Wednesday,  08/27/08  10:47 PM

Suddenly the Olympics seem like they were so long ago!  Weird.  Did you know the U.S.Open is being played right now?  Yeah, me neither.  And now that I do know, I don't care.

Katrina victims' illiteracy hampers recovery.  Here's the subhead: "More than 40 percent of New Orleans adults lack the literacy skills to comprehend basic government forms. And Hurricane Katrina recovery programs have done little to ease the burden."  Get that?  It isn't their fault, because the government's programs haven't fixed the problem.  Wow.  Reading the article we get more victimology: "I didn't get a lot of school when I was a child. I guess they didn't have enough to go around."  See, there's always a they, and it is always their fault.  Ridiculous.

Are you ready for the Vuelta de Espana (Tour of Spain)?  It starts this weekend, of course...  Look for Team Astana to dominate, led by Alberto Contador (at right).  With Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden, and with Denis Menchov and Cadel Evans not participating, they could sweep the podium.  This is the first year of the last three where I didn't have plans to visit Spain in September; I'm going to miss it!

More cycling: How Google Earth helped Kristin Armstrong win a gold medal.

Interesting story in Wired about the new Red digital movie camera.  Developed by Jim Jannard, previously the founder of Oakley sunglasses, this camera shoots movies at 30fps with 4K x 2K resolution, good enough to be compared to analog film.  The cameras cost about $20K, but that's monthly rental on a movie film camera.  Plus the digital cameras don't need expensive film, and of course the resulting movies can be edited digitally without any transcoding.  The future is here!

More future: the Electric Cadillac?  Why not?  Someday all cars are going to be electric, the only question is when that day will come.

Today I discovered KillerStartups, which showcases 15+ new startups every day.  Today's startups include short movie reviews, a Canadian camping network, a way to make your email address anonymous, and help managing playdates for your kids.  Incredible, each of these has a bunch of people working to make them successful.  Just when you thought you've seen everything, you realize "everything" is so much more than you thought.

Tuesday,  08/26/08  11:41 PM

Long day today... up with the moon (0400), drove down to Vista, many meetings (it's all happening), bike ride (brief, up and down the beach from Carlsbad to Camp Pendleton), working dinner (release planning), drove home, blogged about it.

I mentioned earlier that I didn't think the DNC convention was blogworthy, as nothing was going to happen there.  Guess I was wrong, Obama has dropped three points since the convention started.  Who ordered that?

So I mentioned we have a Guinea pig puppy?  Well this little guy talks a lot... and it turns out, they can really communicate.  He really seems to enjoy human attention; when you walk in, he starts chatting, and when you pick him up, he either "weeks" (I'm not happy) or "burbles" (I'm happy).  Way cute.

Sign of the times: the homeowners know the truth in California.  "California’s free-falling home prices sparked a fourth straight month of year-over-year sales gains during July, the California Association of Realtors reported Monday.  Median sales prices were down a record 40.3 percent from July 2007, CAR reported. ‘Deeply discounted, distressed sales continue to drive volume in many regions of the state."  This on a blog called the housing bubble, the existence of which is a real sign of the times...

So, if you're stuck using Vista, here are some workarounds for common annoyances.  Man, some people are trying so hard...

early Phelps

Monday,  08/25/08  11:15 PM

:)

Monday,  08/25/08  11:09 PM

Happy Monday, y'all...  yes, I know, nobody says Happy Monday, sorry.  What could be less happy than a Monday, right?  Especially a Monday following the Olympics' end, and with the kids back in school. Still...

Today is my daughter Alexis' 15th birthday, so that's worth celebrating!  Happy Birthday, Alex!!  In typical teen fashion we didn't see much of her - she spent the whole day in school and with friends - but it is her birthday and we are celebrating.  Yay.

Have you ever noticed that when a company folds, the founders always say they had the right vision.  Maybe they couldn't raise money, or the market wasn't ready, or the competition was too tough, or maybe even they didn't execute, but always they still have the right vision.  It is weird, because to me most companies fail because they had the wrong vision; they thought they had a market opportunity but they didn't.  Either the value proposition wasn't there, or the dogs didn't eat the dog food.

