Ah... not a great day.  Rather unproductive - still struggling with a dead end on a coding project - and didn't ride, and had a  homeowner's association meeting tonight.  And ate too much.  Etc.  I believe I need some Jumilla.  But first...

Instapundit notes the press are desperately seeking silving linings.  "The actual news has gotten worse, but the coverage of it has changed in tone.  Today, reporters are eagerly looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.  A year ago, and for a long time before that, they couldn't wait to get into the tunnel."  Of course, "reporters" have long ago stopped reporting. 

Powerline adds some detail: a miserable failure, and published the graph at right.  Unemployment isn't the only measure of the recovery plan's success, but it is pretty important.  I think the plan is actually icing companies that would otherwise hire....

TDF news: Alexander Vinokourov wants to rejoin Astana.  Unbelievable, and yet... he founded that team, recruited the sponsors, and was its leader for two years.  He has to take responsibility for his doping positive during the 2007 tour, but he's served his two years, [I guess] is now clean, and could come back.  How weird would it be to see Lance and Vino side-by-side in Astana kit?  Back in 2007 you would have bet millions against that ever happening :) 

Wired's Autopia reports Solar Racing Champs Roll Out New Car.  "Delft University is the Brawn GP of solar-car racing, an outfit so singularly successful that it has won the World Solar Challenge four times in a row.  The Dutch team is back with its newest car, Nuna 5, and has its sights set on a fifth title when the checkered flag drops later this year."  Totally cool design in both an aesthetic and functional sense... 

And at the other end of the spectrum, Wired reviews the Bugatti Veyron convertible, a car for the ages.  Not only gas powered, but generating over 1,000 horsepower to go 250mph.  Beautiful.  My favorite part of their review is this: Wired: best car in the world.  Tired: no cupholder. 

I have a question: why is everyone so obsessed with whether Apple will allow porn in iPhone apps?  Like every smartphone, the iPhone has a browser, and like every browser, it can access thousands of porn sites all over the Internet.  This ship has sailed.  Do we really have to worry about it anymore? 

ZooBorn of the day: a baby wildebeest. 

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from the most-excellent xkcd
except everything you just said was wrong

A rather lazy day in which I accomplished little but enjoyed every minute.  I am coding (!) on something really cool (!!) which I will tell you about if you want (!!!) but didn't make much progress; a blind alley consumed most of my day.  I did the world's slowest version of my Hidden Valley ride, and then watched baseball (with Bo!).

The high point of the day was having dinner with all of my kids; Nicole is back from being stationed in Sicily, living in San Diego, and drove up for the night.  It has been over a year since the six of us were in one place together.  Really nice.

An important side note to watching baseball: Shirley points out that baseball uniforms have evolved to be ridiculously baggy and ugly (Manny Ramirez, right, would be exhibit A).  At one time uniforms were tight and better looking (Reggie Jackson, left, exemplifies "proper" fit).  This goes beyond the usual socks and stirrups which we all liked for traditional reasons, into tight bottoms and close-fitting tops which [some of us] like for other reasons [apparently ;].  And aesthetic considerations aside, one would think - as with basketball shorts - that tight-fitting apparel would facilitate athletic performance.  What's next, baggy cycling kits in the Tour de France? 

Speaking of the TDF, stage one in Monaco is Saturday.  It is a 15.5km individual time trial.  I think Levi Leipheimer is a favorite for this, the course looks a lot like the Solvang TT he's won three years in a row as part of the Tour of California.  He's a quiet guy, forgotten a little as a favorite on a team with Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador and Andreas Kloden.  So watch out!  My other rooting favorite is George Hincapie.  I think the real favorite though is Fabian Cancellara, who is the world's best on a "short" ITT course. 

