The other day I bought an iPhone app which takes photos in the style of a Polaroid® camera. It's wickedly addictive. I may be a little obsessed with it.
Some recent shots include this plant in Facebook's lobby:
this of the outside of Wendy's school:
this of city skies:
this outside Blue Bottle Café downtown:
another outside Wendy's school:
and this of Wendy herself:
An ever-growing set including these and more is on Flickr. I know it's corny but boy this thing is so much fun.
I've been reading notalwaysright.com recently. It's a compendium of transcriptions of often hilarious exchanges between serving staff and customers.
Recently there was Famous Ignoramus:
BOOKSTORE | HOBART, AUSTRALIA
Me: “Hello, sir, how may I help you?”
Customer: “Do you have those books in that series?”
Me: “Which series is that?”
Customer: “You know, the one by that famous author.”
Me: “There are lots of famous authors, sir. Do you know what one of the books was called?
Customer: “I want the third book in the series by that famous author!”
Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but without more information, I don’t know which book you’re after.”
Customer: “This is ridiculous! How could you not know the ones I’m talking about? They’re FAMOUS!”
It reminded me of my own stint working in a bookshop in 1992 when I had a number of almost identical experiences. Going beyond the above basic encounter, my two favorite stories from that time:
In other news, I took a bunch of photos with my new lens the other night. Here's one, the rest here
My boss was fantastically gracious. She said "I'm proud of you. I'll miss you. Thanks for helping me build the team". You could barely ask for more when you hand in your resignation.
A week or so later I sent out this email:
and received in return a wealth of warm wishes from people with whom I've worked. Man alive, I've worked with some really super people at Google.
This evening I had my team over for dinner. What a great team! They gave me this lovely card:
Fitting and inspirational. I'll miss them.
Tomorrow's my last full day at Google and next week I begin my "funemployment" with a quick trip to the UK. Exciting times! As a present to myself I bought a new lens for my camera. I took this picture of Wendy with it:
It's true that I don't yet have any "next thing" lined up. If you have any ideas, let me know. My résumé is at isaach.com/cv.
I went to the Crunchies last Friday night. The Crunchies as far as I can tell aspire to be the tech equivalent of the Academy (film), Emmy (TV), Grammy (music) or Tony (stage) Awards.
Tech celebrities appear at the Crunchies annually—including plenty flying in from around the world—and just as with the more famous ceremonies you might be forgiven for thinking that the real talent is probably elsewhere. On the other hand, unlike the more prestigious SoCal-baed awards, they let the fawning masses like me in too... if you're quick enough when they put the tickets on sale, that is.
I was in the cheapseats for the awards ceremony, but surprisingly enough two down from a guy who won a free Nexus One (winning tickets were taped to the undersides of selected seats). It was a good time, with geeky entertainment from the Richter Scales.
My friend April joined me for the afterparty and we rubbed shoulders with the tech elite... sort of. And then we had our photo taken:
When you're having a baby you can barely help doing internet research on what's going on during pregnancy. Turns out, to my surprise, that it's all about fruit and vegetables. Week 7: it's as big as a blueberry. Week 9: as big as a grape. Week 13: as big as a peach. A friend of mine recalls the "Spanish onion" stage, which is remarkably specific.
It's always foodstuffs but apparently never "as big as a packet of chips" or "as big as a cheeseburger". Fruit and vegetables only.
Or so I thought.
And then I found this delightful "Dad's pregnancy guide". Week 7: as big as the power button on a TV remote. Week 10: the size of the head of a hammer. Week 13: a gas cap, of all things.
Love it!
Here's a picture of Wendy the day we got our exciting news:
For many years I've been spending Easters, Thanksgivings and Christmases with Wendy's family in Terry Lake, Fort Collins, CO. The lake's north shore is hugely photogenic, so nice photos are easy pickings each year.
This Christmas was no exception. I zipped out at sunset one evening and shot this set:
While in Denver over the holidays Wendy and I went to the Broncos/Raiders game at Mile High Stadium (or "Invesco Field at Mile High"). We'd managed to get fantastic tickets for seats on the 4th row at the 40-yard line, Broncos side, and the weather turned out to be absolutely beautiful.
