Thanksgiving at Fox Farm in Plain

We've been having a fun Thanksgiving up here at Fox Farm in Plain, Washington. Fox farm is an old, well, fox farm, as in raising foxes for furs. The fox raising has long since stopped, and now its mostly a piece of land owned by a playful family that rents out a little cabin. The land is about 15 acres set in a beautiful valley near Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade mountains. The kids have been having a blast; the farm has chickens, goats and horses among other critters. The father of the family works up at Stevens Pass and collects all kinds of contraptions on the property, like old ski lifts, World War I vehicles, really old snow CATs, and more. Its pretty interesting just wandering the farm and running across things. We've also been enjoying having a nice campfire at night. Even in 20 degree weather, there's nothing like a campfire to stay cozy.

Nayan's Birthday Party

We had a blast the other day celebrating Nayan's 6th birthday. We went down to Sunset Bowl in Ballard. The kids had a hoot. The older kids were seeking order and civility in the bowling process. The younger kids just wanted to grab a ball and throw it down the lane. The younger kids eventually won out, so we settled for pure chaos with the names of random party goers appearing on the who's-to-bowl-next bowling monitors. After some initial discomfort with the anarchy, everyone had a great time, including the birthday boy.

Slurpies at the Science Center

We were at the science center the other day and I had a dying urge for a slurpy. Here's a quick clip of the kids savoring theirs. My appologies for the gunfire audio, but Blogger's video upload is a bit buggy.

The Rise of Khalsa - Punjabi Animation

Its been 14 years since I had my original epiphany on how the web would change the world, and I must say, I'm continually surprised at how rapidly things can change on the Internet. It was a little over a year ago when I wrote about the difficulties of finding kids content in Hindi. Today I did a YouTube search for Hindi cartoons and found a bunch of good content. I thought certainly there couldn't be much Punjabi content, but then my Punjabi cartoons query revealed a bunch as well.

So while searching, I ran across this animation called The Rise of Khalsa in Punjabi. Someone posted it on YouTube in 7 parts. You can also purchase the DVD HERE. The YouTube link to the first part is HERE. I have so far watched the first 3 parts, and it seems to be fairly well done. The video depicts Banda Singh Bahadur's rise and conquest of Punjab by the Khalsa army starting in the early 1700s; the Sikh victories contributed to the ultimate fall of the Mughal raj.

There are some violent images, so be aware if watching it with your kids. Unfortunately, there are no English subtitles in the YouTube video.

Lord of the Flies: Hard Lessons for a 5 Year Old

I posted HERE about Nayan's decision to wear a patka and be a proper Sikh. Well it seems he's changed his mind. For 4 weeks Nayan was perpetually taunted and called "weirdo", "freak" and repeatedly ordered to "take it off" by other kids. He was very surprised. He honestly expected other kids to be as excited as he was in his religious adherence. What particularly frustrated him, was that whenever a child asked him "why he had that thing on his head" - and he tried to explain it, they ran off laughing.

We had no idea he was being harassed until last week. He was afraid to say anything since the school authorities had lectured the kids not to "tattle." Ameen went in to speak with his teacher upon finding out. The teacher, to her credit, took action to separate some of the harassing kids. But I believe it was all too late. These things can be pretty viral in their propagation. The damage was already done.

Nayan learned a hard first life lesson: fitting in is really important, and in the all white school of North Beach Elementary, he already stands out. With all the pierced, tattooed, pink haired "open mindedness" of left wing Seattle - one would think this wouldn't happen. Well it seems many humans, even as young as 5, simply are obsessed with something as harmless as a head scarf. It saddened me to see him so excited with his new haircut and eagerness to be accepted, but alas, at least his heart was in the right place. He was very logical about it, he said, "Papa, perhaps I can try again when I'm older, and better at explaining Sikhism."

