Alexis' edition...

Wednesday,  08/25/10  10:47 PM

It's the Alexis edition of my blog, as she turns 17 today... congratulations, to the most wonderful kid imaginable... and meanwhile, we find: Chest Beating: NEMA Working Group 6 have approved supplement 145 to the DICOM standard, "Whole Slide Imaging for Microscopy".  This means that the huge complicated images created by scanning entire microscope slides can now be stored using the DICOM standard, a major step forward for my company Aperio and the entire digital pathology community.  It will take time for this standard to be adopted and propagate, but just having a standard is a major step forward, and every journey starts with the first step.  Yay. From the August 9 issue of the New Yorker: The Wheelhouse - "Herzog and de Meuron reinvent the parking garage" - and how great is that?  I've always admired the spiral parking of the circular Marina Towers adjacent to the Chicago River... Empty Chamber - "Just how broken is the Senate?" - judging from this article, the answer is very broken indeed.  Yikes. Here we have the T.O. Acorn's Squirrel of the Month.  A great feature, and a great choice :)

 

buzz kill

Tuesday,  08/24/10  10:51 PM

This is interesting...  from Leo Laporte: Buzz Kill.  In which he noticed that everything he was posting to Google Buzz wasn't actually getting posted, and nobody noticed, not even him! "Something happened tonight that made me question everything I've done with social media since I first joined Twitter in late 2006... "It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. "I should have been posting it here all along. Had I been doing so I’d have something to show for it. A record of my life for the last few years at the very least. But I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs. Yep.  Related, from Paul Carr: Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity. (I must tell you, I love having my archive.  It's like a diary, only linked to the world.) I honestly think this microblogging stuff is a fad.  An amazingly popular fad - think CB radios - but a fad nonetheless.  We'll see.

 

No Socialists (New Yorker - Aug 2, 2010)

Tuesday,  08/24/10  10:34 PM

I see socialists myself and they are scary...

 

Tuesday,  08/24/10  10:11 PM

Home for a day, between trips to Seattle and Vista, and on the phone for most of it :(  although it was good to be home.  Trying to get caught up around here and I find... The August 2, 2010 issue of the New Yorker was excellent; not only was the cover great, but the contents too; some selected articles: Stuck - the incredible badness of Moscow traffic. Letting Go - "what should medicine do when it can't save your life" - poignant and thought-provoking, an important subject... The Scales Fall - "is there any hope for our overfished oceans?" - a tragedy of the commons if ever there was one. Christopher Hitchens via Ann Althouse: "Tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism."  That's it.  That's why multiculturalism breaks down.  I can tolerate anyone who can tolerate me! Dave Winer reviews Eat Pray Love.  "The most powerful thing you can do to get through all this messy trickery is to first forgive your ghosts."  I'm not strongly tempted to see this, although I like Julia Roberts and I agree with the message. Scott Adams goes nonlinear: Larger Than the Coolness of Corduroy.  You have to click through. Ever wonder:  How promiscuous are you?  So I took the quiz, and "based on your response data, you'd be most at home in: Finland, the most promiscuous (#1) of the 48 countries evaluated by the study."  Finland?  Huh. I must tell you, my opinion of the iPad is gradually morphing...  it is successful, of course, and to everyone's surprise there isn't a killer app; just a bunch of different things people are figuring out that it is good for...  it might not be good for me - so far, it isn't - but so be it. PS my friend Gary, who has an extraordinary 20 years' worth of tablet experience, opines "his skepticism about his skepticism is warranted."  Yeah mine too. Did you know?  Four years ago today, Pluto was de-planet-ized.  The Earth didn't stop rotating around the Sun, but it was a big deal.