Tragically, and heart-breakingly, the Broncos lost to their arch-rivals in the last minute of the game—chances of reaching the playoffs diminishing accordingly. Still, I got some good photos.
This year I was lucky enough to receive the most kick-ass selection of books. I can't wait to get started working my way through the pile:
I also received one of the most fantastic Christmas gifts ever: a Korg Kaossilator. Holy moly this thing is some kind of super-addictive-awesome.
Also: a Brookes saddle for the fixie and a two-tone chopping board. Got to love it.
Bernal Hill is a few blocks south of where we live in the Mission. I find the area incredibly photogenic.
Yesterday Wendy and I went on a walk up and around the hill, as we often do. In the fall afternoon sun I got a set I'm fond of, some of which are below:
[an atypical business-related post with due credit to the Telco 2.0 Blog, an excellent resource on the modern economics of telco]
I've witnessed this point argued again and again: at my current employer, my previous employer, and the one before that. Telcos are greedy; telcos sell "unlimited data" but deliver otherwise; telcos will lose the broadband market to a player who can offer better value; and so on. Definitely I'm not defending misleading marketing of broadband services, but claiming that telcos are on a mission to exploit consumers falls short of the mark.
It's really not as simple as that.
The problem the telcos have is this: their costs building and running a packet-switched network are fundamentally a function of data volume on that network, (# of bits transported) * (cost per bit). As a first-order approximation, this linear function works pretty well; in this simplified model the cost per bit is an aggregation of OpEx and CapEx (amortized). CapEx includes licensing wireless spectrum, building out towers and backhaul and so on.
Telco costs are a function of data transport volume, more or less.
So you might be tempted to think that a "cost-plus" pricing model is the answer: charge the consumer per transported bit (ie. a metered data plan) at a rate of X * (cost per bit), where X>1. In general these pricing plans don't work well because on the consumption end what users end up paying doesn't correlate with the value they're getting. Is watching that YouTube video on my iPhone 100x more valuable to me than downloading that email from my boss? No, but it might cost me 100x more. Consumers can't make sense of that, and metered data plans haven't worked for the industry.
Consumer value is not a function of data transport volume.
So the telcos move to a subscription-based pricing model, otherwise known as flat-rate. Here they charge you a monthly fee for access to the network but typically give you "unlimited data" along with that. This is easy for consumers to understand, avoids the problem of data value being independent of data volume, and everything works just fine... EXCEPT that now the telco's revenue is a function of (# of subscribers) while their costs are a function of (# of bits transported).
In a subscription-based world, telco data costs and revenues are decoupled.
Having your revenues decoupled from your costs is a dangerous situation to be in, because you could easily find yourself paying out more money than you're taking in. So you try a few things:
After the launch of iPlayer in the UK (iPlayer is the BBC's streaming media product), one major ISP revealed that their costs of carrying streaming traffic trebled within weeks. Unless they can pass those costs to consumers, or fund them some other way, or prevent them entirely, they'd be in trouble. Bad news when your costs treble and your revenues don't.
Of course there are other talented folks doing this stuff. If you're interested you should check out 25 Spectacular Light Painting Images. Of the angel (#10), Matt says "Looks like it was done with a sparkler" and I think he's right. Clever.
Thanksgiving is an interesting time if you're an expat in the States. Intellectually of course I "get" the protocol—the family gatherings, the turkey meal, all-day Bond marathons on TV, mega-retail, putting up the Christmas tree, and so on—but viscerally my experience seems inevitably different from that of those around me. They've grown up with the holiday and I haven't.
The difference isn't about knowing the rituals: these can easily be learned and acted out. The difference is that after decades of experiencing the tradition it internalizes and becomes a "feeling". Thanksgiving has a particular "feel" to US natives, the substance of which is an aggregation of memories going all the way back to childhood. Thanksgiving doesn't have a "feel" for me in a way that Christmas Eve does, for example.