Saturday Morning Soccer in Ballard

We don't yet have a mini van, but we do spend Saturday mornings at Nayan's soccer matches. I can see why this is THE world sport; the game seems to come very naturally to kids, and unlike T-ball, they really get into it. A quick video of the kids playing afterward is shown below (the gunfire audio is courtesy of Google's new video uploading software, the original is HERE):

Seth Falcon joins Hypertext Solutions

Some folks have been asking what type of individuals we are looking for here at Hypertext Solutions. In general, we are looking for star contributors in multiple areas including but not limited to the areas of: text analysis, natural language processing, distributed programming, information retrieval, and data mining. I thought it might be helpful to chat with one of our new hires and ask him why he joined us.

Seth Falcon began working for Hypertext Solutions last week. In addition to being a key individual contributor to the well known open source Bioconductor project, Seth helped lead the overall development efforts for the project and was responsible for orchestrating the efforts of over a hundred contributors scattered world wide. Seth is a known contributor to R, a widely used statistical programming language. Seth brings with him a wealth of statistical and programming knowledge which will help us as we develop beyond our core areas of unstructured and structured text handling.

I asked Seth a couple questions when he first started last week; I have shared these below:

Seth, you obviously were working on very intriguing and influential work. You could have gone anywhere, both to large companies as well as myriad startups. What was it about Hypertext Solutions that really stood out for you as the place to join?

There were a number of factors that made Hypertext Solutions the most intriguing choice for me.  First of all, a small start-up was appealing because I want the excitement of building The Next Big Thing  along with the responsibility of helping to evolve the development culture.  Another factor is the problem domain.  The search space is a rapidly growing domain rife with interesting problems.  So not only did Hypertext provide the start-up environment I was looking for, but it gave me an opportunity to work with cutting edge technologies in a domain that I find interesting and challenging.

So, how do you like it so far?

A few days before I started, I received a "book bomb" from the company (don't worry, just a bunch of books, absolutely no explosives) consisting of a number of technical and fiction titles.  I thought this was a great way to start communicating the company's vision to new hires.    Today is day three.  I continue to be impressed by the technologies that we are working on and am enjoying getting to know my colleagues. I'm really excited about ramping up and starting to contribute to our products.

More about Seth can be found on his blog at: User Primary.

First Day of School

The other day was Nayan's first day of kindergarten. This was a bitter sweet moment for me. While I'm overjoyed Nayan is growing up to be a mature, articulate, and thoughtful young boy, its sad, in a way, to know he's growing up. I recall distinctly when I was 17, waving goodbye to all of my family and friends, as I boarded an airplane to head off to Chicago and my new college life; my family and friends were so emotional -- sad, and crying. In me, there was no sadness; I had to pinch myself to stop from smiling; I was thrilled at arriving in my new life and leaving my small town world behind. Without a doubt, when that day comes with Nayan waving goodbye to me, I'll be a real emotional mess.

Despite the teachers rounding us parents up and taking us to the "cry" room - no one was outwardly sad, most of the moms were just grinning looking forward to their precious hours of freedom. There were, however, many practical concerns. Nayan has never been away from home for such a long duration. Simply getting him to eat his lunch is a whirlwind of a challenge. Well he learned quickly. After 3 days of stubbornly refusing to eat anything but the cookies in his lunch, he ultimately caught on.

I was also concerned about Nayan getting picked on for his patka. Nayan has recently decided he will be a proper Sikh and never cut his hair. As others, Ameen and I were quite surprised by his decision, and powerful will. Nayan has virtually no role models here in the states who have kept their hair, but his dearest cousins in India all have their hair kept. Ameen, after many failed trips to the barber, ultimately relented. So it turns out no one teased him, as Ameen was certain would be the case. Our neighborhood is really full of such open minded and caring people. Thank God we don't live in France, where Nayan would have been ejected from the school system for simply following his faith.

KDD 2007 Videos Available

The KDD folks have made select talks and interviews from KDD 2007 available online. If you were unfortunate, like me, and unable to attend, you can view the videos HERE.

I recommend Calculating Latent Demand in the Long Tail by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine.

