I find myself watching less TV because I have so little time for it. The solution is to record or download it and watch the episodes compressed or speeded up. Close captioned at high speed allows you to get through an entire season. Of course it is different experience from the way it was intended but I manage to get through entire seasons in between flights. Here are compressed reviews in alphabetical order. Text from DJCline.com
Battlestar Galactica
I was beyond caring years ago. They wind up on Earth several million years ago. Who did not see that coming? Text from DJCline.com
Burn Notice
A spy in limbo. This man should be dead several times over. With this many dead bodies and explosions people are bound to notice. Text from DJCline.com
Closer
A Los Angeles detective would be fired or sued if they continually scheme and lie to solve crimes. Definitely a mixed bag for the ACLU audience. Text from DJCline.com
Defying Gravity
Grey’s Anatomy in space. Instead of doctors there are astronauts gossiping and carrying on. They should spend more time in space and less time on the ground. Text from DJCline.com
Eureka
Product placement of deodorant and cars detracts from telling stories. The series finale was a clip or flashback show to when it was better.
In Plain Sight
Federal witness protection case officer finds jaded twisted happiness in Alberquerque New Mexico. My favorite episode was Martin Landau as an old gangster settling old scores. Text from DJCline.com
Mad Men
The third season closes in on the JFK assassination. Everyone still smokes, drinks and carries on, clueless as to how much the world is about to change. Think of it as Cabaret with grey flannel suits. My favorite episode? The lawnmower one.
Monk
The world’s most neurotic detective is still cranking out formulaic episodes. He goes to the circus, zoo, etc. Pleasant viewing.Text from DJCline.com
Royal Pains
A doctor lets a rich patient die and winds up treating more rich patients. He has thoroughly unlikeable brother. It is a sad testament about this country that we must watch rich people get decent health care on television while the rest of us are suffering. Odd product placement of a Tesla electric sports car. Text from DJCline.com
Sopranos
I do not understand the appeal of this show. It must be for people who have never seen organized crime. Save lots of time and watch the first ten minutes of the first episode and the last ten minutes of the last episode. Text from DJCline.com
Warehouse 13
Men In Black meet Hangar 18. Secret Service agents find strange objects and put them in a safe place. Lots of steampunk props and references. Diverting but not engrossing.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled life.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
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The Kennedy Sense of Duty
US Senator Ted Kennedy died this week. His sister Eunice Shriver died earlier this month. Their lives were filled with tragedy. Two of their siblings died in plane crashes and two were assassinated. One sister was severely disabled. They humble family history was just as dark. Their ancestors escaped a place where a wealthy elite ignored the environmental carrying capacity of their island and the basic human needs of the poor. The result was famine, violence and exile. They came to a place that barely tolerated them and did work no one else would do just to survive. They built their social networks and political connections to make the world a better place. Text from DJCline.com
They could have turned their backs on the world but embraced it instead. I believe it was their sense of duty. I work with many organizations and there are members who think volunteering is something you can just walk away from if it becomes too difficult. The best are those who understand that volunteering is a duty, a civic responsibility of every citizen. If you see something that must be done you do it, regardless of the personal price you might pay. In that moment, you may find yourself in a position to make a difference. Text from DJCline.com
After what Eunice and Teddy went through, they could have walked away. I suspect the words of Jack explained why they did not. America rewarded their family in ways their ancestors could not have dreamed and when called they could not turn way. They did what they could for their country. Text from DJCline.com
After JFK died, LBJ could go to Congress and say “It was what Jack would have wanted.” We got immigration reform, civil rights and Medicare. It made America a better place. In memory of two more Kennedys, let us heal the sick and extend health care to all Americans. Text from DJCline.com
They did their duty, let us do ours.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary at 4:08 PM PDT []
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On August 28, 2009 in Palo Alto at the Mandarin Gourmet the STC Silicon Valley held its Summer Schmooze. It was certainly a departure from Arthur’s and even India Gate. There was much networking and discussions about opportunities with more job postings on the chapter website all the time.
Bob Kauten gave me a certificate of recognition signed by our new president Pat Harvey. It said “In grateful appreciation of your service as President, The Silicon Valley STC Administrative Council thanks you on behalf of the entire chapter membership and the technical community at large.”