Interesting article in Fortune the other day about Huisman Yachts, the Dutch firm which builds the coolest fanciest yachts for the richest weirdest people.  (You might remember they were features in Michael Lewis' The New New Thing, building a megayacht for Jim Clark.)  That's Alice Huisman at right, current CEO and daughter of Wolter, the firm's iconic founder, with client Bill Joy and a model of his yacht.  I'm going to add "having a Huisman custom-built yacht" to my life list :) 

The amazing 100' racing yacht Alfa Romeo.  Wow.  N.B. Sailing Anarchy posted pictures by my friend Peter Drasnin, who was fortunate enough to be on the water watching her sail with his dad.  Double wow. 

Excellent news: LogMeIn’s Strong IPO Keeps VC Hot-Streak Alive.  "LogMeIn is the fourth venture-backed company to put in a strong debut in the U.S. this year.  All of them have happened in the past six weeks, at a time when venture capitalists desperately need some liquidity.  The three previous venture-deals - from software maker SolarWinds Inc., online reservations site OpenTable Inc., and software maker Medidata Solutions Inc. - all showed double-digit percentage gains on their first day of trading."  You could hardly say the IPO market has recovered, but there are signs of life. 

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I am delighted to report that tonight I successfully watched baseball with Bo, our new baby guinea pig.  We watched a great pitchers duel as the Dodgers defeated the Rockies 1-0; this was their last game without Manny, a 50-game span during which they went 29-21 and retained the best record in baseball.  Great pitching will trump great hitting every time. 

me and Bo watching baseball

Little Bo seemed to enjoy the game, making chirps at appropriate moments and even sampling a wheat thin or two (he does not appear to like cheese however.)  He cannot replace Smokey, our beloved previous pig, who demonstrated a great understanding of the game, but he is doing his best as a relief pig.  He is amazingly cute and his cuddly demeanor is perfect for sports-watching.  We are of course both anticipating the Tour de France [which starts Saturday] with great interest.

Quarter end!  Gak, already!!  I had the most delightful day today, it began with the fact that I didn't go down to Vista, slept in and had a nice commute downstairs to work.  Then I was able to do some actual programming, which is always a treat, while watching a steady stream of new order bulletins flowing through my inbox (yay sales team).  Later I did a great Rock Store / Encinal Canyon ride with the CVC Red Group; they are fast and just keeping up with them in the flats is a challenge.  And finally we adopted Bo, our new little guinea pig.  I could go for Groundhog Day on this one.

So let's make a filter pass, shall we?

Absolutely the saddest story: Father and Son Grand Tour Dream ends with tragedy.  A father and son riding in the same Grand Tour I rode last Saturday, hit by a drunk driver on PCH.  The father was killed, the 14-year old son hospitalized with multiple broken bones and no father.  That could have been me.  It could have been anyone.  Just horrible... 

No idea what to make of this: Swedish software firm acquires the Pirate Bay.  This feels like Napster going legit all over again.  Business model, anyone?  Cory Doctorow is confused too.  Anyway it will be interesting to watch, in all senses... 

Remember I commented on Alaska Airlines' "north of expected" motto?  I flew Alaska and their service was indeed unexpectedly good, and significantly improved from my previous experience.  Turns out JDPower just found Alaska was airline flyers' favorite airline.  Wow.  Shows the power of a motto... 

An interview with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital: 

Q: Opentable is one of the first 'silicon valley' initial public offerings (IPO) since the economic downturn.  Why do you think the company was able to get public and was received so well?

A: I actually believe that the buy-side has ample demand for IPOs. The key problem is a supply problem – most companies either don’t want to be public or aren’t willing to make the tough choices it takes to get public (healthy margins, sarbox implementation, etc).

Huh, interesting...  Bill is one of the most astute VCs out there (and before that he was one of the most astute analysts).

Check this out - an unbelievably awesome papercraft castle.  As you look at these pictures remind yourself that everything is made of paper.  Wow.  Some people clearly have too much time on their hands, and I'm glad they do!  [ via Boing Boing ] 

Well this is good news: LiveScience reports Getting old is better than expected.  "Good memory, good health, good sex. It's enough to make the grandkids cringe!"  Of course my expectations for getting old are pretty low... 

