, and said nonchalantly, "Don't worry, I will eat it!" I was aghast! Now, my standards of cleanliness and what is hygienic are below the world average, but this was even beyond me! and being the sensitive person that I am, I was not going let anyone suffer for ...

Steve Wozniak, the guy who designed Apple computer, rocks! Listening to him is almost like revisiting childhood. His innocence, his artlessness, his passion, his evergreen beautiful mind is so rare, and so precious!

Blues, mood swings, depression are states of mind. They need not necessarily define people. One can come out of it. Sherwin Nuland, the surgeon and author, talks about the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression. Midway through, his story turns personal. It's a moving and deeply felt talk about relief, redemption, second chances.

Last week, I attended a week long course called YES+! It stands for Youth Empowerment Seminar, and is designed by Art of Living Foundation. It was such fun! Full of energy, dancing, music, meditation, exercise and breathing techniques designed to calm the mind, improve focus, get rid of negative emotions, find joy & peace in the present moment, feel connection and sense of belonging with others. I recommend it to everybody! It was taught by Natalie, a sweet young american girl who has conducted many many trauma relief workshops in New Orleans for Katrina affected people, inner city youth, prisons. I have always been overawed by all Art of Living teachers I have met. They really 'know' what they are talking about! Lets hope my discipline gets better of my inertia in practicing these techniques :-) Below is a music video made in Montreal YES+ course, which captures beautifully the essence of YES+.

Ashish Khetan, the brave journalist from Tehelka.com has found out some very disturbing truth about Gujrat Riots & role of government inaction in it. Listen to these people, as they speak about their, cops', Narendra Modi's role in riots, with exhilaration, without any remorse or moral qualms. Their morality is shaped around Hindutva, and its glory, and hatred of muslims, and feral animosity long cultivated by shakhas, history, fable of past glory, and isolation from Muslim community. They are gullible enough to reveal all, to a relative stranger whom they believe is member of their clan. I have known a person who is very nice person in all other aspects, except this. He is raged with passion, and hatred when he talks about Muslims. He talks about their plan to reproduce and take over India, and his willingness to take up arms when the time for war comes. The first time, I heard him say this, I sincerely wanted to ask him to get a psychoanalysis, or convince him of irratio...

the boy who asked for more :-) Here are some wonderful songs from Oliver! please watch in larger window.

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