Want some actual facts about global warming?  Then check out Global Temperature Trends 2500 B.C. to 2008 A.D.  Not quite what you expected?  Blame the mainstream media who can't be bothered to do this kind of research.  The [incredibly detailed] chart at left contains the punch line; please click to enbiggen.

I find myself completely uninterested in the Democratic Party convention now taking place in Denver.  It is dominating the news, but nothing that happens there will matter; Obama and Biden will be nominated, McCain will be attacked, and on we go in election 2008.  I refuse to blog about it further.

JPL are hosting an awesome documentary on The Beginnings of the Space Age.  Really cool.  I love all that old equipment - much of it analog - really makes you realize how amazing it was that people were able to launch satellites into space "back then".  It is hard enough with today's technology!

Speaking of today's technology, here's an awesome picture of the Space Shuttle Endeavor, with Earth in the background (click to enlarge).  We have come a long way...  and in many ways the space shuttles are old technology too; the epitome of our technology today would be recent unmanned spacecraft like Cassini and Huygens, and the Mars Rovers and Mars Explorer...  all that has happened in less than 50 years.  What will space technology be like 50 years from today?  The mind boggles...

Oh, and guess what?  Iran hopes to send astronaut into space.  Within ten years.  In this they join China, and others... this interesting chart shows the relative spending by Nasa compared to other countries.  So far Iran is not even on the list, but good luck with that!

Russell Beattie notes the missing iPhone apps are appearing, and gives an example: Henny makes beat on the iPhone 3G using beatmaker.  You have to see this video to believe it...  not only for the coolness of the app, but for the complexity; who knew such a program could even exist?  There is a whole world out there - many whole worlds - which are so different to mine.

Here we have 45 beautiful motion blur photos.  Yes they are artistically blurred... and they are beautiful, all right...

Finally, if you haven't said goodbye to the Beijing Olympics yet, Jason Kottke links to a bunch of great photos, including the Big Picture at the Boston Globe.  For me, I'm Olympic-ed out, so I'm not even going to copy one here, but please click away if you're interested...

Olympic BYE

Sunday,  08/24/08  11:56 PM

I watched the Olympic Closing Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics tonight, and WOW, it lived up to the promise of the opening...  really cool!  By this time I guess we're all a bit inured to the spectacle of the bird's nest stadium, and the fireworks, and the pageantry, but when you step back it really is amazing.  My favorite part of the closing was Jimmy Page of Led Zep playing whole lot of love (as part of a show within the show, introducing London as the hosts for the 2012 Olympics); one can only think that the London organizers are scrutinizing these Olympics carefully and wondering how they're ever going to live up to this.  I guess they can't, really; the best they can do is to do their best, and that will probably be pretty good (2012 will be London's third time as host, the first city to have that honor).

I actually think based on my limited knowledge of China that these Olympics did a faithful job of presenting China as China, for better or worse.  They are the largest country on Earth, with an ancient and venerable culture, in the midst of change, and the ceremonies reflected that...  pretty cool.  It was noticeable and probably not accidental that the ceremony begin well organized and structured, as the opening, but then devolved into a wilder somewhat disorganized "party"; an interesting metaphor for what is happening to China as a whole.

In case you missed it, here are some pictures taken of my TV screen, as recorded by my Tivo...  (click each to enlarge)

I guess my reaction after two weeks of watching the Opening Ceremony, all day / all night competition, and Closing Ceremony is...  WOW!

Sunday,  08/24/08  11:11 PM

Continuing the "Goodbye Beijing" theme from this morning, I'm about to watch the Olympics closing ceremony...  might be a bit anticlimactic, but then I wasn't expecting the opening ceremony to be that great, and it WOWed me.  Stay tuned for a full report :)

Today I added to my collection of full-text feeds, but with a twist.  There are some aggregation sites whose feeds link to landing pages on the aggregation site, rather than to the aggregated content.  Digg and Techmeme are both examples of this.  So I implemented filters for these feeds, which pass through the feeds largely unchanged but change the links to point directly to the aggregated content.  So now I can use Digg and Techmeme as indexes without having to click through the sites...  yay.

