A relatively quiet day-before-the-Fourth ... it's always a bit weird when Holidays fall *on* the weekend, right?  Anyway if you've followed me and my blog for any time, you know there's only one thing for me to do tomorrow: race the annual Round the Island race at Westlake.  The race is around the Island :) a task somewhat "complicated" by the presence of a low bridge under which one must either capsize or lower one's mast...

This pic shows my mighty steed, "It's the Water", with a special rig to lower the mast, approaching the bridge...

Google Earth turns ten!  Wow.  Interesting to remember that when Google first bought Keystone and then launched this incredible service, they were not yet "Google", just an upstart search engine with a funny name and some big ambitions.  Google Earth remains entirely amazing, familiarity might hide it a bit, but how cool is it to pick anything on Earth - the pyramids, the North Pole, the Champs Elysees, or your girlfriend's house - and poof you can see it.  Very cool.' 

Cannot wait for Google Mars.  I know it's coming :)

Novartis on digitizing medicine in an aging world.  A big vision.  Interesting that so much of the "innovation" in medicine comes from pharma companies, right? 

This is adorable ... A tiny kitten befriends a photographer. 
Cats are amazing. 

The morning routes of the most successful people.  I don't think there's one way to be successful, or even on definition of success.  Follow your own path :) 

Hmmm... test pilot says the [new] F-35 fighter can't dogfight.  There's always some controversy around new expensive weapons systems, but it seems there is a lot of resistance to this one.  Too big, to ambitious, too expensive... 

So have you been listening to Beats 1?  Yeah, it's okay - I think the DJs are excellent - but then there's always a song I don't care for (usually rap or hip-hop) and then I change the channel.  It's a good option but only one of many.  (And with streaming services like Slacker, there are many... ) 

This image from a Beats 1 ad seems to capture the problem perfectly.  Everyone does not listen to the same music, any more than they eat the same food or wear the same clothes.  I predict this will end in failure.

Interesting note: no, Apple is not adding DRM to songs you already own.  Except ... yes, they are, kind of ... the key phrase in this story is "iCloud is not a backup service".  So if you're thinking, well, everything is copied to the cloud anyway, I can just delete my local copies, then you are going to get DRM if you ever try to download the music from the cloud.  So keep your local copies!