I'm Nikko.
I've been interested in physics and math since the age of 16, and I love learning about the rules that make our physical world behave. I was, and am, particularly keen in trying the solve the energy crisis by installing wind turbines in every spare patch of land - more on that later.
Since getting my degree in Mechanical Engineering, I've worked in startups.
First as a research engineer and product manager at a haptic robotics / VR startup creating desktop force-feedback robots
- think about a robot arm whose hand you hold and move around. It resists your movement so precisely that it can "render textures" of fabric or skin or metal. Useful in simulating surgical procedures in VR
and then as a product manager at a document processing AI startup
- think about doctors notes and insurance quote pdfs that have lots of handwriting, weirdly scanned formatting, and the world's ugliest tables. the product I worked on focused on turning these documents into a format readable by machines, allowing users to train machine learning models on their documents at scale
I’m currently a senior product manager at Capital One (not a startup, mind you) working on streaming systems that support the credit card portfolio.
There are a million things that interest me, and I plan to use this blog to help me understand them through writing. Some things I like, and would like to write about:
- lifehacks and tips for getting the most out of everything
- bagpipes, or as some people put it, nagpipes
- math books for kids (see Baby's First Bessel)
- efficient cooking techniques (I'm pro-boiling)
- sustainable energy and thermo-mechanical systems
- poetry
- kettlebells
- more efficient forms of working: asynchronous work, meetingless workdays, plain-text
- cooking videos that make meals for hundreds or thousands of people at a time. My heart goes to Indian school kitchens and airline meal services
- using a calendar like a maniac (see my chrome extension)
- the future of voice-based interaction in computing and the direction of AI in general
- good urbanism and public transportation
- lactofermentation and the world of sauerkraut and kimchi
- traffic shock waves
- modular cat trees
- publishing your first book on KDP
- creating a board game in 40 hours
- seasonal pollen allergies and how to deal with them
- bessel functions and the wave equation