I am so excited about this: Myst returns on the iPhone.  (I assume it will work on my iToy as well.)  Can you remember the first time you played Myst?  I can - definitely - it was on an old Mac 6100 (the first PowerPC Mac!), at a time when CD-based games were amazing.  The graphics!  The sound!  The innovative animation!  It was really eye-opening...  and I can't wait to experience it again.

So here's an interesting thing; while spelunking through old blog posts I found this one celebrating my old Compaq Evo laptop.  What's weird is that this post is from June 2003, more than five years ago, and to a first order the specs on that laptop are the same as my laptop today:  2MHz processor, 1.5GB RAM, 60GB hard drive, 100Mb ethernet, 802.11g WiFi, 15" screen at 1400x1050x32.  So PC technology has really stopped moving.  Sure I have a dual-core machine today (2x1.8MHz), with more RAM (2GB), more hard drive space (100GB), Gb ethernet, and 802.11n WiFi, but those are incremental improvements.  Interesting, especially considering the progress made in the previous five years, between 1998 and 2003.

The NYTimes thinks we've reached a turning point for touch screens.  Well, maybe.  I admit they are great for smartphones (like the Centro and more famously the iPhone), but I'm not sure about desktops or even laptops.  I can remember using a light pen, back in the day, and finding it very fatiguing.  And other than the "pinch to zoom" gesture, are they really that useful?

This is really cool: ten ancient observatories spied from space.  You'll see Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, but the weirdest/coolest to me is Easter Island: "Hundreds of stone statues called moai ring Chile's Easter Island in the remote Pacific Ocean. Almost all face inland, perhaps keeping watch over agricultural villages. But seven of the statues, located at an inland site known as Aku Akivi, gaze out over the ocean to a point on the horizon where the sun sets during the equinox."  That's awesome!

As you think back in time to the days of the Easter Islanders, you might find yourself seeing in four dimensions.  ScienceNews links a series of videos which try to explain how you can visualize four dimensions using our three, by analogy to a "flatlander" visualizing three dimensions using only two.  Weird stuff, but pretty cool...

Astrobiology considers the possibility of Life on Titan.  "Titan, the sixth and largest moon of the planet Saturn, is thought to be made largely of ice. Some of that ice may melt during meteor impacts or in underground processes, producing “ice volcanoes” that emit a “lava” containing ammonia mixed with water.  Could tholins formed in Titan’s atmosphere react with liquid water temporarily exposed by meteor impacts or ice volcanoes to produce potentially probiotic complex organic molecules - before the water freezes?"  I can't wait to find out personally when I visit Titan myself :)

Ten pieces of unusually cool furniture for kids.  Wow, that's just about all I can say.  I would definitely have loved to have a Space Shuttle bed when I was a kid.  In fact, I wouldn't mind having one now, the better to dream of visiting Titan...

Yandex vs Google.  May the best engine win!

Want to speed up Firefox?  Try this.  It worked for me!  [ via razib, who reports "it worked for me" ]

deHeisenbugging

Sunday,  08/24/08  11:36 AM

Word of the day: Heisenbug.

A bug which is affected by the process of observing it, usually in an effort to get rid of it.  Examples include bugs which only show themselves in Release code, but not Debug, and timing bugs which go away when breakpoints are set or [more insidiously] when logging is activated.  In another variation they occur in the field at customer sites but not in a lab under controlled conditions.

Their possible presence leads to the Heisenbug uncertainty principle: it is never possible to be sure there are no more bugs :)

I am fighting a tenacious Heisenbug just now and wishing I could pause the universe temporarily to examine the server when an error occurs on the client.  I wonder if the developers of The Matrix began this way?