Firefox 3.5 was released today, and apparently set all kinds of download records.  At this point they've served over three million downloads and at one point were averaging about 100 per second.  I don't know what's more impressive, that the servers stayed up or that their monitoring application :) 

So what, right?  Well, it you're already a Firefox user, 3.5 is going to be faster, and perhaps enable compatibility with a few new websites.  And if you're not, this is your perfect chance to switch to a browser which is faster and more secure and supports extensions - like Adblock...

Finally our ZooBorns of the day: baby Otters! 

(Almost as cute as Bo.  Almost.)

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Today we adopted a new baby guinea pig, please say hello to Bo:

Man, there is nothing cuter than a baby guinea pig.

He is quite cuddly and [of course] a little scared in his new surroundings which include two very interested dogs (what's that?) and a very interested cat (it's dinner!).  We are attempting to communicate and so far he seems to appreciate the attention.  I look forward to watching sports with him, the Tour de France is coming up of course, and then it is baseball season.  We'll see if Bo knows baseball :)

... and so I am somewhat back to normal, somewhat recovered from my long ride Saturday and from losing Smokey Friday, and somewhat caught up from a busy week during which I fell behinder* each day.  Was actually able to do some coding (in both English and C++).  Edited and posted some pictures.  And blogged...

* yes of course behinder is a real word

... which is something my friend Robert Scoble is back to doing (yay) after having shifted most of his communication to Twitter and Friendfeed (and apparently after having lost 50% of his traffic, wow).  Welcome back, Robert. 

Oh and I have to agree with this post about Facebook, in which he wonders why they're trying to be like Twitter and Friendfeed.  I don't know either, seems like Facebook will be around long after Twitter is a footnote.

This is a really good thing: The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.  This is great news because any decisions based on race are racist.  Minorities benefit from this too because if promotions are made purely on merit, there won't be any hint that they weren't really qualified when they are promoted.  I really hope Sotomayor is not confirmed, although that seems unlikely.  It isn't that she's liberal, it's that she's activist.  

Are you ready?  Tivo checked out, schedules arranged?  Yes that's right the Tour de France starts next Saturday.  Woo hoo!  Stay tuned for pixel-to-pixel coverage.  In case you haven't figured it out from the pic at left, I'm rooting for Denis Menchov, since it's unlikely Levi will be allowed to go for the win.  Menchov just won the Giro in fine form. Go Rabobank! 

The other day I mentioned Quantum Hoops, a great documentary about the Caltech basketball team, which hadn't won a league game for over twenty-one years.  So I bought the DVD, and last night I watched it.  Great stuff, especially if you're a Caltech alum, they have the whole backstory, the history of the school, historical figures who achieved great things (while floundering at basketball), etc.  Oh and the basketball is pretty cool too :) 

This is excellent: Malcom Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson's Free.  I love this excerpt: "YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube’s ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the 'abundance thinking' that lies at the heart of Free.  Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year.  If it were a bank, it would be eligible for TARP funds."  Not all free things can make money :) 

Since it is a Free Internet, Chris Anderson responds:  Dear Malcolm: Why so threatened?

If you want to invest in Free, Fox has a story about how to invest in Facebook and Twitter before they go public.  Apparently a lot of their own employees are doing this, rather than wait for liquidity.  Interesting. 

Oh and speaking of Free, Mark Cantor has plain advice for the Plain Dealer.  "The point is that it’s NOT about changing the copyright laws and asking for special treatment.  If the Plain Dealer can’t sustain itself, it’ll go the same route as the auto industry, the housing market and oh yah - the world of investment banking."  Hits the nail on the head, IMHO... 

And we have another roller: LogMeIn IPO 'should blow the socks off people'.  Let's hope so, the IPO market needs more players (and more successes)... 

Here's a pretty interesting new company: Aardvark.  The NYTimes reports all your friends are now in the answer business.  Basically it is an automated way to ask your friends and your friends-of-friends for advice.  This actually seems like it will work.  Huh... 