Of all the the awards from all the organizations I have received over the years, this means a lot. Every time someone gets a job through STC, I know I have been a part of something that helps thousands of people. Join STC and volunteer. Pay it forward or get it backward. :-)
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 4:53 PM PDT []
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On August 26, 2009 in Palo Alto the SDForum SAM SIG hosted LinkedIn engineers Bhupesh Bansal and Jay Kreps to present “Project Voldemort: Scalable Fault Tolerant Distributed Storage at LinkedIn”.
LinkedIn takes web scale computing to extremes. They store and manage high read/write loads of massive data sets. Their applications need high scalability and performance but not necessarily features seen in relational databases. Project Voldemort is a distributed, highly scalable Key Value Storage System based on the Amazon Dynamo project using Hadoop and Pig. They talked about its architecture, design choices and future serving many data intensive applications. They want to build a community to solve the huge challenges they face. (I recommend using LinkedIn to find them.)
I think the use of the name Voldemort is sign of a new generation taking over the nomenclature from retiring nerds who used names from Star Trek and Star Wars. I just hope they are not hoping for a magic solution. :-)
At one point they discussed a process that takes several days to run. That needs fixing pronto. I can recommend a good database expert that might be able tune that to a few seconds.
For a more detailed analysis I suggest Richard Taylor’s post at:http://bandb.blogspot.com/2009/09/project-voldemort.html
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 12:59 PM PDT []
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I was stopped in rush hour traffic when I saw an experimental prototype from Stanford Solar Car project called the Apogee (not the Solstice). It definitely turned heads. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Cash For Clunkers program where you get an electric car?
UPDATE
The driver of that vehicle according to Mr. Sasha Zbrozek was Daniel Posch of Stanford. His perspective can be seen at http://dcposch.blogspot.com/
A few days after these pictures were taken, Chuck Squatriglia of Wired posted an excellent article about the car with splendid pictures by Jim Merithew. Their fine work can be seen at: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/stanford-solar-car/
I have been covering electric vehicles for many years and I wish Mr. Posch and the rest of the team success in Australia.
And now for some good natured humor…
Top Ten Thoughts on the Apogee
1. No cupholders
2. Can only use the cigarette lighter on really sunny days.
3. Low ground clearance prevents off-roading.
4. Not exempt from chain laws on ski trips.
5. No place to put a bumper sticker.
6. Seats one person or one really close couple.
7. No luggage rack.
8. Needs windsurfing board adapter kit.
9. Needs USB port so you can upload songs to the world’s largest iPhone.
10. Dealer supplied undercoating costs an extra $800.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 8:28 AM PDT []
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The Cost Of Raising Children
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) economist Mark Lino and Andrea Carlson released a report called “Expenditures on Children by Families” It is used by courts and state governments to decide child support guidelines and foster care payments. The report says: Text stolen from DJCline.com
“In 2008, raising a child from birth to 18 can cost a middle-income, two-parent American family an average of $221,190. When adjusted for inflation, that rises to more than $290,000. On an annual basis, that would range from $11,610 to $13,480 depending on the age of the child. Those 2008 costs are slightly higher than in 2007 and much higher than the $25,000 figure in the first report in 1960, more than $183,000, in 2008 dollars.” Text stolen from DJCline.com
Thirty-two percent of the cost will be on housing, sixteen percent for food, sixteen percent for education, fourteen percent for transportation. The rest is for incidentals like health care. Text stolen from DJCline.com
This does not include the cost of childbirth or college. Medicaid studies show costs of an average delivery were about $10,000 in 2007. The CollegeBoard.com estimates the average cost of a college education at about 25,000 per year or $100,000 total. Add the occasional piano lesson or cell phone and it can easily add up to $500,000. All of these costs are certain to go up. Text stolen from DJCline.com
There are other costs. If those people who talk about “family values” were serious they would do more to help people struggling to raise kids. Thanks to family planning, people have a choice. Some are happy about their choices, some are not. Publicly parents like to say they love their children. Privately, many tell me there are days when they think it was the biggest mistake they ever made. From the mother who suffers post-partum depression, to the father who has two grown children still living in his house, to the senior citizen wondering why her children don’t help her in her old age. I also know people who decided not to have children. Privately they say they have no regrets. One said “They call them nuclear families because they blow apart.” Text stolen from DJCline.com
There are also environmental costs. I recommend watching ABC News Bob Woodruff’s sobering report called “Earth 2100″. Six billion people are now fighting each other for food, water, shelter, clothing and energy. According to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet there will be 7 billion by 2011.
