Out Of Reach

On the plus side (see below) the auditorium we were using had power available at each seat so I have to confess to doing some photo-processing in the background when the less enthralling sessions, shall we say, were underway.

This one was taken on a bridge in London. Not sure I've quite got across what I wanted to convey but thought I'd throw it up here anyway. And yes, I could probably have phrased that a little better ...

Disconnected Strategy?

Went to a seminar today on the future of the software industry as the switch towards software as a service (SaaS) gains pace. Interesting in places but nothing earth shattering. I also feel compelled to note that the industry speakers (Ray Lane, Timothy Chou) were more grounded and their material more coherent than anything the academics had to say.

Anyway, it was held on the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View and Craig Mundie, one of those anointed by Bill to take over technical leadership of the company in '08 when Gates hangs up his company hat, delivered a lunch-time keynote about multicore computing and how to put all those extra processing cycles to work. Turns out Vista is employing what he termed "predictive computing" and using those extra cycles to, for example, load-up what applications you are most likely to be using next. Hmm. That's all well-and-good I suppose but I'd be more excited if they'd just make Windows boot in less than three minutes and get that whole suspend/restore thing to the point where it can actually become a usable feature.

Despite all that technical wizardry and crystal ball gazing, I was amazed to find out that there was no working public Wi-Fi access available, a fact that ultimately drove me out of the Microsoft facility to the nearest Starbuck's in order to catch up with work during the day.

Words fail me. (Actually, what I mean is "words fail me, except for the ones above".) The one company in the Valley - apart from Google, naturally - where you'd expect to be able to get connected via a public access point, and it's broken??

Microsoft's future, written on a grain of rice.

UCSC Photography Course

Line Astern

As mentioned a post or three ago, I was at Laguna Seca this weekend for a course on action photography. Although the racing itself wasn't too thrilling, nevertheless the course was very good. Excellent instructor who was both a strong professional photographer and a great educator, always keeping people engaged and interested. He "went the extra mile" and worked with the people at Skip Barber to get us access to some great areas for picture taking. Indeed, as it turned out the fact that this wasn't a public race weekend might well have made it more worthwhile from a technique, practice and access to the track standpoint so I think I have reversed my position on that one!

Well recommended, and as I get round to reviewing the shots that are worthwhile I'll begin posting some of them here, starting with the above (which I may yet crop differently).

Road Melts in Fire

Interesting news item today. A petrol tanker crashed on a freeway connector for 580 in Oakland, resulting in a fire so intense the elevated roadway then collapsed onto 880 below. Fortunately, it was early on Sunday morning and traffic was very light so no injuries reported except for the driver of the truck who suffered some burns.

Living here you get quite used to the idea that earthquakes can flatten roads, but this is the first instance I can think of when a fire has had the same effect.

Fortunately, for me at least this isn't on my commute route and I don't find myself up that way very often. Nevertheless, I hope they get it sorted quickly because Sod's Law says that all of a sudden I'll find myself having to go that way!

CEO = Scapegoat?

I came across this article talking about “Signs that a Board should consider changing the CEO”. Of course I had to read it, but by the end I was more than mildly ticked off. What about “Signs your VCs are a bunch of arrogant ___s who know damn well the business is worthless but still hired some poor sucker to run it anyway?” Or, “Signs the VCs wouldn’t listen to an honest appraisal of the real opportunity - or lack thereof - if was beamed at them through the Rolling Stones’ PA system from 6 feet away?”

Sure, some CEOs – irrespective of background, founders or not - screw up, no doubt about it. All well and good, but what about the responsibility of the Board and the VCs to engage constructively in this process? How about the fact that a) they either hired the wrong guy in to manage it in the first place or b) left the founder and/or the management alone to run things into the ground to such a degree that the nuclear option is the only one remaining?