The Rock Star Treasure Hunt

I've been interviewing a lot of people lately. Trying to find truly great employees is such an interesting process. I find it difficult to really put my finger on what predicts a future epic employee. I've interviewed a large number of people over many years. I've also hired a good number, and then gone on to see how they performed.

Over the years I have constructed a mathematical model to try to help me gauge different attributes of engineers and ultimately score them. Its not a terribly fancy model, but I do have a number of attributes I rank a candidate on after an interview; these scores are then combined to give me a final candidate score. In many ways, this is a ridiculous thing to do -- try and distill a human being down to a simple number between 0 and 1. What I find, is that I am constantly playing with the model to see which attributes really matter and in what relative weight to one another. I often go back and forth with numbers until I can align them w/ my intuition; I realize this is a silly game, but I find the process helps me think through the many issues and realize ultimately what is important. So I put the scores of the absolute best people I have worked with, and the worst, along with the scores I think I would have given them after interviewing them; this helps give me a little perspective. Some really key lessons stand out for me.

1. Programming problems and puzzles only take you so far. I like to ask a lot of tough questions, but the one lesson that sticks out in my head, is of the hundreds of people I have interviewed over the years, the one person who stood out as the uncontested best at answering my technical questions, turned out to be the absolute worst employee. As a candidate, I recall being utterly impressed by this persons answers. I kept drilling him from all angles, and then said, ok, these answers are simply great and I have to hire the candidate. I did, and then I realized what a mistake it was. It turns out, this person was a complete Bartelby the Scrivener, cleverly refusing to do any work. He simply would not do anything, other than reinstall various operating systems on his machine, and answer other people's questions. It turns out, he was really quite good at answering peoples questions, but a "mere" oracle was not what we needed.

2. Sort of the opposite of my first lesson, is that someone who my instincts tell me is worth hiring, but I may still be hesitant on, may still be great. I barely hired at least one of my greatest all time hires.

3. Motivation is a hard thing to gauge, but an essential part of any great contributor. People that have something to prove, can be incredibly motivated. For example, I once hired someone who had never programmed anything more than some toy applications based on a reading of "Java in 21 days." I knew I was gambling, but I was just so impressed with how much this person knew about something he knew nothing about only 3 weeks prior. Obviously he had many other great technical attributes, a strong math and physics background, etc. In any event, he was able to rewrite 6 months of work from a 15 year veteran in 5 long days and have the system really shining within a few short weeks. A few months later he was the star programmer amongst a strong team of 10.

Okay, I'll end this post, as I'm not sure what my conclusions are, other than, its not a straightforward thing to hire the best of the best.

Out of the dark - Hypertext Solutions buys InFact

Well for those of you who have wondered what my top secret quest for the past few months has been about, you can now, finally, read all about it HERE. It has been an extremely interesting time in my professional career leading the effort to make this deal happen. I have indeed learned a great deal about many things non-technical. I have met an amazingly talented bunch of people who have helped guide me through this amorphous and somewhat enigmatic process.

More than anything, I'm simply thrilled to join Hypertext Solutions (note: the name is just a placeholder, we're still in stealth mode) where I can focus on taking the work that has consumed the last 6 years of my life out to massive success. I'm so happy to be back in the start up world, and especially, a well funded one with a powerful and disruptive strategy.

Finally, for those of you who are interested in perfecting and building upon the world's best NLP based text analysis and search platform, send me your resume! I'd love to talk to you.

And now, here is a snippet from the press release:

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Insightful Corporation (NASDAQ: IFUL), announced today the sale of its InFact search technology and associated intellectual property rights to Hypertext Solutions Inc. for $3.65 million in cash. Hypertext is a Seattle-based startup company focused on making information on the web more “intelligent.” The transaction closed today.

“Our move to sell the InFact technology enables us to focus on accelerating the growth of our S-PLUS product line and our Data Analysis business, which grew 14% during the first half of 2007 as compared to the first half of 2006,” said Jeff Coombs, President and CEO of Insightful Corporation. “We believe we are well positioned to drive additional growth in the predictive analytics space, and are currently investing heavily to deliver an increasingly enterprise-scalable platform and a series of high-value solutions targeted at the life science and financial services industries.”

