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Nov
6
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Against my own previous advice on not traveling during the winter - I'll be traveling over the next couple of weeks.
Later this week I'll be in New York talking about Security and Identity in SOAs at the InfoWorld SOA Exec. Forum (the session is on Thursday @ 12.10pm). It's been several months since my last (extended) stay in New York and I must admit I'm looking forward to it; though I'm not going to have much time to look around - my schedule is pretty packed.
As soon as I get back on Thursday - I'm meeting Superpat at RedHat's HQ in Raleigh for his talk on digital identity at TriLUG; then we're being joined by the rest of his family on Friday.
Next week I'll be at ApacheCon in Atlanta for some meetings and will likely attend some of the more business-oriented tracks; and obviously Dave's talk on Apache Roller. Looks like there are a lot of fellow Sunnies there - should be a good opportunity to put some faces to email addresses.
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Jun
20
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We got to San Jose airport in plenty of time for our 8.55am to Dallas (on route to Raleigh, NC) yesterday morning - extra time is essential if you're traveling with young kids. We were pleased that we got our bags checked quickly but were shocked to find the security line in terminal A stretching out of the terminal and into the parking lot - a *long* way into the parking lot (that is badly broken). Queuing for 45 minutes with two kids is not going to be fun. Missing flight - even less fun.
Then I thought to ask the FlyClear reps. if I can take my family through with me and was told I could take two kids under twelve but not my wife. Hmm, tough one - take the kids and avoid the queue but risk not being on the same plane as my wife. In the end we decided I'd take the kids and Jo would have to push and shove as best she could. To cut a long story short - we all got to the front of the security line and were through in under five minutes. I was very impressed with the service - and will probably write them a nice letter (not something I'm moved to do very often).
If you travel through SJC frequently and don't like the queuing - you should take a look at FlyClear - so far - a very positive experience.
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Apr
21
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Weekend blogging is becoming a bit of a habit lately - I'm working on a couple of hush-hush projects that converge around JavaOne so things are getting a little hectic. That by the way was an understatement - the English do that all the time. For example Scott (the Antarctic explorer) would probably have described the deadly conditions at the South Pole (had he found it) as a "tad inclement".
Anyway, a busy week interrupted by a quick trip to LA didn't leave much time for reading blogs; let alone actually writing any - so here I am again at the breakfast table scribbling down a few thoughts. O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo. was last week - I did intend to go along for half a day but never got there - I'm sure there's a whole bunch of news to catch up on.
One bit of news I did see was that Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) is out - I'll either resuscitate an old machine or install Parallels and try it out - It'll be interesting to see to what degree they are closing the gap on Mac OS/X. The real news, however, is that Ubuntu now includes the full Java software stack - including GlassFish, JavaDB, NetBeans and Java SE. A good arrangement all round. That's an understatement by the way.
Read more about that news on the Tom Marble's blog, the Aquarium and on John Clingan's blog. By the way - John has chosen a great time to become the Product Manager (or should that be Community Manager) of GlassFish - things seem to be panning out pretty well. That's another understatement.
Until next weekend !
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Mar
30
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Last week I was at O'Reilly ETech in San Diego; it was a good show, but not great - I'll get to that later.
Anyway, here are my day by day notes - I'm doing this mainly as an aid for my own memory but also for anyone else who cares. So, here's the first day's notes, also see Part 2 and Part 3.
Day one (Monday) was the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing. The focus of the morning was on-demand and user-driven manufacturing. Colin Bullhap, one of the designers of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) explained the evolution of the hand charged power supply used in the OLPC - every week they get fully formed prototypes to play with. Think agile manufacturing.
Chumby is a web-enabled clock-radio that you can hack; the blueprints are freely downloadable from Chumby Industries - open source hardware and software. You can hack Chumby in a number of ways - with a compiler or with some fabric and a glue gun.