P.S. Yes of course there is a Wikipedia entry for Heisenbugs, as well as Bohrbugs, Mandelbugs, and Schroedinbugs.  And my favorite, the Stotle, “the incorrect output of a computer program that contains no bug”.

goodbye Beijing

Sunday,  08/24/08  09:18 AM

Woke up this morning to headlines about the Olympics closing ceremony.  Last night I watched the Men's marathon, by tradition the "last event" in the Olympics, and also the 4x400 relays, which also traditionally come at the end (on "tape", kind of silly since the whole thing was delayed, but somehow the marathon was "live" and the relays were not...).  We'll watch the closing ceremony later today, I can imagine that it will match the opening ceremony for grandeur and spectacle.  

I am absolutely uninterested in watching the basketball final (yay, the U.S. won the gold medal, so what) or the volleyball final (yay, the U.S. won the gold medal, so what).  Just now I'm thinking about all the sports I didn't get to see - weight lifting, for example, or the high jump, or [my favorite] the javelin throw.  Archery is an Olympic sport?  Who knew?  The only Taekwondo coverage was some guy who lost his temper and kicked a referee.  In all these sports I guess U.S. athletes weren't among the top performers so NBC didn't include them in their coverage.  We need a new rule; for sports where each match takes a long time, we only show the last ten minutes.  This would include especially volleyball and basketball in all their forms, which took inordinate amounts of time out of the coverage.

So the Olympics are over, and I'm sad.  It was great fun, a once-in-four-years amazing cool thing, and now we'll have to wait until 2012 (which seems impossibly far away) for the next one.  I'm sure that one will be great fun too.  (Remember Athens?  I can - barely - but it is a distant memory...  the summer of 2004 was my first big gap in blogging so I didn't blog about it.)  You kind of wish the Olympics could go on forever, but of course if it wasn't so brief and so rare it wouldn't be what it is.

Coupled with my kids going back to school, this really is the end of summer, 2008.  So be it, onward!  Goodbye, Beijing, it was amazing.

introducing smokey

Saturday,  08/23/08  10:25 PM

Today our family acquired a new member; introducing Smokey:

Smokey is a baby Guinea pig, and the picture above is pretty close to actual size.  To say he is cute would be an understatement; he might be the cutest object there is; a physical embodiment of the word "fuzzball".  Especially endearing, when he is comfortable (like in this picture) he makes little low burbling noises.  In case you're wondering, Guinea pigs are not pigs, and do not come from Guinea; they are rodents, and come from the Andes.  They are however adorable little pets, and we are delighted to have Smokey join us.  Stay tuned for more :)

Friday,  08/22/08  11:03 PM

Just got back from a nice ride...  my usual route around Westlake has been interrupted by road construction, kind of fun discovering some new rides.  I'm going to be sad when the Olympics are over - what will I do late at night?  (Sleep?)

So Joe Biden is Barack Obama's running mate.  So be it.  A safe choice, he's run for President himself (in 1988, and briefly earlier in the 2008 election), and presumably chosen in part because he's chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  Among his activities Biden presided over the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, while chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee; I guess we'll hear more about that...

Note: It is remarkable that the Wikipedia entry for Biden has already been updated!  Wow.

I have yet to try Microsoft's new Photosynth software, but everyone is raving about it...  This is an online tool which stitches together multiple photos taken of the same thing to create a 3D environment.  You could take a bunch of pictures of the inside of your house, for example, make a "synth" from them, and then "walk" through it.  Stay tuned...

Speaking of cool 3D representations, check out this awesome panorama taken from the 30 meter platform in the Beijing water cube.  Very cool, and the voiceover by a U.S. diving team member is a nice touch.  [ via Kottke ]

David Harsanyi: Let's chuck the drinking age.  Yeah, let's...  at least make it 18 instead of 21.

Aaron Schwartz: How to launch software.  (Really "how to launch a web application"...)  Some good thoughts here, basically he points out that a single massive launch without a good beta period is a recipe for disaster.  Of course beta testing is always a good idea, but the single massive launch does have its advantages - like getting everyone's attention.  His counter-example, GMail, isn't really a prototype for most companies because most companies aren't Google :)

Thursday,  08/21/08  10:18 PM

Happy Friday, everyone!  (I have a friend who says Happy Friday every Friday, and it is infectious.  I find myself waiting for Friday so I can say it; in fact, I find myself saying it on Thursday night :) 

Had a great ride today...  I bought some new pedals, which are about 1/2 the weight of my old pedals, and either the actual difference or my mental approach because of the difference was dramatic.  I fairly flew up a couple of climbs.  Kewl!