 

at U-dub

Monday,  08/23/10  11:01 PM

Woke up this morning in Seattle, at the beautiful Alexis Hotel downtown, got up (yawn), worked out (gasp), ate breakfast (yum), and drove up to Bellingham to meet with a client (wow what a beautiful drive!): this picture does not fully capture the green and blue, wow After an equally beautiful drive back, a visit to the University of Washington, aka U-dub, with Alexis... we are here our guide explains; statue of George Washington, "red square", that is a library, not a cathedral the UW campus is stunning; note Mt. Raineer beyond the fountain Husky stadium! "the quad" is the main road down campus, lined with greenery and buildings Alex was pretty impressed - a great place to spend four years learning and playing a sample of campus life :) And then ... off again, back home; the whole trip seemed a bit of a dream... Mt. Raineer towers over the landscape; it doesn't look real, does it?

 

Sunday,  08/22/10  03:16 PM

A quiet Sunday, we had a nice brunch down by the Lake, and I am still pleasantly worn out and buzzed from my 200K yesterday.  And tonight Alex and I are off to Seattle for a visit to University of Washington aka U-dub; I plan to visit a couple of customers as well...  but first, blogging! Faster please!  Digital textbook startup Inkling scores Sequoia funding, publisher deals.  Using the iPad for textbooks is such a no-brainer, you can totally see the writing on this wall.  Textbooks are *so* expensive, and it is such an inefficient market.  Of course the challenge is that unlike novels and the like, textbooks must be "rendered", the formatting must be preserved via PDF or HTML or something like that... but it is doable, and it shall be done. Meanwhile: Then this happened.  The iPhone happened, and smartphones changed.  The iPad happened, and ... laptops changed? I'm not sure I believe it, but it's cute. An interesting think piece from Brad Feld: should you charge more for your product?  The conventional wisdom is no, you should charge less, and make it up on the volume.  But... yeah, you might be leaving money on the table, and yeah, you might be cheapening your brand.  Pricing is tough. I love it: One more reason to ride a bike.  Most encounters between cars and bikes end badly, but not this one... From LGF: Cactus bloom.  I find the lifecycles of desert plants to be amazing, wherein they wait patiently for weeks or months or years for a teeny bit of rain.  And often the blooms are equally amazing. Here we have six fascinating underground homes that go above and beyond.  Just when you think you've seen it all, you realize "it all" is so much more than you thought!

 

Cool Breeze 200K was

Sunday,  08/22/10  10:58 AM

Yesterday I rode the Cool Breeze 200K, for the second year in a row, and it was ... a great ride.  Starts in Ventura, up the river along the bike trail, back into the quiet neighborhoods East of Ojai, then the climb above Lake Casitas and descent into Carpinteria, through Montecito, up into the hills above Santa Barbara, down into Goleta, and back along the coast via Hope Ranch, downtown Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, the 101 Freeway (!), and the coastal bike path.  The weather was perfect, and I rode most of it with some good friends from the Conejo Valley Cyclists which made it even better. Some pictures, of possible interest: the route: 126 miles, 8,100' of climbing, and yeah a cool breeze along the coast self portrait in the early morning light of Ojai my CVC compatriots Jim, Richard, and Gary climb the Lake Casitas grade above Lake Casitas - wow! - all the climbing pays off view of Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean from East Mountain Road paceline through Hope Ranch - amazing properties bike path along the Four Seasons in Montecito ... a perfect day Rincon Beach checkpoint - all I needed was a book and a beer riding the 101 is not my favorite part; traffic to the left, ocean to the right, paceline ahead feeling great on a perfect day And when I was all done?  I'd done it in 7:12 riding time, the fastest 200K ever for me.  Yippee.

