Notes from a Floating Dog

It’s Friday, the day after tax day. Not that that is a big deal but it seems de-rigueur to say so….

I seem to be having more of these experiences where I do what I used to do; namely go out and randomly check out cultural events. And then realize, wow, there’s cool shit going on here in the bay area.

Tonight was no exception, I went to LaPena cultural center in Berkeley and caught a comic performing. His material was pretty good and poked my sensibilities in the side a bit. That was great. After the show I did the hang at the bar for a while and just watched people. Damn, there are some fun AND interesting folks out there. I seem to forget about this part of life during the work week. Aren’t we working to live, and NOT living to work.. Hmmm, I’ll have to do more of this…

And OBTW, I miss my mom…

Within the last month, Apple announced the iPad and Google announced that it wants to deploy 1 gigabit (1 billion bits/per second or 125Mbytes/second) internet service to selected communities. In both press campaigns there were allusions to enabling new rich applications. Given the hyperbole that tends to emanate from the tech sector it would be easy to dismiss such proclamations as just more geek bullshit…., that’s right, I used the word geek. Bullshit shouldn’t offend

Apple might have some sense of how the iPad will drive these “rich, new” apps. As arrogant as they  can be at times, Apple knows products, and  is smart enough not to try and impose an all-reaching narrative on the iPad/app story arc. The feature set for the iPad, at least the initial version seems reasonable. As usual, they’ll improve the hardware platform over time . I am also pretty sure, given recent history, they’ll use the App store to help nudge things in the “right” direction.

Google, a relative newcomer (compared to Apple), has a somewhat tougher task in that their offering is more a service augmentation than straight up new product. True to form however, their hubris, and formidable corporate developer intellect should help them overcome some of the pitfalls this deployment may encumber. What remains to be seen, however, is how much of their storied prescience was brought to bear on the long term effects of this deployment. If they are smart, they will have already put together, locked and loaded, a developer community outside of Google primed and ready to go, because 1G to the house is a large pipe and there is more than just good hi-def media that could be enabled.

This is an infrequent event in the tech industry. Two titans each bringing potentially disruptive products /and or services to the consuming public. Each product/service being somewhat underestimated in its potential effect. The iPad is more than just a big iPhone, 1Gbit to the home is an awfully big pipe.

Apple and Google have asked us to “wait and see”. IMHO, I think that true results from either of these plays is a little further out then either of them knows. Good counsel would  be to do as they have asked, wait and see, give this some time…

So far, from what I have read/seen online , while not quite the second coming, I do see the iPad as something I will probably buy.

I don’t think the iPad is a complete replacement for my MBP (or the upgrade I intend this year) but when I am traveling for fun, it and my iPhone will travel with me and will pretty much cover all my online/communication/organizing needs. Not to

No, I won’t be able to fire up VNC, log into work and write some Systerm Verilog.No, there is no X11 server/client stack for it… yet

But I am pretty sure will be able to satisfy all my news/journal reading and offload my brain from stuff I have to remember. That’s good enough

I’ll be buying physical hard cover books though. Call me a luddite in that domain, I don’t care.

I won’t be buying one  one immediately. I’ll wait until the end of the year, when more of the production and design kinks are worked out. I suspect the price may drop a bit as well.

There you go,not nearly the epic tome you may have been inspecting. But then hey,

It is without fail that the month or two after the end of the year is probably one of the tougher stretches, at least work wise, and also for me emotionally. The winter months have always been a tough. However, for the first time in a while the  holidays in ‘09, for me at least, despite some personal stumbles were actually on the whole, rather upbeat. Now, comes that long grind from the first of the year until Memorial day which is when summer, for me leastwise begins.

I am sitting here now, by myself, on Super Sunday reflecting on how adrift I have been since my mother passed (dad died in 1985) in 2004. I am not a momma’s boy or anything like that, but as an adult when you parents die you begin to note your own mortality and more importantly that you have no one to look to for answers. I don’t mean that in the literal sense, but that you have those moments where you could call home. I miss that.Soooo onwards I guess, next in line is doing something about my work.

So, as I had mentioned in a previous post, I quit my gig at Caustic (ironic, the name of the company given its also a characteristic of my disposition) back in September. Since then I have had the honour (or is that privilege) of watching the economy tank. It’s very strange though, it’s like the entire country is in denial. Over the last couple of months we have had this amazing demonstration of what happens when people don’t have money to spend, and how that phenomenon reaches out and spreads throughout the entire economy (ours and the world’s) yet still, the remedy most governments and/or other institutions recommend is to get things back to a point where the consumer class can begin spending again. But that makes no sense, it seems so obvious to me that maybe we should really be taking a hard look at not consuming so much. Maybe the world (or at least the US) needs to re-think our affinity for consumerism. Maybe businesses which produce things are not supposed to grow in revenue etc.. year-to-year. What’s wrong with businesses or companies holding a static size.

I am so confused

So, about 2 weeks ago, dutiful parent (along with my wife) that I am, took our 5 year old daughter and a girlfriend to the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills. Now it is important to me, being the father of a girl, that she get exposed to as much science and math as possible. Not so that she’ll necessarily become some manner of techie, but so that she is facile with understanding how things work from politics, to johnson counters….

Well as I am walking through the hall with her, it occurs to me that there are a fair number of other parents there with the same idea.What worries me however is that if all of these youngsters become techies, developing all kinds of neat protocols, and devices to push media around. Who will be left to generate the actually generate the content that these devices will push/carry across the “ether”

In most parts of the “industrialized world” it seems, at least from a metric that most societies understand, that the arts are not really valued. At least not nearly as valued as say, the Nth generation iPhone (full disclosure, I have one and we are exclusively a mac family). 