So tonight we watched the Netherlands defeat the U.S. in women's water polo.  I'm not a water polo fan, definitely not a women's water polo fan, but this was cool; the gold medal match came down to the last 30 seconds, and was decided by a single goal.  Pretty darn exciting.  As much as I root for the U.S. in most things, I found myself pulling for the underdog Dutch; they were not expected to do anything, but overperformed and beat the best team in the world.  That's what the Olympics are all about!

Another cool sport I knew nothing about until this Olympics: BMX.  You might think as a cyclist I would know about this, but I don't; yeah, I do a lot of road riding, and yeah, I do a lot of mountain biking, but BMX is quite different to both.  And it is fun to watch!  And a guy from Latvia (of all places) is the best in the world (who knew?).

Here we have the Advertising Olympics, courtesy of Slate.  That is one event I have definitely not been watching (thank you, Tivo); good luck to the competitors, but seriously, who cares...

The always excellent Inhabitat reveals the Ecotricity wind-powered vehicle.  Hard to park, but beautiful, and excellent for salt flats :)  Not to mention fast...

Did you know?  2008 is the coldest year in the 21st century (so far).  So much for global warming...

Shapeways: 3D printing for everyone.  How cool is this?  But Shapeways is outsourced 3D printing for everyone; I'm sure there will come a day when every household has their own 3D printer, and you make all these objects for your own use.  Seriously!

Amazon are bragging that they still have XP for sale...  Vista: "Give up!"  XP: "Never!"  Ha.  And remember, Amazon pride themselves on knowing their customers...

Wednesday,  08/20/08  11:32 PM

I am feeling Olympic tonight...  still enjoying it...  I love the uncertainty of the track events.  Sure, Usain Bolt was going to win (or was he?), but you just never know when someone will touch a hurdle, or get a slow start (or drop the baton!), or just get beaten by a virtual unknown, and poof, four years of work are gone in an instant.  Sport and especially track and field is a contrived, distilled microcosm of life.  Maybe that's why we like it?

In this connection I have to ask, how badly do we feel about Beijing's fakeness?  Sports Illustrated has an article about the lengths to which China have gone to hide reality and project a "clean, well-lighted place".  We all know about the coverup, even if we don't know exactly what is being covered up.  But how important is that?  Is the goal of the Olympics to learn the reality of the host city and country?  Or is it to experience something which is essentially artificial, this massive sporting event, given that sports themselves are a contrived, distilled microcosm of life?

A little more on the Olympics; Jason Kottke thinks "One of the best ways to watch the Olympics is to chase down all the references made by NBC's commentators on YouTube and watch them".  He's right; watching those old routines by Nadia Comanici (age 14), Olga Korbut, etc. is really eye-opening.  (Olga's backflip on the uneven bars [right] remains for me the single most enduring memory of Olympic gymnastics.)  They weren't as athletic as today's competitors, but the style was amazing.

Parenthetically, YouTube is amazing.  Anything you can think of - anything at all - is there.  A perfect extension to the magic of Google.

Robert Weintraub remembers when decathletes were cool.  Some people like me still think they're cool, but I agree it is no longer the marquee sport of the Olympics.  I think that happened when the U.S. athletes no longer dominated :)

You might enjoy this interesting debate between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discussing McCain and Obama at the Saddleback Forum.  A pretty balanced analysis; that was a pretty valuable showcase for both candidates, I think.  [ via Instapundit ]

Looks like Rudy Giulani will be the keynote speaker at the Republican convention.  So be it.  Meanwhile Arnold might not make it; he's too busy fighting fires metaphorically back in California.  If he doesn't it will be too bad; I really enjoyed his speech at the 2004 convention...

