Qasim Virjee

This random paper comes by way of my brother Kameel, a financial specialist @ the World Bank.

From the intro:

"Penguins spend most of their life in the water. An extended period ashore only occurs during breeding. Anyone who has then watched a penguin fire a ‘‘shot’’ from its rear end must have wondered about the pressure the bird generates, but apparently no published data on the pressures produced exist. Since all penguins are protected and one must not approach penguins closer than 5 m (unless one holds a special permit), direct measurements are hard to come by. However, we found an indirect way to calculate the likely pressures involved in ‘‘venting’’ by chinstrap (Pygoscelis antarctica) and Ade´lie penguins (P. adeliae)...."

Read more in the attached PDF...

*Reposted from http://designguru.org/blog/020110/starting-2010

Whilst in an airport newsagent this holiday season I ventured away from my usual selection of publications and picked up a copy of .inc magazine.  As I expected, the issue was yawn-worthy - in it was a piece (why oh why did Time Inc shut down Business 2.0?) entitled 'Five years of Start-up Insanity' that described some hurdles a chap by the name of Philip Walker experienced whilst attempting to launch a new Life Insurance company.

The piece itself didn't get me thinking too much - but it did trigger some reflections on projects I launched under the Design Guru banner this past year and whether or not they were themselves capable of being 'start-ups' - in the tech/business community there's a lot of hyped lingo and expectations around what that term entails which, in the rapid world of agile-(web)development is easy to ignore.

I haven't quite written out a list of New Year's Resolutions for 2010 but when I do, I'm certainly going to include 'take another look at the projects Design Guru has started and incubated (http://designguru.org/project-incubator) over the past few years to asses their potential for financial sustainability'.

You see, in-between developing projects for clients its always fun to develop new skills and ways of thinking by very quickly trying to solve a problem on the web without being hindered by a profit motive - but once that solution's first iteration is live we often don't find regular time to go through further iterations or ('development rounds') which could turn these passion projects into vehicles for turning profit...

Perhaps some articles Om Malik just posted will help this thinking process... More to come soon...

The Essential Startup Reader: 10 Lessons In Entrepreneurship:

http://gigaom.com/2010/01/02/startup-company-lessons/

Fortified by eggnog lattes @ the bucks, the family-virjee cruised top-speed to manhattan's south end via taxicab, which deposited us in front of our much-anticipated discount fashion destination; 3 hours later we emerged from century 21 exhausted and need of caffeination... the eve was spent recharging at pain quotidien (sp?) With some delish pastries (pistachio + honey + other-tart-stuff = mmmm) and coffees, then the parents split to venture into chinatown (and yes, they lived to tell a wonderful tale @ brekkie this morning!) While kameel and i met up with some friends, um, @ coyote ugly (where a scary underage and under-clad blondie bartender drunkenly poured us pints) and proceeded to a great jazzy snacks joint called 'rue b' in alphabet city before ending the night singing the tragically hip @ a karaokee joint!

We're walking back to the hudson to grab our bags and head back to lga and i tell you, nyc has proven to be quite family-friendly! The parents didn't lose themselves and the kids snuck in a few good evenings without being too tired for family pedestrian-jaunts!

[This post came via email from Qasim Virjee [Connected]]

What a full day! It started with an excellent breakfast in greenwich village - at this tiny mexican flavored place with a poster boldly stating 'puta' above the image of a dancing lady (photos on flickr next wk), which had an excellent huevos rancheros, then the moma (to see a far-too-dense exhibit of tim burton's animated phantasms) followed by thai @ 'real pam' (thx for the recommendation pei) and avenue q before kameel and i dropped our bags @ the hotel and met our friend nityal for drinks in the 30s @ a (slightly cheesy) bar with, wow for a torontonian, only white folks! Hahaha.

Qas./

[This post came via email from Qasim Virjee [Connected]]

We checked into the hudson this evening before hitting the streets of nyc's 'upper west side' in search of a resto to grab dinner @.

At first glance the hotel looks great; its got dim, focused lighting and features custom furniture etc created by phillipe stark... but upon closer inspection over drinks at the end of the night we noticed that in the past 8/9 years that they've been open it seems seat upholstery has never been updated; that and the clientele (@ least in the main lounge area) was crazy - a motley crew of kanye-wannabe's and middle-america hoody'n'jeans dudes drinking stella.

We're staying in a disco hotel where the host seems to have left the party...

[This post came via email from Qasim Virjee [Connected]]

Taking advantage of the great travel discounts offered to folks uninterested in xmass turkey-ing, the virjee family heads to pearson int'l... we're off to new york in an hour and there until monday!

Will try and post along the way; testing the auto-post function of my new email>posterous>blog setup...

W00t!

Q./

[This post came via email from Qasim Virjee [Connected]]

A bunch of footage in this flick was shot @ the Centre for Social Innovation, where my office for Design Guru and Indian Electronica are; makes you proud to live here in the tdot I tell ya. :)

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How it ended up on Adelaide St in front of my house this morning and why it needed towing I'm not sure, though I do I know I wanted this car when I was 11 years old. :)