Threadless really pushes the custom manufacturing envelope; they make cool t-shirts as well. The idea is anyone can submit a t-shirt design (a GIF plus some words) - if yours is selected (by community vote) then they'll manufacture it and pay you. So thy only create what there is demand for and they only create enough to satisfy the demand - as a result - they've sold out of every single product they've produced - that's pretty lean. Who knows - maybe cars will be designed (OK, maybe options packages selected) like this one day.
Seth Goldstein talked about his new service attentv.com - basically people can watch what you are surfing. My immediate reaction was - Uh ? But when I think about it - there's huge demand for watching people go about their daily lives, reading about what they're doing - so hey, why not. Ultimately there could be real demand from marketers - ie. "Subscribing to Me" - imagine how much a marketer could learn by not only subscribing to your click-stream and your TV remote - but maybe tracking you physically - tracking where your eyes wander when your walking through the store. How much would you charge for people to subscribe to your "attention stream" ?
Jeff Jonas from IBM is an interesting character and a great presenter - but you have to keep up; he moves fast; skipping from subject to subject - "identity analytics", "enterprise amnesia", "anonymized data spaces". I made notes but will probably have to go do some additional research to make sense of them.
There we're a couple of talks on energy and data center economics - it's all about location - finding the balance between land availability, infrastructure, power costs and the source and consumers of the data.
There was an all too brief demo of FreeBase - a structured database (consolidation) that can be easily edited by anyone - a kind of semantic web meets crowd sourcing. The idea is that content can be tagged and categorized and additional structured data slurped in as a result of the categorization. This is an area I need to invest more time in and managed to tap the presenter (Robert Cook) for a demo account. Thanks, Robert - hopefully I'll have more to share when I get time to play.
There was a session on Wall Street and Web 2.0 but I completely zoned out - I've no recollection what it was about.
The closing keynote on Monday was pretty cool - I saw my first Mathemagician - a very irregular guy named Arthur Benjamin. He's America's foremost Math Whiz and pulls some pretty amazing Math stunts in real time; better yet he took time to explain how he does it so you can get some insight into how his brain works; suffice to say it doesn't work like mine.
After a break - I attended the EFF BOF - there was lively discussion and I learned a lot - so much I decided to lend my support to the cause and join.
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Mar
27
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I was walking through an hotel lobby in New York last week and came across a wall full of fixed-line pay-phones - each partitioned to provide sound insulation and privacy; some were even fully enclosed; door and all. How quaint. A remnant from a time gone by, I thought. I can't even remember the last time I used a pay phone.
Fast forward a week - Different hotel, different city, I'm in one of those pay-phone booths, on a conference call (on my cell phone). To my left and right are other fellow conference-goers doing the same - most with their laptops open; some even using Skype. No-one has used the pay-phones yet. We're all huddled in these pods because it is the only place in the hotel you can actually hear yourself speak.
So, I thought - rip the pay-phones out (OK, maybe leave a couple) so the 'desk' can be made a little bigger and you have a drop in office. Locate these at airports, train stations, hotels, shopping malls, conference centers, libraries - maybe even charge $5/hour to maintain them.
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Mar
18
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[the title is a reference to the song "Englishman in New York" by Sting]
For the second time this year (and we're only 3 months in) I'm stranded. Last month it was Washington, this time New York (note to self - don't travel between November and May). I was supposed to leave New York on Friday but I won't get out until 6.30am tomorrow morning (fingers crossed).
I spent most of Friday at LaGuardia until they closed it at 4pm and have spent at least 4 hours on the phone trying to rearrange my travel. I found a useful feature on my Treo - you can have (at least) two calls at the same time a quickly switch between them - great if your stuck in automated queues.
Anyway - I've used the time well - I've pretty much walked the length of Manhattan (humming that song by Sting), saw the Statue of Liberty close up, got to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, walked through Central Park and spent a couple of hours at the AMNH (American Museum of Natural History). btw the AMNH is pretty awesome (certainly on par with the Natural History Museum in London).
I've just started to upload pictures here.
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Mar
14
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OK, maybe <3 is a bit much but I certainly appreciate New York whenever I visit. I'm pretty lucky, the handful of times I've visited, I've stayed in mid-town - generally walking distance (if you like walking) from anywhere you want to go to.