Jason Kottke notes fake restaurant wins wine award.  "I named the restaurant "Osteria L'Intrepido" (a play on the name of a restaurant guide series that I founded, Fearless Critic). I submitted the fee ($250), a cover letter, a copy of the restaurant's menu (a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes), and a wine list. Osteria L'Intrepido won the Award of Excellence, as published in print in the August 2008 issue of Wine Spectator."  Given my own experience with the reliability of such reviews (basically, they are useless) this does not surprise me.

colored water

Wednesday,  08/20/08  11:19 PM

The 25 most colorful lakes on Earth.  Wow.  That's just about all I can say...

Tuesday,  08/19/08  11:07 PM

Tonight we had a marvelous dinner with our kids; a "last supper of the summer"; they start school on Thursday.  Had a great filet with a '97 Kara's Vineyard cab which was out of this world.  (Trying, slowly, to drink through our old '97s before they turn the corner; this one was peak.)  Oh and with a tiramisu, a '55 Croft port.  I have never had a '55 anything before, it was wonderful - for a young port :)

With the Presidential race heating up (and by many accounts, now a virtual dead heat), and with VP picks on the horizon, and the conventions to follow, it is time to start watching the electoral vote tracker again.  This great site integrates across all the polls to tell you up to the minute what's going to happen.  I've heard it said there isn't one national election, there are fifty state elections, and that's how it works.  Anyway check it out, good stuff (despite the somewhat obvious Democratic bias of the webmaster :)!

BTW, the score is currently Obama 264, McCain 261.

Did you see this?  Shawn Johnson finally won a gold, on the balance beam, after four silvers.  Is she wonderful or what?  I still think Nastia Liukin is more graceful and beautiful, but Shawn's bubbly personality lights up the gym.  When she won who could help but be happy for her, Nastia included?

King Kaufman asks Why do runners 'shut it down'?  Yeah, I wondered that too... no clear answer.  It can't be that they save much energy over the last ten feet.  Has to be some kind of psychological thing, like they are showing up their opposition.  Huh.

Here we have an ode to weightlifting.  There has been zero weightlifting on NBC so far; boo.  I like it too, no difficulty scores, no judging, it is pretty binary.

What makes for a good blog?  Yeah, what?  If I only knew... :)

(New Yorker - 09/25/06 - low hanging fruit)

Monday,  08/18/08  11:34 PM

... at a caveman SAG stop :)

Monday,  08/18/08  11:11 PM

Another day of eights - 8/18/08, and I notice I started this post at exactly 11:11.  FWIW :)  I rode my newish "regular" route this afternoon, up Decker Canyon and around Encinal Canyon; 30 miles with 3,000' of climbing.  That should keep me in shape...  actually I like it for the variety and beautiful views of the ocean and mountains, as well as for the roadwork.

Regular readers may be familiar with Mark Burson, my friend and riding partner, with whom I have ridden many ultra centuries.  And you may recall my recap of the Hemet Double, in which I recounted Mark's battle back from having his hip replaced to return to form as an ultra cyclist, completing three double centuries within a year of his hip replacement surgery.  So Johnson & Johnson, which owns the company DePuy, that made Mark's artificial hip, is presently featuring Mark on their home page!  (hover over "never stop moving", and you'll see "new hip begins Dad's recovery"...)  Here's the whole article which includes a nice video.  It is a really great portrait of Mark and his family, and what they went through with Mark's surgery and recovery, but I thought this was pretty funny: "Two weeks later Mark was on his own bike and never looked back. Today he continues to ride and looks for ways to reassure other people who face joint replacement that it doesn't mean an end to their activities. "I'm like every other 'weekend warrior' with my bicycling,'" says Mark. 'I feel like I got my life back.'"  Yeah, like every other weekend warrior that rides ultra centuries :)

Jeff Jacoby points out that when it came to Iraq, Hindsight isn't 20-20.  "The prevailing wisdom 18 months or so ago was that invading Iraq had been, in retrospect, a disastrous blunder... But what if we had known then what we know now?  [Would we say] That Iraq is a pointless quagmire - or that it is a costly but winnable war, in which patience, tenacity, and smarts have a good chance of succeeding?"  I'd say the latter, but then, I said that before, too.  Maybe it isn't hindsight in general, so much as whose hindsight; for example McCain's seems a bit more accurate than Obama's :)  [ via Instapundit ]

