I am heading into the spin cycle, blogging turbulence ahead...  tomorrow I am off to the Pathology Visions conference, which used to be Aperio's annual user group meeting, but which has morphed into an industry conference, sponsored by the newly formed Digital Pathology Association.  Either way it will be several days consecutively of dawn-to-dusk-to-last-night breakfast meetings, customer meetings, lunch meetings, partner meetings, dinner meetings, and colleague hanging-out, all compressed into a few days.  I cannot expect to even read blogs posts let alone compose them.  But stay tuned for a report on the other side...

...and meanwhile, the Ole filter makes a pass...

Congressman Mike Pence: "You look like the cavalry to me".  Me, too. 

When Steve Jobs returned to the stage to host Apple's latest product announcements last week, he looked thin.  Hey, the guy has been really sick, okay?  He had a liver transplant.  But the WSJ  distastefully posted an add with a skeleton alongside a picture of Jobs presenting.  Ha ha.  The WSJ deviated from its usually classyness here, and it didn't work. 

Philip Greenspun wonders: How come iTunes sales haven't hit a wall?  A good question without a good answer. 

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?  The ancient philosophers could never decide.  And now we have the enigma which is Twitter, as the punits analyze why Facebook will never be Twitter.  There is a fundamental difference, of course; Facebook is you and your friends, in detail, Twitter is you and everyone, in sparse summary.  You know where I think the value lies :) 

A fantastic article in Computerworld, from Jeff Ello: The unspoken truth about managing geeks.  It rings so true.  This should be widely emailed to senior managers everywhere! 

Congratulations to Ryder Jesjedal for winning a Vuelta stage, the first Canadian to do so... which gave Garmin its second consecutive Vuelta stage, too. 

Meanwhile, Tom Danielson eagerly anticipates stage 13, up Sierra Nevada.  This stage has a special place in my heart, as the finish is at the top of the Alto de Monachil, scene of my perfectly incredible day, as I rode this climb myself almost exactly three years ago... to watch Tom Danielson win his only grand tour stage (my pic at right!). 

Bach canon played as a Moebius strip.  Yay!  Paging Douglas Hofstader; as Mark Frauenfelder notes, this would have been great to listen to while reading Godel, Escher, Bach... 

Robert Scoble on "assisted driving technologies".  The safety aspect of adaptive cruise control is all very exciting and it is a real benefit, but the hidden REAL benefit is the efficiency of caravans! 

Wired photo gallery: Surgical robots operate with precision.  You may know, I am a massive fan of this technology, as a forerunner of today's DaVinci made by Computer Motion was used by Dr. Michael Black at Stanford to repair my daughter Megan's heart, when she was four.  I think of that often.  Pretty amazing... 

I have an important question: Is it okay to use smileys?  I use them all the time, but apparently not everyone think's they're okay.  Are they too cute?  Too immature?  Do they pretend at coolness?  I have no idea, but I like them :)