This isn't to say, of course, that it's not a good time. This year Wendy and I stayed in San Francisco for Thanksgiving, something we've not done before. We were thankful for each other, the amazing city we live in, the Californian climate, the house we love to live in, and the beauty of the fall.
Like Paul Simon says.
I find these things particularly photogenic. There's this set from Denver, of which this is an example:
and there's this set from Minneapolis, of which this is my favorite:
and latest is this lovely taillight from Healdsburg:
There's a spider's web in there, honestly. You can see it a bit better in the larger version. I took it last year at the launch party of my mom's book.
Took these last Saturday wandering around our neighborhood: the Mission in San Francisco. What a super super place. I moved to the city five years ago and I'm still just thrilled to live here.
Some samples below but the full set is on Flickr as ever:
The Alemany Farmers' Market is known for all sorts of things. The weekly parking débâcle, the hummus guy, Two Dog dry-farmed tomatoes, and (to me) amazing colors. It's an organic sustainably farmed rainbow.
I'm posting some samples below but you should check out the set on Flickr.
If you search Wikipedia for "worst pain ever experienced" the #1 result is "kidney stone". Until a couple of weeks ago I didn't really know what kidney stones were and the worst pain I'd ever experienced was appendicitis nearly six years back.
All that changed, though:
The strangest thing.
Isaac's advice for this week: avoid kidney stones. Badness.
About last week: I spent it in England, including visiting my parents a couple of weekends ago. On the Saturday we had a lovely day with a break in the clouds and went for a walk around the village:
In ten days in England I don't think I saw the sun at all apart from that one day.
As an immigrant myself, it was touching and poignant to visit Ellis Island and I'm glad that I did. What a place!
I was captivated by the reception hall on the second floor. This is what it looked like 100 years ago:
and this is what it looked like when I was there:
More photos on Flickr as ever.
Going to Tiffany wasn't on my mom's list but we did it anyway. She wasn't wearing Tiffany Blue on purpose.
The walk from SoHo to Wall Street was part of a longer walk from SoHo to Battery Park, with the intention of hopping on a ferry to Ellis Island. At 3.30pm or so, though, the line for ferry tickets was about 45 minutes with an additional 60 to board a boat after that. We figured we'd skip it and come back first thing the next day.
Instead we dropped in on the hotel, picked up our books and headed to Central Park. While we hung out I got some great shots in the late afternoon autumn sunshine, like this one:
We left the Empire State Building and headed in a cab to SoHo. From there we took a walk to Wall Street and I took photos along the way:
It's been a long time since I've been down the southern tip of Manhattan. A lot has changed since 1999.
Sunday in New York I woke up early and started my research on the Empire State Building. Did you know it was built in just 410 days? Or that in 1945 a B-52 bomber crashed into it and precipitated the longest survived elevator fall recorded (75 floors). Or that because it opened during the Great Depression they had such problems finding tenants that in the first year they took in more money from tickets to the observation deck than from commercial rent?
I also learned, crucially as it turned out, that you can buy Express Tickets online. From the site:
The lines at the Empire State Building Observatory are as legendary as the building itself. The line actually consists of 3 different lines. The first one is the security line that everyone must go through. Next comes the ticket line. Visitors with pre-purchased tickets can skip this line which can save a considerable amount of time during our busiest times. The 3rd and last line is for the elevators that take you to the Observatory.and it's true. There are lines to get in, to get authorized, to get screened, to get up, to get down, and to get through. Pay the little extra for express tickets and it's like these lines don't exist. Empire State visitor pro-tip. Save two hours.
While we have been told that anything this good is worth the wait, we have also heard laments that some people missed out on being able to visit the Empire State Building Observatory because they just didn’t have enough time to see and do everything while in NYC. Now you can. By purchasing an Express Pass you will automatically be moved to the front of each and every line.
It was a wonderful clear day and I took a bunch of photos. You can find a selection in the usual spot on Flickr. An example:
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