Of all the lame attempts to wedge branding in where it makes no sense, my vote goes to Sun's Java.  You load a web page, it happens to contain a Java application, and ... what's this?  Some weird spinning logo thing - what's Java? - and why is this taking so long? - and what's Java anyway?  Nobody can understand this.  Explain it to me, please... 

So I was wrong to think I was wrong about the Kindle.  I'd thought there's a limit on the number of times you can [re]download a book, but that's wrong; the limit is on simultaneous devices.  Okay, that makes sense.  Whew.  [ thanks Gary for straightening me out :] 

ZooBorn of the day: a Lynx kitten.  Adorable! 

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You will remember I had a most wonderful Father's Day weekend crewing for Meg in the C-15 North American Championship, at Lake Huntington in the Sierras?  Well yesterday I received a DVD with a ton of great pictures taken on the water, and some of them are amazing.  I've posted a smattering on Facebook in case you're interested, and am in the process of editing and posting the rest...

bullet start!

cranking to weather

bearing off for the mark

planing on a dead run

As much fun as it was sailing, and as proud as I was of Meg at the time, it will now last forever captured in these pictures.  A perfect Father's Day weekend :)

Well today I did ... nothing.  Very little, anyway; nothing worth reporting.  The high point was sitting by the pool, drinking Cuco, and finishing Spook Country (I have become quite the William Gibson fan).  I am still sore and tired from yesterday, and it was good to stay away from the computer, too... well except for editing pictures and blogging I guess.  Speaking of which, it is all happening...

According to Auren Hoffman, engineers are the best deal, so stock up on them!  Apparently software engineering techniques have allowed software engineers to become twice as productive as ten years ago.  I still don't understand why that would lead you to want as many as you could get.  Seems like that means you only need half as many?  You read the article and see if you can follow the logic :) 

Jason Kottke links an appreciation of the SR-71 Blackbird, the most remarkable plane of the 20th century.  Really when you consider it first flew in 1964, it seems unbelievable. 

Here's an interesting article which asks is Twitter is a fad?  I wouldn't go that far, but it did cause me to remember another phenomenon like Twitter... do you remember ICQ?  Back in 1997 it was the biggest thing since sliced bread - peer-to-peer communications, between people!  Everyone had to have an ICQ account, the number of downloads per day was breathlessly reported, and we even had celebrity adoption of ICQ in the news.  AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for $280M, at that time a massive amount for a company with no source of income.  (I know what you're thinking, who would pay that much for a company with no income even now, but check out the Google acquisition of YouTube :)  ICQ still exists today, but it is barely a footnote in Internet life.  That's my prediction for the trajectory which Twitter will follow - they'll be bought for a huge amount, adoption will plateau, monitization will corrupt the user experience, and it will fade into a footnote.  We'll see... 

A fascinating observation: Major League Baseball uses an outdated camera angle from centerfield.  (Basically for historical reasons, the camera is off center, distorting the angles of the pitch crossing the plate.)  When you see the comparisons, you realize there really is no comparison.  Dead center makes a huge difference. 

Cool picture of the day: approaching Jupiter.  Please click through and watch, you will not be sorry.  I only hope someday I'll see it on the main screen of a spaceship control deck :) 

Awesome news: the Palm Pre's WebOS SDK has been "leaked" into the Internet.  Known as Mojo, this enables developers to use proprietary interfaces to the WebOS API from within JavaScript.  I can't wait to play with it... 

I'll just say parenthetically, I wonder to what extent this was unplanned.  Seems like by leaking the API Palm can get more apps developed and have an extended beta period, and if anything goes wrong they can claim they weren't ready...

Check this out: maxi-trimaran Banque Populaire arrives in New York.  Awesome.  They're trying for a new North Atlantic crossing record. 

ZooBorn of the day: a Sea Lion pup.  Awww... 

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Remember last year, I was going to ride in this incredible ultra-century, the Furnace Creek 508?  Yep that's 508 miles, starting in Valencia, going up through Death Valley, and then looping back through the desert to end in 29 Palms... all within 48 hours.  I had done a comprehensive recon and everything... but then a couple of weeks before I got really sick and couldn't ride.