I agree with this: Salon reports 33 and Fabulous.  "The most outrageous happening [in women's gymnastics], by a long shot, was when Oksana Chusovitina won the silver medal on vault at 33 years of age...  Much has deservedly been made of Dara Torres' outstanding performance at age 41.  If 41 is old for a swimmer, 33 is ancient for a gymnast.  Chusovitina competed in her first Olympics at 17 years of age in 1992, winning a team gold.  This was the year that Shawn Johnson was born."  I saw this myself and couldn't believe it; Oksana looked like a team mom rather than a competitor.  But she did two great vaults.  I cheered for Dara - I guess we all did - and I cheered for Oksana, too.

It was also pretty cool when 38-year-old Constantina Tomescu won the women's marathon, but I guess older marathon runners are not quite as unusual as older swimmers or gymnasts.

One thing a commentator noted that I think is quite relevant; not only have training techniques improved, enabling older athletes to remain competitive longer, but financial support has improved too, such that 30- and 40- year olds can make a living as world-class athletes.  That was never the case in the past.

Here we have the 2008 Summer Games in Lego.  Wow, an incredible effort.  Nearly as difficult as building the real venues, and nearly as impressive :)  I'm absolutely sure this is the first time I've ever seen a Lego version of a cycling race; how excellent!

O'Reilly Radar highlights a practice I hate dislike intensely: linking to yourself.  You've encountered this I'm sure; you're reading a news article about company X, and you click on a link expecting to be taken to the X website, and instead get some kind of landing page on the news website with more information about company X.  Finding the actual link to X is always hard, and sometimes you even have to Google for it directly.  A short-sighted byproduct of advertising as a business model, I guess.  (Fortunately with Firefox and Adblock I never actually see the ads :)

This is so classic: ArsTechnica reports Pandora can't make money, may pull plug.  If you don't know, Pandora is a service which finds and plays new music that "sounds like" music you already know and like.  A perfect way for the music industry to get people to buy new music from new bands, right?  But instead of rewarding Pandora and other Internet broadcasters, the RIAA increased the royalties they have to pay, and now they may go out of business as a result.  The music industry are honestly a case study in stupid market management.

InfoWorld reports 1 in 3 business PCs drop Vista for XP.  Pretty amazing, isn't it?  And the other 2 out of 3 probably don't know they could do a free upgrade to XP using the Vista license.

Sunday,  08/17/08  09:47 PM

Spent most of today asleep (!) after the Relay for Life yesterday and this morning; woke up at 3:00PM, and vegged the rest of the day in front of the TV, watching the Olympics.  I couldn't even muster enough energy for a ride.  Not necessarily my most productive day :)

The Economist's increasingly liberal bent on display: Taking on Terrorists.  This makes me so sad; there was a day, not too long ago, when the Economist set itself apart from the MSM by being relatively apolitical.  And they still are relatively apolitical, as Time and Newsweek (and U.S. News & World Report) and the rest accelerate into the trash.  But the trend is in the wrong direction :(

I never thought I'd enjoy a Kobe Bryant interview; I was wrong, as Kobe schools NBC's Chris Collingsworth:  "Collinsworth: Is that a ‘cool’ thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you’re fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by(?)  Kobe: No, it’s a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor."  Excellent.  My opinions of Kobe and Chris are adjusted accordingly.

[Update: some commentors have suggested that Chris was just teeing up the question for Kobe, and upon rewatching the video of the interview, I agree.  So my opinion of Chris, formerly high, has been restored.  YMMV :]

In this context it is worth mentioning, by some accounts Kobe is the most popular athlete in the Olympic village; more in demand for pictures and autographs than even Yao Ming or Michael Phillips.