By 2050 there will be 439 million Americans. Raising a child in a rich country requires seven times the resources than a child in a poor country. I think about that when I see a suburban McMansion with three garage doors. It looks like a muffler shop in Colonial Willamsburg. It seems more wasteful when I see a parent load a single child in an SUV and drive twenty five miles to run in a marathon (which incidentally is about twenty five miles). Perhaps it is best to learn how to walk long distances on foot as children because at this rate they will most certainly do it as adults. Start teaching them subsistence farming too.
Ultimately the cost of having children is paid not by parents but by the children themselves.
Text stolen from DJCline.com
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary at 4:07 PM PDT []
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Aug. 20, 2009 in Palo Alto at SAP, the Bay Area Future Salon hosted FreeRisk’s Jesper Andersen and Toby Segaran. Andersen is a statistician, computer scientist and entrepreneur. Segaran is the author of the “Programming Collective Intelligence” and frequently speaks on the subjects of machine learning, collective intelligence and freedom of data.
Why didn’t more people see the current economic downturn coming? There was lots of data flying around but no useful strategy to make sense of it. Andersen and Segaran gave their assessment of current polling and statistical research. Bias is unavoidable. The questions you ask inevitably reflect your perspective. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s AAA ratings are not enough. If you combine enough information from enough perspectives you can start to get a less biased picture of a complex problem.
How can we avoid this from happening again? They believe the solution will be public-private partnership internet firms with more transparency and market competition. They want to supply corporate financial information that can be openly analyzed to avoid conflicts of interest. FreeRisk aggregates accurate, accredited risk data so users can generate crowd-sourced algorithms to analyze credit risk that will be visible to everyone. They use standardized Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) data, public-domain financial data and user-generated content. They also use unstructured data released in financial reports right down to those pesky and suspicious footnotes. Credit evaluators can focus exclusively on creating and applying risk analytics and not worry about IT or database management. No more black-box credit ratings.
They want to create a community of developers so this economic mess never happens again.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 4:27 PM PDT []
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On August 19, 2009 in Palo Alto at Pillsbury Winthrop SDForum held its quarterly volunteer meeting. Kristi Royce of KLR Consulting led the progress update from volunteers and discussed what steps to take next.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 1:23 PM PDT []
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On August 18, 2009 in Palo Alto at SAP, SDForum presented “Cutting Edge Business Intelligence in the Cloud” with Lenin Gali of ShareThis. ShareThis has a widget that allows people to share what they find on the web with others on their social network. It doesn’t matter if it is FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn. Their clients include Fox Media, UsMagazine, Wired, ESPN, and movies.com. They built their IT on Amazon EC2, Cascading, Hadoop, Hive and MicroStrategy. They use Aster Data for their Data Warehouse. Text from DJCline.com
If you come from a traditional database IT background, I guarantee that you have never seen an operation like this. Cascading is the processing API for Hadoop Clusters. There are pipes, flows, branches and groups. You get event notification, can write scripts and control it at the tuple level. Hive is the data warehouse built on top of Hadoop. It supports non-complex SQL using HQL. You can build a custom map/reduce jobs for complex analytics. You can still make adhoc queries for large data sets. The Aster Data DW in the cloud is scalable commodity hardware with an Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) Architecture. It uses SQL, Map/Reduce, JDBC, ODBC, and is compatible with Extract Transfer and Load (ETL) tools. Aster Data architecture uses PostgreSQL and has a beehive heirarchy. Queens control the cluster and hold metadata while workers process and store it. If the queen fails it is replaced immediately. Text from DJCline.com
They think that all of this is easier to use and lowers their costs. They keep their headcount down and their revenue up. It works for them. The question is whether it will work elsewhere. Text from DJCline.com
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 11:17 AM PDT []
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I’ve written over a hundred articles for SDForum. You can too.
It is easier than you think. SDForum holds more meetings than Alcoholics Anonymous. There is always a meeting going on somewhere. Someone stands up in front of an audience and says “I’m Bob, and I love technology.” Text from DJCline.com
I go to these events, take notes and pictures and then write about it. I try to get the basic facts straight like how to spell their names and companies they work for. That is the easy part. The hard part is trying boil down incredibly complex ideas into a few sentences. What I do is high tech haiku. Nothing beats getting a message from a reader thanking you for attending that event and explaining it to them.