Well, I'm going to try again.

I just submitted my entry, mark your calendar, it's October 3-5.  I'm excited and scared.  Stay tuned for more...

Greetings... I'm a bit tired and more than a bit sore today, after having completed the Grand Tour Double yesterday.  It wasn't as tough as the Heartbreak, and wasn't nearly as tough as the Eastern Sierra (for one thing, it didn't snow :) but there's no such thing as an easy double, and with 8,500' of climbing, this one was not easy.  Compounding the difficulty, I was tired (once again, failed to get enough sleep the night before) and sad (still carrying the loss of Smokey) and just I don't know blah.  But I did it - yay, me! - and I have the pictures to prove it:

http://pics.eichhorns.com/pics.cgi?A090627-GrandTourDouble

There were a few high points, first, since this ride goes right by my house, I was able to do a pit stop mid-race and say "hi" to Shirley and the dogs, and I pretty much knew every inch of every road.  I flatted twice so I was able to perfect my fast-tube-change technique.  And I was so sore that I spent the second half of the ride out of the saddle most of the time, so I got some great exercise (how many times are your arms more sore from a ride than your legs?)

the route - Malibu / Port Hueneme / Thousand Oaks / Simi Valley / Moorpark / Santa Paula /
Ojai / Carpinteria / Ventura / Port Hueneme / Malibu - a grand tour indeed

early morning fog shrouds Mugu rock

always photogenic Grimes Canyon

Lake Casitas

this got a smile out of me at 135 miles

an impromptu jazz band added to the flavor of the post-ride chili :)

Next up - the Death Ride (dum dum dum) - on July 11 (yikes, that's in two weeks)...

And so we lost our guinea pig Smokey this afternoon.  Poor thing.  He was only a little rodent, but, well, he was our little rodent, and now I won’t be able to watch baseball with him any more.  I'm going to miss his personality: a spunky little guy, always with something to say (yeah, guinea pigs chirp and click and squeak and purr and make all kinds of little noises).  He recognized me, knew when I was going to take him out and we were going to hang out together, and was great company.  He will be missed.  A very sad day.

Hey everyone out there in blogoland...  how's it going?  Thanks for tuning in tonight; I've got kind of a nasty cold, and didn't ride, and I'm bummed about Farrah (and okay about Michael too), and worried about riding the Grand Tour Saturday with a cold.  Otherwise things are great; I can't complain, but sometimes I still do :)

I am aware of a disturbance in the force, somehow my posts are not syncing from my computer to my server, and so although I see them, and think they're "out there", you do not, and do not.  Compounding things I believe my dynamic DNS servers are intermittently down.  None of this is interesting to you, but I'm sorry if you can't see this!  Stay tuned...

[Update: I think I finally found and fixed the intermittent sync problem I've had.  Whew.  Stay tuned.]

John Hinderaker concludes Obamacare is disastrous in every way.  "The worst thing about socialized medicine isn't its ruinous cost, or the rationing of medicine, or the inevitable decline in quality.  It's the change it implies in the relationship between the individual and the state...  Congress is on the brink of making one of the worst mistakes in the history of the Republic."  Huh.  I thought it was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad, but now you've got me thinking... 

With the Tour de France a week away (yay!), Velonews helpfully published a video retrospective: Armstrong's first tour win, ten years later.  I wasn't a big cycling fan then, but I do remember Lance.  And the good news is this year Versus is broadcasting the entire tour in HD.  Wow, thirteen hours of coverage per day.  Get that Tivo ready! 

An interesting article pointed out by my colleague Kathy: Image in a Haystack, about searching for video online.  Yeah, it is hard, and in fact searching for static images online is hard.  Unless either are indexed with text by humans they are pretty tough to find and classify.  This problem will be solved, but it hasn't been yet! 