If I was 25 again - NY would probably be #1 in my top 3 list of places to live; followed by Barcelona and Sydney. What I most like about New York (aside from the atmosphere, the noise, the bustle) is the vertical scale - there are few cities (maybe none) that compare.
Update - I'm being stalked by Rudy Giuliani - he was hanging around outside the hotel (and blocking the foyer with his entourage) and he was at the restaurant as well - I would've "had a word" if his body guards hadn't been so intimidating.
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Feb
24
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Well, it seems I was right about something; there was more snow in Chicago than Lake Tahoe (though I never actually made it to Chicago to see for myself). The good news was that our drive was pretty good (driving there : less than 5 hours with a lunch stop and about 4.5 hours on the way back). We had to get way above 6k feet to find decent snow - we took the kids up to Heavenly in the Gondola and drove up to Mount Rose. Looks like they'll be getting a dump this week - relief for the local economy. Pictures to follow.
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Feb
24
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I meant this as a joke, untile I saw this article. Why don't they take the money they generate from confiscating people's personal belongings and give it back - for example - everytime someone gets something confiscated - give them a Starbucks voucher, better yet use the proceeds to provide a free postage paid envelopes so the items don't need to be confiscated in the first place. Remember - 99.99999% of travellers aren't guity of anything - they shouldn't be punished.
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Feb
15
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I feel a bit guilty - I managed to escape Washington DC yesterday and spent last night in my own bed. Winter storms that have battered the mid-west and North East cut short my Washington / Chicago trip and I managed to get home a day early. I feel guilty because many of the folks I bonded with in the various queues at Dulles were on their second or third attempt to get home - I'm guessing many more spent another night at airports throughout the US. Not fun.
During my wait at Dulles I watched as a United flight got within 6 inches of the terminal only to be held up for (another) 30 minutes as the ground crew attempted to move the frozen gantry into place. Ironic - a puddle of ice no bigger than a doormat separating a hundred million dollar, state of the art jet liner and a multi-billion dollar air terminal - in the end one of the ground crew resorted to some percussive maintenance with a monkey wrench. I'm surprised the frustration on the plane didn't turn into mutiny (I think the plane had been on the ground for 90 minutes already and most likely had a severely delayed landing too).
It's nice to be home.
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Feb
9
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I'll be traveling again next week as part of Sun's EBC on the road; Washington DC and Chicago to be precise. The days are pretty packed so the chances of writing are pretty low. No sooner do I get back in California - we're taking the kids to see the snow in Lake Tahoe - hopefully we'll get some nice pics. like last year but I have a feeling I'm going to see more snow in Chicago !.
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Feb
4
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The "War on Liquid" continues unabated - I had my toothpaste confiscated by the security screeners at San Jose - of course I commended their dilligence and highlighted the fact that their colleagues at San Jose and at least half a dozen other airports had missed the same credible threat.
I wonder if this is all a conspiricy by the toothpaste companies to increase the turn on their inventories or by the screeners to make a bit on the side selling used personal hygeine products.
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Jan
26
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The Department of Homeland Security and Liquid Abatement recently changed the rules for entering the US from Canada - as of last Tuesday you need a passport rather than your driver's licence or other easily forgeable photo Id. Fortunately I knew that and grabbed my (British) passport as I left the house for a series of all day meetings followed by a late flight to Vancouver from SFO.
On the way back, checking in at the e-ticket machine in Vancouver it dawned on me that I'd forgotten my Green Card - that's the thing that proves I'm allowed to be in the US (vs. a temporary visa). Ah well I thought - I have the number in my organizer and I'm sure they can quickly determine that I have a Green Card (after all it's the same people that issued the card) - right ?