Google Scalability Conference Talks

Greg Linden has an excellent summary of the Google Scalability Conference with a number of links to the talks. I've seen a few, and highly recommend the first keynote titled MapReduce, BigTable, and Other Distributed System Abstractions for Handling Large Datasets by Jeff Dean. Greg's full post is available HERE. Kyle Cordes also does a good job of summarizing YouTube's scaling experiences HERE. You can see the full YouTube scaling talk HERE.

Human Computation by Luis Von Ahn

I absolutely love StumpleUpon's video recommendation plugin. I now get great video's to watch highly tailored to my taste. Here is a lecture I ran into by Luis Von Ahn, a CS professor at CMU, lecturing on his approach to developing clever and addictive games to leverage human computational power to solve important problems. For example, one of the games allows him to build a database of metatags for images on the web. He argues he can metatag effectively all image content in Google's image search with his user population in a very short period of time. This lecture left me thinking social networking sites are significantly under utilizing their user populations.

How not to find great employees

If you're in a startup and are trying to attract great employees, whatever you do, do NOT post a job ad that looks like this:

CompanyX is a tiny technology startup in Seattle. We are working on some amazingly cool technology, and we face the ongoing challenge of matching people with other people (contextually and behaviorally) and scaling a complex Web application.

We're looking for scary smart people who are willing and excited to jump into a startup, work hard, have fun, make their mark, and work for part equity and part cash. We want to make a lot of money, but you should know this is not your Mommy's station wagon rolling down the freeway at 60mph. This is a pimped out Hummer on extremely rough terrain with life-threatening hazards around every corner. And we're going too fast. If that actually sounds FUN to you, then give us a yell and tell us exactly why we should have a conversation.

Trail Critters and Other Biking War Stories

So after non stop mountain biking for the past week up here at Whistler, I can say with confidence, bears rule the land. A few days back, I was flying through the woods on a cross country ride; I was descending some tight technical single track and ready to shoot out onto a gravel road when I noticed a rather large black bear mulling around in the trail exit onto the road. I stopped as fast as I could, smiled and waved at the bear, and proceeded to back out slowly. He watched me until I was almost out of sight. I then turned my back to him and zipped away -- heart racing of course.

Yesterday, there was a big fella grazing just a hundred yards or so at the top of the lift. I also met a French guy who told me all about his best friends grizzly encounter that had recently happened. Apparently his friend and another friend were mountain biking not too far from here, and a grizzly attacked the other friend. The Frenchman's friend charged the bear to save the other guy, and smacked the bear with his bike. The bear was pushing toward him while he was holding it back with his bike. He then tried to break the bears nose by punching it - to no avail of course. The bear then swiped him with his paw, and apparently ripped deep into his jaw bone. He then passed out, and awoke over half an hour later. Apparently the grizzly left him after determining he was dead, or unworthy. He escaped with only 256 stitches.

This is what riders up here do whenever talk of the furry ones comes up - we all have our war stories. Today, there is a section right above lower Whistler downhill, where you turn a tight corner and launch in the air and down fast into a long open descent. As I was rounding the corner just a moment before committing, I noticed a huge black bear grazing only a few feet from the trail at the bottom. Fortunately I slammed on my brakes and was able to back track out. Another instant and I would have had to race by him praying all the way that I wouldn't blow out a tire or that he wouldn't give chase.

Another rider up here had a mountain lion incident on Tuesday by the mini-disc golf course - he got confronted, and the lion kept pushing toward him. Finally he hopped on his bike and tried to out run the lion. Fortunately for him, he was a downhill racer so he was pretty quick. Apparently the lion chased him for quite a while. The lion story brought me back to my own lion encounter, but I'll save that for another time.