So here’s my plan (though my daughter I am sure will have other ideas). I want her to be able to bust out the solution for a non-linear fourth order differential equation….. when she needs to because…. it helps her figure out how to internalize the fact that Dave Holland’s Big band swings with a groove like nobodies bidness…. She does all this and then pays good money she earns as some creative type to see Dave Holland’s big band live…..

Now that’s a fathers dream

Peace y’all

I haven’t posted in ages, new gig at caustic.com, yes we do fast ray tracing. My daughter turned 5 and we spent the day (yesterday) at Disneyland. It wasn’t all that painful given the locale…. 

Ok, so I have been meaning to write this for a while. As I am sure a lot of people are aware, there is tons of “free” content, meaning video, audio, and text available on the internet. My question to you is: How much content do you pay for, and if you are firmly ensconced in the “I won’t pay for anything on the internet camp”, shame on you. I am more than willing to bet that there are artists who produce music, video, or text which each of you is passionate about. So, why not pay for it. If your favorite artists doesn’t have a means to do so, suggest one to them. These creative folks can’t live and produce their works if they can’t support themselves….  

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore… The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” – Steven Jobs Before I deal with the Steve’sters comment above let me give my quickie on Macworld. I went up to San Francisco on Wednesday to check out the wonderful world of Apple….. I have been to exactly two editions of Macworld, that, on top of my one visit to Comdex years ago, and one soiree thru Vegas for NAB two years ago. I’d have to say that comparing the three, Macworld is rather underwhelming. Especially for someone like me whose seen a lot of hardware over the years. And I think, that in fact, its a good thing. Seems to me nowadays that all the fun in Apple is wrapped up in software and therefore there really isn’t a shitload to see at Macworld. That being said, Mac Air is pretty schweet, I’d have been happier with a slightly smaller form factor as I suspect it might be a bit large for my shoulder bag, but then that is just me. I think it will make a pretty good box for the traveller who has to have a laptop in addition to their iPhone . Next on my list was was the Modbook from Axiotron, they modify a Macbook so that it has tablet functionality, its pretty nice though I suspect that a true Apple version of this would be less of a hack. I also checked out the Etymotic booth. Their H2 headset for the iPhone is nice, sounds just about as good as my e4’s and costs about half. Hmmmm… Time Capsule seems pretty neat but for the most part this is NAS with an Apple flavor on it.Still, given that I use Time Machine, I suspect I may have to score one of these in the not too distant future. So there you have it. I’ll continue to vote with my wallet for Apple. However… this year’s Macworld… well it was gonna be pretty hard to follow the iPhone release earlier this year. Regarding Steve’s comment about reading, well sadly, he might be right, at least in his circle of friends . It does seem a shame that all of this tech progress is not affording us the chance to take time out of our days sit down, read, and contemplate things. I’ll go get my lottery ticket now before I forget. Soooooo, maybe before Steve’s next public outing, lets make sure he gets a copy of Charles Barkley’s “I am not a role model” commercial and remembers to view it before he speaks publicly. The last thing we need in this country is less literacy from the technorati….. 

This past Christmas I bought my wife an iPhone and as things turned out, got one myself. After Christmas I started wondering if the same phone had been offered by someone else whether or not I would have bought it. After some deliberation I concluded that odds are I would not have bought the iPhone if it had been made by someone other than Apple.  Now let me say straight off that I am and have been a longtime Apple supporter (read customer) so that fact has to be accounted for.  I still wonder however, why it is that if someone else had made the same functionally equivalent device I wouldn’t have bought it from them.You guessed it, Apple has managed to instill “brand” loyalty in me. In my case, I have believed or been brainwashed to believe that Apple Computers, and over the last 5 or 6 years Apple consumer electronic devices are better than those produced by other companies. At least in terms of laying my money down for something. Are Apple products better than others. Well in some cases yes, in others maybe not, but my experience, and that is what counts to me is that they have been consistently good for me….

Before I go on, let me share what my definition of  “brand” is. I believe a “brand” to be a an image  or set of concepts  or both which represent or try to represent the positive experience  a person has when they acquire/use a product from a particular company. For instance, to me, for the longest time, Levi’s were the only jeans I bought, they made a good product, and continued to do so over the years until recently. The brand to me was that they were well made jeans which seemed to be be with/on me during memorable times in my life, they were fun, and nice to wear

What I am stumped on is the question of what “brand” means for the rush  of web 2.0 companies (and 3.0 and 4.0) that are currently out on the internet. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Tech Meme, Valleywag etc… and the ones which follow these companies down the road. How will they generate true brand loyalty ?

I ask this because in the last company I worked for,I became aware of how important branding seems to be, almost to the extent whereby the exercise of branding becomes disconnected from the products the brand is supposed to be linked to. 

This must be even more difficult when a company’s deliverable is a search result, or a web page, or some internet service as opposed to something tangible. Also, because development on the web happens so much more quickly than in the oconomies it would almost seem that there is not enough time to generate any loyalty to a “brand” and therefore what results is what we currently have on the web.A mad dash to always have the next latest web service or feature, or worse still, acquire it via a merger which then potentially dilutes the acquired brand. It’s funny, I was about to use the example of Myspace being acquired by Fox and then realized that Myspace was not really a brand. 

Maybe its the service provided by the likes of a Myspace which is the brand on the web these days.

My head hurts…. I am done