Sometimes I am the first person to write about a new company or technology. If you write for SDForum, you may get the scoop of a lifetime. You may see an idea that will create a company, jobs and an entire industry. The person you meet at a small event may one day speak at convention center full of people, and you will know them personally. Pretty cool.
This brings up an important point. For all the technology you will see, it is the people you will meet that will stay with you. Tell their stories. Write for SDForum.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Events, Reviews at 4:36 PM PDT []
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I’ve been bumping into HappyAbout Books for years. The books are concise bits of useful information put together by authors that are fascinating just to be around. Compact and downloaded to an Amazon Kindle, they are perfect for anyone who travels. Here are some quick reviews of books that are quick to read.
18 Rules Of Community Engagement: A Guide For Building Relationships And Connecting With Customers Online
By Angela Connor
Some people think communities are self organizing. They are not self managing. The internet provides lots of opportunities for individuals to belong and contribute to a community. Connor shows how to recognize and foster community development.
42 Rules For Driving Success
By Mitchell Levy
I think there are more rules but these fit in one book. I haven’t tried all 42, but the ones I have followed seemed to work.
42 Rules Of Cold Calling Executives
By Mari Anne Vanella
Despite the rise of referrals through social networking, at some point you will have to make a cold call. Her advice was important to put myself in my client’s shoes. If someone cold called you, what would make you stop and listen?
An Extra Hour Everyday
By Nicholas Soergel
The man pictured on the cover has four arms. I was worried that the advice would require surgery or genetic engineering. It turns out I already did a lot of these things and quickly adopted the rest. It gave me more time to review more books.
I’m On LinkedIn Now What?
By Jason Alba
I was not on LInkedIn until I read this book. LinkedIn has become the de facto social networking service for business but most people do not know how to leverage it. This book tells you what you should and should not do. It is already in its second edition and soon there will be a third.
Internet Your Way To A New Job: How To Really Find A Job Online
By Alison Doyle
This takes a broader view of professional social networking. Your resume is only part of the brand building you need to work on. There is LinkedIn, Facebook and your own webiste or blog. There are good and bad ways to interact with email and texting. I highly recommend this book.
Scrappy Project Management: 12 Predictable And Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces
By Kimberly Wiefling
Not everyone is lucky enough to meet or work with Wiefling in person. This book tries to capture what is more than a series of steps but an attitude or state of mind. It is now translated into Japanese, but not available on Amazon in China.
Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help Or Hurt Your Company
By Julio Ojeda-Zapata
I was not Twitter until I read this book. It kept me from making serious mistakes. Your business needs to understand Twitter before venturing out there.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Books, Reviews at 12:28 PM PDT []
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On August 11, 2009 on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Jon Stewart ran a series of video clips of conservative woman saying “This is the not the America we grew up in.” and “We want our country back.” The point of the piece was that such comments are polite code for conservatives. They don’t like social progress. They don’t like having Obama as president and all that it entails. Text stolen from DJCline.com
Cast member Larry Wilmore’s response to the woman who “wanted her country back” hit a chord with me. He said “She wants her America back? Go tell that to the Indians. Nobody gives America back. You keep it until somebody else takes it away from you.” Text stolen from DJCline.com
The good old days might have been good for a few people but they were not for everybody. For instance, they would not have been good for the woman making that statement. Progress has its perks. Personally I like sitting where I want on the bus, at a lunch counter or in a theater. I like being able to drive down a street and not be pulled over for not matching the skin color of my friends or family. I like working with people online unseen and never knowing where they stand on some arbitrary classification Boss Hogg came up with. I don’t like being told who I can kiss. Text stolen from DJCline.com
Imagine if there had been no social progress. Would there be segregated lines at McDonald’s or the airport? Would there be separate websites or cell phone networks? I know that conservative woman might be afraid of the future, but she’s just given me a great story idea. Text stolen from DJCline.com
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary at 4:07 PM PDT []
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This service comedy movie is part “MASH”, part “Stripes”, part “Catch-22″, part “Apocalypse Now” and mostly “X-Files”. It is based on John Griesemer’s first novel “No One Thinks Of Greenland”. An army private winds up in a secret base Greenland that takes care of dying MIAs until they can be classified as KIAs.Text stolen from DJCline.com
It accurately captures Army life after Vietnam and has one the only screen appearances of a PET personal computer to produce a newspaper. I thought it appropriate that the troops watched “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” and “The Thing”. The location they picked looks like Labrador more than Greenland, but maybe that’s just me. Recommended for a very bizarre evening.