Once this sort of stuff creeps into your mind, its very hard to get rid of the thoughts. The past few days, I've been scanning for critters like mad. Its actually an annoying distraction when there's enough obstacles immediately in your path to pay attention to. Today I was dropping off a steep ladder when I got completely spooked by what turned out to be a life threatening squirrel. Ridiculously, I did end up with quite a crash - fortunately for my ego, it was a tough and terribly slippery spot. Well at least I got to test out my helmet and armor. In any event, I've had enough furry encounters in the past week to last me the year.

The Continued Adventures of Mateo: Fidel Oaxaca

My good friend Matt, now known as Mateo, dropped his life as a Seattle software geek, packed up his trailer, and drove down to the lovely beaches of Zipolite, Oaxaca. He has set up a new life down there. Occasionally I post some of his letters, with his permission of course, to remind us all that there is a world out there away from mortgages and 9 to 5 gigs. Here are some snippets from the latest:

Hey man. Thanks so much for getting back, I really appreciate it. [...] I'm now working with two other Mexican guys starting yet another Mexican non-profit to apply for world bank money to do a deforestation project. This is more Manolo's baby, he worked at the world bank for a number of years and his program was canceled by Wolfowitz. Needless to say he is quite pleased that W got the boot. Anyway he has retained a ton of contacts; I'm helping him prepare English applications and he is helping me find international money for things I'm interested in. The coolest thing, is learning from him.

In Mexico you can't do anything without the support of a local heavyweight. The local heavyweight can be a business leader, a member of an old family, a particularly good fisherman, or even somebody who tells good jokes. It has nothing to do with money or explicit power, it has to do with their personal power, their charm, their charisma, who knows what... Some people have this power [and] people follow them[;] they just know how to talk to all different kinds of people. With them you have a project. Without them you don't, they just take your money and nod. Usually if you go to a small town there are one or two guys who are heavyweights and you will quickly learn who. But one in a hundred, you can take the guy anywhere and plop him down and hell if he can't get everyone behind him in 30 minutes... no matter if they have never seen or heard of him.

Manolo is one of those. He looks like Fidel Castro at 50 with [a] gray beard, rides an old horse everywhere, and is shitfaced by 10:30 every day, but he's an incredible community leader. We went for a business meeting last week in the early morning sober hours. We were all in our bathing suits. We drank cheap Nescafe and he smoked cigars that he rolled from a single tobacco leaf at the table. He gave me the names of about 30 different international organizations that fund the work I'm interested in with tips for writing proposals and the names of his personal contacts. Then Filemon came by to borrow his gun to kill his cat, which had developed a [terribly] incurable disease. Manolo produced a small firearm and dispatched the poor cat, after which he announced he needed to take a ceremonial bath to cleanse himself of the bad vibes from killing an innocent animal. But no matter; we would resume the meeting with Alexis and I at the table and him out on the patio naked in a tub of water under the [bougainvillea] and next to his horse, who lives with him in his house. His house is the most amazing place I've seen, a sprawling decaying concrete estate with 180 degree views of the coast that he built himself over the last 20 years.

[...]

Nothing new here really. Things have quieted down a lot, we are waiting for the rain to start. Best to Ameen and the kids. take care, hasta la proxima,

Matt

Book Review: Come Back to Afghanistan by Said Hyder Akbar

I just completed an amazing book called Come Back to Afghanistan by Said Hyder Akbar, a 17 year old teenager from California. For anyone interested in the current state of Afghanistan, I highly recommend this book.

Books like this, i.e. personal accounts of a foreign and politically relevant land, are typically written by seasoned news reporter type folks, or other adults who already have a solid world view. Witnessing Hyder, a youthful teen, struggle to make sense of this world, often through colorful pop culture references, is so unique. In addition, I've always been fascinated by the recent history of Afghanistan. I was similarly glued to Soldiers of God, by Robert Kaplan, a detailed account of his experiences with the Soviet fighting Mujahideen. Perhaps it is the vivid descriptions of these rugged mountain war zones, places like the Khyber Pass or the Hindu Kush, that get to me. I'm also always interested in understanding the forces of tribalism, especially in South Asia.