Another feel good story from Beijing: Cancer-stricken U.S. swimmer wins unexpected 'gold medal' in China.  "Although having failed to qualify for the final of the swimming competition at the Beijing Olympics, cancer-stricken U.S. swimmer Eric Shanteau won an unexpected "gold medal" from the Chinese.  He received the medal from Shanghai-based Cancer Rehabilitation Club for his fight against the disease, in the presence of 200 cancer patients from Shanghai."  Good for them.

A simple rule from Richard Wolpert for reconnecting a dropped cell conversation [ via Joi Ito ]:

• If you dialed the other party, you redial.
• If you received the call, you wait [semi-patiently] for them to call you back.

Pass it on...

Relay for Life

Sunday,  08/17/08  09:32 PM

Yesterday and through this morning (!)  I joined Team Aperio in participating in the National Cancer Society's Relay For Life, down in Encinitas.  It was an amazing experience.  These events celebrate cancer survivors and memorialize cancer victims, while raising money for cancer research and care for those battling cancer.  Teams representing companies or individuals relay continuously around a quarter mile track for 24 hours.  After dark the track is surrounded by luminaria, candles inside paper bags; the luminaria are each sponsored and carry messages, either congratulating cancer survivors or remembering cancer victims.  Walking along the track in the middle of the night, reading these handwritten messages was incredibly moving.  My favorite was one which began “Dear Grandma, I never knew you but have heard so much about you”.  It was signed Britta, age 8.  It really makes you realize how important our work is, and the work of our customers.

I couldn't help thinking about my father, who died twenty years ago of a brain tumor, or my friend and ex-partner Daniel Jacoby, who was similarly taken by cancer four years ago.  I thought of Randy Pausch, the "last lecture" professor, whose audio book I listened to recently.  I found myself blinking back tears, thinking of all the people - survivors, victims, caregivers, and family and friends - whose lives have been affected by this disease, the scourge of our time.  I'm tearing up right now just typing these words, recalling how I felt, and thinking of all those affected today and tomorrow.  It really brings home how important Aperio's work really is, and the work of our customers.

...the long and winding road...

Posts and articles in the last month:

08/15/08 10:30 PM - full lunacy
08/15/08 09:32 PM - Friday,  08/15/08  09:32 PM
08/14/08 10:12 PM - the ceremony
08/14/08 10:08 PM - Thursday,  08/14/08  10:08 PM
08/13/08 10:12 PM - solitude and lunacy
08/13/08 10:02 PM - Wednesday,  08/13/08  10:02 PM
08/12/08 09:38 PM - Furnace Creek 508 recon
08/12/08 08:35 PM - Tuesday,  08/12/08  08:35 PM
08/11/08 10:57 PM - Monday,  08/11/08  10:57 PM
08/11/08 10:52 PM - (new yorker - 08/11/08 - future memories)
08/11/08 08:27 PM - gak! down...
08/10/08 11:40 PM - Sunday,  08/10/08  11:40 PM
08/09/08 07:11 PM - stuff happens
08/09/08 02:13 PM - Saturday,  08/09/08  02:13 PM
08/08/08 11:43 PM - Olympic WOW
08/08/08 05:47 PM - in a rut
08/08/08 09:18 AM - 8/8/8 - crazy eights!
08/07/08 11:21 PM - Thursday,  08/07/08  11:21 PM
08/07/08 11:55 AM - XP SP3
08/06/08 11:41 PM - Wednesday,  08/06/08  11:41 PM
08/06/08 11:35 PM - predicting bugs
08/05/08 10:51 PM - Tuesday,  08/05/08  10:51 PM
08/04/08 10:15 PM - driven up
08/04/08 06:29 PM - Monday,  08/04/08  06:29 PM
08/03/08 11:08 PM - just got back
07/31/08 12:54 AM - gone beachin'
07/31/08 12:20 AM - Thursday,  07/31/08  12:20 AM
07/29/08 11:01 PM - Tuesday,  07/29/08  11:01 PM
07/28/08 09:17 PM - Monday,  07/28/08  09:17 PM
07/28/08 09:55 AM - lazyweb: Firefox Z-order?

For older posts and articles, please visit the archive.