I’m fortunate: my present investors are realistic, supportive and always willing & eager to help out, but I’ve had other, less positive, experiences in the past. As a “hired gun” CEO, though, the reality around taking on a new company is that it’s a lot like marriage: based on a very short courtship, you find the bride attractive and want to get hitched. BUT, don’t forget to spend time with her parents too because - surprise, surprise - they come included in the package, like it or not. It’s also worth remembering that they are footing the bill, paying for your house and likely to be loaning you cash in the future, so unless you can get on with them as well as you can your prospective spouse, think twice, and then run for the exit before the vicar gets into his stride!

Death Valley Beach

Thanks to an 18 hour trip from ARN to SFO, finally got round working on some of the other shots from Death Valley, and I liked how this one came out. I was really surprised at the range of colours evident in the sediments in the area. Not sure this shot fully captures it (yes, Mr. “I”, I really should get round to profiling my laptop display!) but I’ll take a look on my home PC at some point and make sure it's capturing how things really looked.

Half-Head Dummies

Is it only me or is there something disturbing about these shop window dummies looking like they’ve been decapitated by a chain-saw killer with lousy hand-eye co-ordination?

I suppose the idea was something akin to photo-cropping – limit the visible extremities of the dummy to make shoppers focus on the clothes – but instead it presents such a macabre sight that your eye keeps being drawn upwards to the remaining half-heads.

And I bet those models don’t work too well in hat-shops …..

Spring in Sweden

Tree Shadow, Stockholm

Beautiful sunny weather this morning, so I walked to the office. It's about a 30 minute stroll from my hotel and certainly no hardship on a day such as this. The most direct route goes past what, to me at least, appears to be the Justice Ministry, inhabiting an appropriately large and imposing edifice! However, it's clad in a rather cheerful yellow stone that's quite at odds with what otherwise, given its massive and imposing proportions, could be a wonderfully Kafka-esque sort of place.

I guess that's modern socialism for you - the kindlier, gentler, yellower sort of political system!

Weekend Fun

Interesting weekend in store - off to Laguna Seca for a couple of days to take a course on action photography. Alas, it got moved by a week so instead of getting to do this with a SCCA Classics meet it's with a Skip Barber MX-5 class in which, by definition, every vehicle is identical! Strikes me as less than thrilling, so not sure I'll make both days. Anyway, I'll at least see how day 1 goes and what the instruction is like. Of course, I'd rather be in the race class than the photo class, but maybe later this year ....

Cures for Jet Lag?

San Francisco Airport International Terminal

I'd love to know what other people have done to combat jet lag, but to get the ball rolling here's my approach to dealing with it. Not saying it would work for anyone else, of course, but at least it gives me a basic ability to function on these trips:

- try to get onto local time as soon as possible. Stay up until 9 pm at least otherwise you'll be awake at 2 am, fall back to sleep at 6 am and feel like crap when the alarm goes off at 7 am.

- you *will* wake up during the night. The body is 8 or 9 hours out which means instead of body temperature and other processes (e.g. urine production) slowing down to coincide with sleeping, everything is still going full steam ahead. Travel tiredness will only knock you out for so long.

- only when you wake up at 12 midnight, 1 am etc. do you reach for any kind of drugs. (No, not that kind ..)

- I use one or one-half a tablet of Benedryl, an anti-histamine for hay fever relief. This helps deal with any stuffiness you feel after the flight and, for me at least, acts as a very mild sedative, sufficient to put me back to sleep half an hour or so after taking it.

- If you wake around 5 am you might be better off getting up and starting the day, depending upon which direction you travelled. Again, the issue here is that 7 am CET is 10 pm on the West Coast and hence you run the risk of falling back asleep just before the alarm goes off. And that's a *very bad* thing!

- you will feel down or out-of-sorts at some stage. Accept it, and just wait it out.

That's it. No magic, alas, just routine stuff, but it works for me at least.

(In case you are wondering, yes, I do drink on flights. Gain outweighs the pain in my view!)