Anyway, back to the book, not sure exactly how it happened, but somehow Hyder was given a microphone and recorder by Susan Burton who ultimately produced a show for This American Life, the NPR radio show hosted by Ira Glass. You can listen to the complete This American Life episode HERE. This show kicked off much of what appears in more vivid detail in the book. You can also buy the book on Amazon HERE.

Here's a snippet from a Publisher's Weekly review on Come Back to Afghanistan:

Akbar's refreshingly unsentimental reminiscences of visiting his father's homeland as a teen make for an intriguing portrait of Afghanistan at a time of significant transition. On 9/11, Akbar, who was born in Peshawar in 1984 but grew up in the U.S., was living near Oakland, Calif., where his father ran a clothing store. After the attack, the elder Akbar, a descendant of an Afghan political family, returned to his country to take a job as President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman and, later, as governor of Kunar, a rural province. The author visited his father for three successive summers, and the result is this account, a closeup view of the creation of the country's post-Taliban democratic government, told from a perspective that's impressively both insider and objective. Akbar reports on chats with cabinet ministers and warlords, and sketches the lay of the land, visiting both sumptuous Kabul palaces as well as bombed-out villages. His youth and curiosity send him on some dangerous adventures (he retraces a mountain route between Afghanistan and Pakistan used by fleeing members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban), and that youthful flavor also infuses the writing with a hip stream-of-consciousness that is by turns funny, insightful and, occasionally, breathtaking.

All in all, I give this book 4 out of 4 stars.

Big Whistler Air

Here's a great video of riders getting some big air. By the way, that reminds me, there's a popular trail up here called Dirt Merchant - there's a lovely spot where you launch over a creek that flows between the launch and landing. Its such a great feeling - a middle aged guy like me can feel like Evil Kenievel for a wonderful few moments. But I digress, back to these far more talented kids, enjoy:

Whistler Fun and Lots of Sun

We got up to Whistler yesterday morning and have been having a blast ever since. Yesterday I had a great time riding a bunch of cross country trails all around the Lost Lake area. There are some really fantastic trails that I've never found before. Lots of great wooden planks and roller coaster fun on Rhinoceros Furniture - my these Canadians sure know how to make some unbelievable trails. Poor Maya didn't make it out of the house today; alas her paws are really sore from our heavy riding yesterday; I really want to find some good running shoes for her.

Today was a hoot doing some downhill riding. I ran into an old friend randomly who I haven't seen in 15 years. We had a blast riding together. And the weather has been just stunning - perfectly sunny and around 75 degrees.

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine

A recent NY Times article that is lighting up the search blogosphere called Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine by Saul Hansell provides some insights on how the Google ranking system works. For anyone that has ever spent some time tweaking ranking metrics, this is an article worth checking out. Here are some snippets:

“Someone brings a query that is broken to Amit, and he treasures it and cherishes it and tries to figure out how to fix the algorithm,” says Matt Cutts, one of Mr. Singhal’s officemates and the head of Google’s efforts to fight Web spam, the term for advertising-filled pages that somehow keep maneuvering to the top of search listings.

Some complaints involve simple flaws that need to be fixed right away. Recently, a search for “French Revolution” returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like “French Revolution” rather than pages that simply had both words.

At other times, complaints highlight more complex problems.

...

Mr. Singhal introduced the freshness problem, explaining that simply changing formulas to display more new pages results in lower-quality searches much of the time. He then unveiled his team’s solution: a mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don’t. (And yes, like all Google initiatives, it had a name: QDF, for “query deserves freshness.”)

...

THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot.” If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. The model also examines Google’s own stream of billions of search queries, which Mr. Singhal believes is an even better monitor of global enthusiasm about a particular subject.

As an example, he points out what happens when cities suffer power failures. “When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds,” he says.

Mr. Singhal says he tested QDF for a simple application: deciding whether to include a few news headlines among regular results when people do searches for topics with high QDF scores. Although Google already has a different system for including headlines on some search pages, QDF offered more sophisticated results, putting the headlines at the top of the page for some queries, and putting them in the middle or at the bottom for others.