EvolvingWorld

Kindle Books becoming more and more popular

tomh — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:55:35 +0000

We’ve noticed over the last few months an interesting trend – sales of our Leading and Managing in Silicon Valley book have substantially shifted from the hardback version to the Kindle version. When we started out, we’d only occasionally sell a copy on the Kindle, and almost all the sales were of the printed version; by now though the Kindle version is outselling the hardback by 3:1 ! I admit I really like using the Kindle software myself. I find it nice that I can transparently pass books between my laptop, the iphone and the ipad. And I have a real problem that all my bookshelves are overstuffed – I just don’t have more room in the house for books. So it makes a lot of sense to get electronic books, particularly for books that aren’t primarily visual. Art books are still different, but for most things, the electronic versions are great! Also, Amazon has made the terms for the author a lot more compelling, offering royalties at the same level as the printed book (it used to be a much worse deal) and they’ve added UK distribution as well. The book is actually starting to sell abroad too, which is nice. It’s actually a lot of fun to see ongoing interest in the fruit of our two years labor.

If you haven’t gotten one yet, the Kindle version of Leading and Managing in Silicon Valley is available for only $11.99 in the US edition, and £8.04 in the UK edition. Everything you ever wanted to know about running a hitech organization, and then some!

Enough hot sauce

tomh — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:28:37 +0000

As many of you know, I like trains, and I like spicy food. This raises the question, is this spicy enough ?

(Thanks to Zars on Trainorders!)

Caroline D Bradley Convention

tomh — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:20:14 +0000

I’ve been enjoying once again the company of the Caroline D Bradley Scholarship convention. It’s a funny feeling that these four years have gone by so fast. It was great to see old friends again, and note the absence of families from previous years - a sign that we too are about to finish this phase of the adventure. For those of you who don’t know, the CDB scholarship is a nationwide competition from the Institute for Educational Advancement for seventh graders that seeks to identify gifted kids and provide them with financial and educational support in high school, and guidance through the college application process. Besides sponsoring the kids’ private school education, it puts on these annual conventions where all the families meet, and provides individual consultation and support as well. We learned about the scholarship by chance, and it was a mighty struggle for Ida to do the SAT, write the myriad essays and such. It was essentially a college application in seventh grade. When we got the word she had made the cut for the final round we were so excited, and boy we were all nervous driving to San Francisco for the interview. But she handled it with great coolness. Like for everyone else it seemed almost a dream when she won. That embarked us on a great journey, encountering the other CDB families, going to the conventions, picking a high school, the letters and talks with Bonnie Raskin, the famous television producer who started a second career as head of the CDB scholarship, the dedication of Betsy Jones in conceiving and running the program, the hard work of the IEA staff, and of course the mind-blowing education Ida has received at Castilleja school.

So every year, we learn a little more about the donor and her amazing commitment to education; and our appreciation for all that the Institute for Educational Advancement has done grows ever deeper. As one of the parents said, it must be part of God’s plan for all this to happen.

Anyhow, besides listening to serious talks on psychology and education, we’ve been having a lot of fun – had an architectural tour of Boston this afternoon by one of the parents who’s an architecture professor at Yale. We also discussed the merits of various Korean soap operas at dinner. The kids have been bonding too — even though they don’t see each other that often, increasingly facebook ties them together. Obviously we have two big clumps – the andover/exeter faction, and the bay area folks, but it’s not cliquish at all and the group meshes well. Listening to the seniors give their talks is so amazing – they’ve grown so much. One of the great ideas this year is to really organize a parent alumni organization to keep the families in touch, and to provide ongoing support for the institute, and find ways of paying back some of this incredible debt we now owe.

So if you have a bright child in the sixth grade — you should think about having them apply for the scholarship next year. It might change your child’s life, and yours too!

Crosby Stills Nash (&Young) Setlists

tomh — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:15:01 +0000

Hi folks,

I just posted a new version of the CSN(&Y) setlists. A big thanks to Dennis for his information on concerts in Washington.

Did you know that these guys will have performed 1489 concerts by the end of this year? I’ve got setlists for 799 of them.

Please send me any corrections or additions! I’d love to fill in the gaps.

My Heroes Are Getting Old

tomh — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:02:04 +0000

I’ve been enjoying listening to Phil Lesh’s 70th birthday party. It’s an amazing show – over four hours of 24bit delight. But it got me thinking – Phil is actually 70! And still able to play such a monster show. He sure doesn’t seem 70, not like my own parents were at 70. I suppose the music keeps him young – Karl Boehm and Otto Klemperer kept it up till a very advanced age. Yet the reality is, he is 70. And it makes me realize that being able to share this music is a precious gift - and it won’t keep happening forever. I remember when my wife bugged me about going to so me Grateful Dead concerts and I said I knew it wouldn’t last, and it certainly didn’t. Though it was sad how Jerry faded out. In that sense it’s wonderful to see Phil and Bobby having more fun than ever in Furthur. Bobby in particular seems to have woken up of late. Along similar lines Steven Stills seems to have found new enthusiasm and voice, at least listening to his latest show in Anaheim. So the music goes on. But as the saying goes, carpe diem…