 

Bowling for Tchaikovsky

Friday,  08/20/10  11:46 PM

Tonight we were guests of our friends Mike and Liz who took us to see the L.A. Philharmonic's Tchaikovsky Spectacular at the Hollywood Bowl.  It was indeed spectacular; the entire experience, including the ambiance, eating in their box (lobster salad!), the music itself - violin soloist Baiba Skride was awesome! - and of course the finale, featuring the 1812 Overture, the USC Trojan bands' brass section, fireworks, and yes of course cannon fire.  You can't get much more spectacular than that! violinist Baida Skride with conductor Bramwell Tovey Conductor Bramwell Tovey was magnificent, coaxing an energetic Capriccio Italien from the staid Phil, and then a rather peaceful and dreamy Swan Lake, before the excitement of the 1812 Overture finale.  Tovey's remarks to the crowd were delightful, about the trombone fanfare at the end he remarked "it is rather hard to ignore them, but I find it is worth the effort". the Bowl in full regalia; USC Trojan brass, L.A.Phil, fireworks, and cannon fire A great evening and a wonderful example of a uniquely Los Angeles tradition...

 

no arms, no legs ... no worries

Friday,  08/20/10  11:41 PM

This you must see... no arms, no legs ... no worries Unbelieveable.  And incredibly inspiring!

 

I'm baack!

Friday,  08/20/10  11:21 PM

Yay, back home, finally, after another long week on the road again... Unexpected.  "The seemingly-endless parade of bad economic news, which time after time is described in the press as 'unexpected.' Apparently it is always a surprise when left-wing economic policies don't work. It happened again today, with the announcement that new unemployment claims rose to a nine-month high of 500,000."  It would be funnier if it wasn't our lives. Guy goes into a bar, there's a robot bartender.  "So, you still happy you voted for Obama?"  It would be funnier if... Q: Will Barack Obama be a one-term President?  A: Yes, he might last that long. Union member fired for attempting to unionize union's employees.  I am not making this up. Kindle and iPad displays, up close and personal.  Not only is the resolution on the Kindle better - as shown in these 400X pictures - but the contrast is *way* better, especially in bright light.  No comparison, really. More on P ≠ NP: inside everybody's favorite million dollar math proof.  I love that everyone knows P ≠ NP, but proving it appears to be NP :) The Rise of the MAMILs.  (Middle-aged men in lycra.)  "Flashy sports cars are out, now no mid-life crisis is complete without a souped-up road bike."  Very cool, and I love my bike, but I disagree that flashy sports cars are out :) I have to pronounce my upgrade reload to Win 7 64-bit a success.  Everything is *faster*, and no babies died.  Woo hoo. This is so funny, remember I told you my Mom was the only person I knew who used their iPad?  Well Bloomberg reports the iPad leads Apple to the elderly.  Probably not the main market but how cool is that? Wired: The Web is dead.  They must be desperate for circulation, this is the dumbest thing ever.  From the magazine that ran The Long Tail too. Picture of the week: A bike shop with 120 bikes on their facade.  I love it!  A sure-fire way of attracting MAMILs :)

Posts and articles in the last month:

08/16/10 11:24 PM -	on the road again
08/15/10 10:18 AM -	Win 7 x64 ...
08/14/10 06:52 PM -	on top of the world
08/14/10 06:45 PM -	the joy of solitude (New Yorker 8/2/10)
08/14/10 11:42 AM -	Alex and me in SF
08/14/10 10:48 AM -	my life as an oriental curry
08/10/10 10:28 PM -	timing is everything
08/09/10 10:20 PM -	Megan on the cover of North Ranch Living!
08/09/10 09:58 PM -	-8-9-10-
08/08/10 11:15 AM -	Aperio is hiring product people
08/08/10 10:11 AM -	reading an actual book
08/07/10 10:19 PM -	revisiting ancient posts
08/07/10 04:31 PM -	despicable me
08/07/10 10:20 AM -	tranquility challenge
08/06/10 10:45 PM -	checking out (of) Foursquare
08/06/10 04:58 PM -	the week that was 8/2/10
08/02/10 11:27 PM -	contemplation
08/01/10 09:34 PM -	Alexis' Mini!
07/31/10 08:33 AM -	en vacance...
07/31/10 08:18 AM -	Wired: cockpits

For older posts and articles, please visit the archive.