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Movies, Reviews at 4:10 PM PDT []
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Have we reached the bottom of the housing market?
According to Zillow.com the national housing market peaked by June 2006. It had the first year over year decline by January 2007 followed by 27 months of depreciation resulting in a drop of 22 percent nationally. In March 2009 the annualized depreciation was 12.4 percent and by June it was 12.1 percent. A change of a few tenths of a percent is not much. Home values are still declining, they are just not declining as fast, depending on the market. Text from DJCline.com
Some California markets like Stockton dropped 61 percent from their peak. They fell so hard that foreclosures are a major part of sales. People are buying, but they are buying abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere. Home values in Las Vegas are down 34.6 percent from the peak and Phoenix 26 percent. Text from DJCline.com
The downturn has created a frightening dynamic. People are still losing their jobs with an unemployment rate nearing 10 percent nationally. In many cases people race to make one last mortgage payment with one last paycheck. It can still take months to sell a home. If they don’t get another job they will lose the house. Text from DJCline.com
So they try to put it up for sale. There are already a lot of homes on the market. There will be more flooding the market over the next few months. Zillow estimates nationally 23 percent of single-family homes are in negative equity or “under water”. The negative equity average in California in the second quarter is 35 percent. In San Francisco Bay Area counties the numbers are worse. San Joaquin has a rate of 67 percent. Solano is 63 percent. Contra Costa is 45 percent. Alameda is 31 percent. Santa Clara is 22 percent. Even San Francisco and Marin are at over 12 percent. On average houses are worth half of what they were at their 2006 peak. Text from DJCline.com
Many of them will become foreclosures. If the Federal Reserve stops buying Treasury notes in September, mortgage rates may increase pricing people out of buying in a bad market. Text from DJCline.com
George Avalos of the newspaper Argus wrote an excellent article with some great quotes. Brad Kemp of Beacon Economics said “The housing market is getting worse. More people are being laid off. Home prices are still falling. The price you could sell your house for today is less than yesterday’s.” Stan Humphries of Zillow said “The new phenomenon in this housing bust is people having a sense of futility. They wonder, ‘Why am I paying for a house that used to be worth twice as much.’ Then they walk away from the house.” Text from DJCline.com
Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Commentary at 4:30 PM PDT []
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Judd Apatow is a hot property in Hollywood right now. A few years ago he made a movie called “The TV Set” starring David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver. It is about the compromises everybody in broadcast television makes to get a show on the air. It falls into the same category as “Network” and “A Face In The Crowd”. All of these films are as hard to watch as the shows they make fun of. These films are now time capsules of an age gone by. Text from DJCline.com
Judd Apatow made this satirical independent film about Hollywood. Then he went out and made blockbuster movies about young men making rude noises and tasteless jokes. He understands this is a business and this is what sells. Don’t expect Tolstoy at the multiplex. Text from DJCline.com
Many people are getting their programming through pay TV by satellite or cable. Audiences are watching snippets on the web. Despite the change, the role of the writer in Hollywood has not. You come up with an idea, write the script and then you sell it. I consistently run into writers who agonize over what happens to their words after they leave their hands. I do not mourn. I do not worry if my name is not on it. I do not worry if it ever gets made. I got paid and I move on to the next project. Text from DJCline.com
I seldom talk about any of this but someone commented about how terrible Nora Ephron’s film depicted the blogger in “Julie and Julia”. Writing for a blog is different than writing a screenplay or anything else. Depicting a writer putting together a blog for two hours is boring. Watching Julia Child in Paris is fascinating. I would have stuck with Meryl Streep and ditched the Amy Adams blogging portions. I hate to say this but it is true. I hope the woman portrayed in the film does not take the critics reaction to the film seriously. It is dramatized version and not your real life. Your real life is intact and running without a greenlight from Hollywood. Text from DJCline.com
Do not weep when your words are warped by the wide screen. Count the money and not your tears. You sold them to the highest bidder. Text from DJCline.com
Copyright 2009 DJ cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj as Movies, Reviews at 4:20 PM PDT []
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