Popcorn Hour C200

tomh — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:35:43 +0000

My stereo/home theater has really been transformed by the Popcorn Hour C-200. I had an A-110 earlier, but this is really even cooler. The C200 looks like a dvd player, and indeed it plays CDs, DVDs and BluRay disks. But it’s real purpose in life is to stream media from the network. I listen to my music though it, view my photos, and watch home movies, all without inserting a disk or tape, and even better, without having to go look for same. I’ve got it connected via a dedicated 801n link to my Synology DS509 NAS. On the Synology I’ve got 5TB of disk space in Raid 6. The disks are organized into a single volume, with three folder structures for music, photos and video. Since the Synology is just a Linux box on the inside, I run llink on it. llink provides a convenient user interface for browsing the collection and streams the results to the C200. The C200 itself can grab stuff from the network, either by a network share, or through llink, or from its internal hard disk or a connected USB device. If it takes too long to download stuff, I just copy it over via a USB device. It’s also linux based, so I can install my own applications on it and manage it remotely. This gives a huge amount of flexibility. It’s also cleaning up my setup, because it can replace a whole bunch of devices.

The main challenge with the C200 is that in keeping with its flexibility its software is very complex, and the team developing it has their challenges. When I got the device it barely worked, but with every successive software release it’s gotten better. So every two months you get a new software release, and you watch the device get some more capability. As one joker put it, he’s hoping the software will be finished before the hardware is obsolete. Yet in spite of considerable rough edges it’s so cool simply being able to browse my concert collection, and pick out what I want to listen to without having to go up and dig through my closet full of disks.

The only problem now is I keep having to watch my 250GB monthly limit with Comcast as I rebuild my music collection on the hard disks. I bet soon I’ll need to get an expansion cabinet for the Synology to add more disk space. A foot note there – when building a NAS like this, it’s highly recommended to get the RAID class disk drives – they will work better and longer.

The other useful and ever entertaining thing about the C-200 is the very lively discussion forum where users exchange ideas and whine about bugs. The forum is pretty crucial for learning how to get the most out of the device. Definitely a superior toy!

Is God Green?

tomh — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:50:41 +0000

Last week John Ortberg gave a really amazing sermon at MPPC on the topic Is God Green? I found this really inspirational because it was original, profound, and well connected two areas of thought which often are quite separate: Christianity and Environmentalism. You might even say that in popular culture they’re often opposed. A lot of conservatives, who claim to be religious, tend to reflexively oppose any efforts to protect the Environment, for these interfere with their worship of the almighty $$$. A lot of Environmentalists are fairly derisive of religion, viewing it as opposed to science and progress. Exemplifying this dichotomy, John by starting his sermon with pointing to an influential paper published in the sixties arguing that Christianity created a historical break in the thinking of man’s place in nature in that it argued that God had created the earth primarily for the benefit of people, and that therefore it only existed to be exploited by people, and had no other value.

John then proceeded to give a fascinating tour through the bible illustrated with many quotes showing that this is a quite incorrect interpretation. In fact in many places the Bible clearly states that the entire universe is the work of God, and belongs to God, and that therefore it’s the responsability of humans to take care of it. In fact, the special role of humans as those creatures made in God’s image is in fact to be stewards of God’s creation. I found that to be quite an inspiring insight. That being a good Christian requires us to be a good Environmentalist and vice-versa.

It made me think that one of the bad habits of our society is that we create false dichotomies and false conflicts, because there are those who try to profit from creating conflict, whether economically or politically. Why do we always have to choose one or the other? In particular, it’s more and more clear to me that the word of the Bible is in very close accord with every other objective view of the universe. Recent historical and archeological work have more and more confirmed the fairly impressive accuracy of much of the old testament as a historic document. When you look closely at the findings of modern Science, and the ethical implications of science, it also is in close accord with the Biblical message. Some say that creation and evolution are in opposition. But how so? Aren’t all the natural laws simply proof of the work God in all places and times? What we call Science is nothing but our observation of the continuous presence of God’s work around us. And in that sense too the Environmentalist’s dedication to the planet is not, or should not, be some act of pagan worship, but really a manifestation of respect and care for God’s creation. So we shouldn’t let ourselves be distracted by false divisions, but keep focused on the ONE thing.

747-8 near Mr Ranier

tomh — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:30:58 +0000

Boeing put out a nice picture of the Boeing 747-8 flying near Mr. Ranier. This such a beautiful airplane, and the perfect setting. The new wings and the longer fueselage give the airplane a new grace. It’s always been big and impressive, but this is definitely the most attractive version. I still remember in 1972 flying to Europe with my parents on a PanAm 747-100, and it was really impressive. It’s just so amazing that after all these years this design is still evolving and staying fresh.

Boeing 747-8 takeoff!

tomh — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:04:51 +0000

What a beautiful plane, and check out the takeoff….. it’s big, it’s looong, it’s beautiful and it flies! It’s so cool that 40 years later this is still a current design — the new wings add so much to it. What I find too amusing is the difficulties Boeing had integrating their new composite wings, all designed on the computer, with the fuselage, much of which is still based on old pre-CAD drawings from the late 1960s… As always Flightblogger has the best pictures and the latest Boeing news… go there for more great pictures.

Happy New Year and more MOW equipment

tomh — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 04:46:31 +0000

Back in Menlo Park, the Caltrain facility has a couple of newcomers parked on their siding.