ZDNet: Blu-Ray buzzkill: the death spiral.  "Will consumers upgrade to Blu-ray?  The CEO & co-founder of fast growing Netflix believes mailed DVDs shall be replaced by web-sent movies.  And a recent Harris Poll finds that people today are less likely to buy a Blu-ray player than they were last year."  This is no surprise at all - physical media are dead.  In future you will have a box the size of a toaster which holds 10,000 movies.  The vPod. 

Wow, this is bad: Rethinking the Kindle.  Did you know there's a limit on the number of times you can [re]download a book?  I didn't, and I bet you didn't either.  That's an amazing limitation, because it means although you've bought the book, if you don't keep it on your Kindle you'll lose it eventually.  And since your Kindle can only hold a finite number of books... wow.  I suspect this policy will change as it becomes more widely known. 

Electric Daybook considers the Nano [car]: Shifting Gears.  "Go ahead and chuckle, sneer, and guffaw while pointing at the diminutive and ridiculously low-priced Nano automobile being made in India.  We can sit up high and superior in our massive SUVs... But the facts remain: Entrepreneurs in India, not America, designed a car that bested 700 entries to win the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in the 'Transportation' category."  This is a disruptive technology, clearly.  Watch out above! 

CNet: saying goodbye to Kodachrome.  Wow.  The end of an era, huh?  Check it out, there are some great photos in the collection...  that's my favorite, at left... 

Ted Dziuba: Print isn't dying, serious journalism is.  "Print media isn't hurting because it's an outdated business model, print media is hurting because it's boring."  I think it's both actually, print is dying, along with serious journalism, and it's a chicken-and-egg problem to say which is causing which. 

Sounds like an Onion headline but isn't of the day: Onion is an effective cancer cure.  Who knew? 

But here's a real Onion story: 95% of Opinions Withheld on Visit to Family.  It may not be real, but man it rings true...  

I must tell you for me: 0% of Opinions Withheld on Blogging :)

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And so we lost Farrah Fawcett today, to cancer; she was 62.  I know the picture everyone remembers, the swimsuit pinnup, but this is the one I remember; it shows a beautiful girl, but also a fun girl, a friendly girl, a girl with personality and a bit of fire.  I had this very picture varnished onto the bottom of my own handmade wooden skateboard, circa 1974 (I would have been about 16).  So be it.  She will be missed... but I will always remember her like this.

A productive day of work - dawn to dusk - and a nice hard ride, and a nice dinner with a friend - and yet I feel blah.  I think I am thinking too much.

One thing I think I know; music makes me happy.  I get in my car, I feel blah, I turn on some music, and poof! I feel less blah.  I get on my bike, I feel blah, I crank my iPod, no more blah.  Even now, blogging; feel blah?  Listen to music...  yes sir Mr. Santana, make that guitar cry... 

Philip Greenspun discusses the new Cirrus Jet.  "This promises to be the least expensive of the very light jets, but for a lot of families possibly the most useful.  The plane holds two people in front and realistically should be flyable by one parent.  That leaves room for a second adult in the front, two sullen teenagers in the middle, and a parent with two younger kids in the back row of three seats (two of which are undersized)."  Yeah, a jet which is designed like... a car. 

Elon Musk gives his version of Tesla's history.  It's amazing that Tesla are so transparent - about everything.  Perhaps that's one reason why the federal government are giving them $465M to help build their sedan.  A decent use of the stimulus money, it could be argued; a lot better use than "saving" General Motors... 

While I'm waiting for a working Pre (you will remember my particular one doesn't charge correctly), a number of people have been reviewing them in detail: Steven Frank and ArsTechnica among them.  Both are good reviews if you want balanced detail.  Oh, and there's an update out, WebOS 1.0.3, but I don't think it will rehabilitate my phone. 

John Gruber links John Dvorak in 2007: Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone.  That has to rank with the worst advice by any "analyst" ever, amid heavy competition.  Wow. 

Picture of the day: this shot of the Round the Island Race, which had 1,750 competitors (the Island being the Isle of Wight).  How excellent. 