So I queued up at immigration (you pass through US immigration in Vancouver) and explained my situation to the immigration officer expecting to be quickly on my way. Nope. He explained I'd need to go to the immigration office. As I walked through the nondescript door I saw a room full of people who looked like they'd given up all hope of every seeing their loved ones again. I asked a couple of people how long they'd been waiting - I got various replies from 45 mins to 4 hours. Oh, feck, 45 mins 'til boarding. I asked one of the uniforms what the process was and was told to take a seat. I called the travel agency to see if I could get on a later flight but the same uniform told me I wasn't allowed to use my phone. I was about to rant about the lack of any signs saying anything about not using cell phones but decided it wasn't important enough to risk getting rubber-gloved.
Another uniform walked by so I explained very politely my situation and asked him what the process was; skipping the details he told me there were a couple of options but my best bet would be to stay in Vancouver a few more days and get my Green Card Fed-Exed. Vancouver is a really nice place and if it were Summer I'd probably have gone for that option. The uniform also explained I couldn't actually leave until I'd been 'processed' which could be a while, Feck^2.
So I sat back in the chair along with all the other dejected souls and start thinking of the Tom Hanks film - The Terminal - a fellow immigrant called Victor Navorski who get's stuck in JFK for a couple of years because he didn't have the right travel documents. I also start imagining the the smell of freshly powdered rubber gloves. Shudder.
Then, five minutes 'til boarding, out of nowehere a voice summons me into another office and another uniform asks me a bunch of security questions then explains the process (which I've already heard) and insists that they'll need to sort my case out tomorrow. After a bit of persistence - the uniform consults with one of his buddies and decides they can do something but it'll take time and cost $260 - and I'll probably still miss my flight. After several more minutes of furious form filling I'm running through the terminal and make my flight with a whole couple of minutes to spare. Yeeeha.
BTW if you're ever in Vancouver and like Indian food - I'd recommend Vij's, It's more like West Coast Indian Fusion but don't let that put you off - it's a very lively place, the food is top notch and they sell beer.
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Dec
1
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... starts the email I just received from British Airways - 'we'd just like to assure you that even though we've just found traces of a deadly radioactive isotope linked to the assassination of ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko on three of our airliners - everything is under control - no problem.
Er, hold on - so it's been proven that it is possible to transport radioactive poison on commercial airliners - on a route that is (my guess) probably pretty strict on security. Yet the monkey at <insert your favourite airport here> still insists in strip searching my wash bag searching for combustible tooth-paste or something. I'd like to see airport authorities divert some attention away from the war on liquid and focus more on credible threats.
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Nov
4
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If you've ever dropped off a rental car at Austin Bergstrom Airport you've probably done what I did on Friday, and what I did just 2 weeks ago. And what i'll probably do next time I'mm in Austin.
You follow the huge overhead "rental car return" sign, get in the left lane then as you sweep around the corner toward the terminal - just on the edge of your peripheral vision there's a sign that says "rental car return". The sign is actually two signs : left for rental cars right for terminal. The sign is so small you need to be within 20ft to read it. At night the sign is invisible - it is reflective but your headlights won't be pointing at it unless you knew to take the turnoff.
The sign is also iconsistent - its smaller than the other signs and at eye level (not overhead). The chances of seeing the sign are slim. If you have perfect eyesight, in good light and you're not racing to catch a plane you'll be fine.
Otherwise you have 2 choices - loop around crawling past the terminal - or you did what I did today - "oh shit not the terminal"; evasive action; sharp left. "Oh shit" - 2 more options : short or long term parking - you go for long term (straight on) and the quickest way out.
I explain to the lady at the exit booth for long-term parking so I don't have to pay - "this is the second time I've done this - am I the only person stupid enough to do this (twice) ?", "no dear everyone does it" she replies. And she adds - "please complain it will make my life easier". She tells me she's out of forms but gives me the customer service number instead.
When i've looped back around - I tell the car rental guy that the sign could be improved - he tells me "yeh that's what everyone says, i'll tell xyz dept.".
Walking back to the terminal I wonder how it can be such an obvious problem for many people with such a simple solution (better sign) - yet still not be fixed. The reason is - people racing to catch a plane don't have time to complain so; no complaints - nothing to fix.
So I went out of my way to offer feedback (by phone and email) - not something I'd usually do (too busy).
I'll let you know what happens.