This is just too cool: world's rarest insect found on rocky spire.  "The scientists found a colony of the huge Lord Howe Island stick insects living under a single bush, a hundred feet up the otherwise entirely infertile rock.  Somehow a few of the wingless insects escaped and managed--by means still unknown--to traverse 23 kilometers of open ocean, land on Ball's Pyramid, and survive there."  The spire itself is amazing - a rock which rises straight out of the ocean for 1,800'.  Looks like something from Myst! 

Proving that there is an iPhone app for everything, here we have the iPhone wind meter.  How does it work?  Using the microphone!  You point it into the wind and let it listen.  I doubt it is very accurate - in fact I suspect it is a total dancing bear - but it is ingenious... 

Global Cooling news: polar bears are not dying out, and Arizona has longest stretch of days under 100 since 1913. 

ZooBorn of the day: a little dolphin!  Which brings to mind this question: would you rather be a dolphin?  "Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around.  Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."  - Douglas Adams.  I love it... 

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Huh, well I'm *back*; seems like with all the travel and everything, I've been gone forever; silly of course, but that's how it feels.  Best thing that happened today: got my hair cut.  I love that.  Worst thing: took a really slow sore ride around the lake.  Sailing appears to use different muscles from cycling :P

Email spam is a weird thing, isn't it?  We now take it for granted...  I get hundreds of spams each day, and I have filters which deal with them, and so be it.  But if you ever wanted to send me an electronic greeting card, forget it; it would not get through.  Strange that this problem which afflicts every single Internet user has gone un-addressed.  Seems like someone would have figure out a way around it by now. 

What a concept!  LATimes suggests putting parents to work - caring for their own children.  This sounds like an Onion headline, but it's real.  Wow. 

This is way cool: The Architect's Journal selects the 10 coolest buildings from Star Wars.  They gave first place to the second Death Star, a worthy selection, but my personal favorite is the Sandcrawlers on Tatooine, from the first movie.  I so remember the way I felt when I first saw it on screen; awesome! 

Excellent: Venture Capital Industry Moves Quickly To Jump-Start IPOs.  This is longer-term stuff, it won't help immediately, but innovation in the U.S. crucially depends on VC funding of new ideas, which in turn is driven by the potential of IPO exits.  Without an IPO market, VC money will dry up, and new ideas won't get funded... all of which is bad.  Still, you can't force a market.  The key is going to be investor confidence... 

So, was 1959 the year everything changed?  Maybe.  I was born in 1958, that was a big change for me :) 

This is probably going to make you tear up in that "feels good to feel bad way": 10-year-old Cancer Patient Gets Request Granted Before Death.  "Colby Curtain of Huntington, Calif., received a special visit from Disney-Pixar studios, which flew the animated movie, 'Up,' for her to see; just hours before her death.  It was her last request since her infirmity disallowed her from seeing it in a theater."  How excellent of Pixar. 

HealthImaging.com reports: Study: Medical imaging increases U.S. life expectancy:  "Increased utilization of advanced medical imaging has improved the life expectancy of patients in the United States by nearly nine months, according to a study released this month from the National Bureau of Economic Research."  Wow, excellent.  And increased adoption of new modalities like digital pathology will increase life expectancy even more... 

Slate: Step aside Windows, the browser is coming to save the day.  A conventional "web is taking over" analysis, but I liked this: "There are two kinds of Web surfers in the world.  Some prefer to open new pages as tabs within the same browser window.  Others open each Web page as a new window, accumulating lots of entries on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.  On the face of it, this battle between Ctrl-T and Ctrl-N seems totally mundane.  A few years from now, however, I think we'll look back on the gradual drift to tabs as the browser's bid for emancipation."  Interesting.  I'm mostly in the Ctrl-N camp, unless I find myself on a small screen, and then I prefer Ctrl-T... 

Just in case you thought you've seen it all, here we have the Barbie Foosball table.  I am not making this up. 

ZooBorns of the day: baby skunks.  Proving that baby anythings are cute. 

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Well we're back, and I must tell you Meg and I had the most excellent time!  She finished second in the B fleet, my little girl, the only female skipper and the only kid, and she handled the boat so well I was bursting with pride.  Yeah, we capsized twice (!), and yeah, we missed a couple of races while drying out (!), but overall she hung in there and did great, and it was a most excellent experience.  It couldn't have been a better Father's Day weekend; it's hard to believe this morning I was racing at Huntington Lake, and now here I am back home, celebrating Father's Day with Shirley and Alex and Jordan.

Me and Meg and our mighty steed...

Huntington Lake, one of the best places to race dinghies in the world...

I’ve posted a couple of pics above (please click to enlarge) but there were lots of others taken on the water which I’ve seen but don’t have yet, stay tuned. As you can imagine the photo boats zeroed in on Meg, she was quite a story.

I'm off!  Or should I say "we're off"; just about to drive up to Huntington Lake, at 7,000' in the Sierras, North-East of Fresno, to crew for Megan in the C-15 North American Championships.  Should be excellent!

A few quick notes on the way out...

Particularly apropos considering I'm sailing on a windy mountain lake this weekend, check out this picture of an International-14 on Donner Lake.  Wow.  You must click through to enlarge, what a great shot... 

I had to switch from my Pre back to my Centro.  The battery life on the Pre was too horrible.  I need an actual phone for this weekend...  after my local Sprint store has more units in and can swap, I'll switch back.  I remain hopeful that my particular unit was defective and that they don't all have such horrible battery life. 

RAAM is under way!  A 3,000 mile cycle race from California to Maryland, wow.  I always think this is the weirdest thing, that RAAM doesn't get more press coverage.  It is an incredible event.  The route is a single stage, 35% longer than the Tour de France, and the athletes finish in 9 days instead of 23.  No stopping to sleep, eat, nothing.  On and on and on until you finish.  Wow. 

Can you handle this ZooBorn?  It is a Tawny Frogmouth hatchling.  Personally I would say it is the living embodiment of "fuzzball" :) 

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Whew - couple of super busy days of work.  Finally this afternoon I escaped (!) and had a nice ride, my "usual" Kessel run from Dana Point to Camp Pendleton and back (for the record, posted a new best time of 1:56 for a new best average of 20.4mph, despite being worn out).  Now I have to sleep, and tomorrow afternoon I'm driving up to Lake Huntington in the Sierra's to sail in a regatta with Megan! 

...but first, the Ole filter makes a pass...

James Surowiecki notes Change we can't believe in, an interesting look at currency as a commodity.  Apparently in Brazil at the moment change is at a premium, literally; people are actively optimizing for not using coins. 

My pet peeve of the day: websites which open fixed-sized windows.  What!  This is 2009 people, we don't do fixed-size windows.  Either your web design works in all kinds of different windows - everything from smartphones to huge wide-screen monitors - or your web design is outdated... 

Of possible interest: Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science.  This is absolutely true.  I remember telling a junior colleague once that writing compilers was the easiest possible programming task, because the inputs and outputs were perfectly defined, and there were relatively few human factors and no GUI.  He looked at me in astonishment :) 

The Venn diagram of work life.  Pretty cool. 

Not noted on the diagram: we spend 90% of our waking hours staring at glowing rectangles.  Wow, that would definitely describe me, I'm afraid.  Well maybe not 90%, my cycling sort of saves me, but still I do spend a lot of time at the computer.  What about you?  What are you doing right now?  :) 

Top Gear "thoroughly tests" a Ford Fiesta.  Among the key questions answered: what if I'm asked to take part in a beach assault with the Royal Marines?  You must watch this :)  [ via Daring Fireball ] 

So, have you tried Hunch yet?  It supposedly makes decisions for you, but in my admittedly non-rigorous experiments it either couldn't help me or made the obvious choice.  I think it is a dancing bear. 

The glowing jellyfish of the year.  Wow, amazingly beautiful.  (click to enbiggen and admire :) 

ZooBorn of the day: a baby Pangolin.  (and yes, it is a mammal :) 

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