Did you know?

Having a six year old is a lot of fun, if you are a geek. There is the endless flow questions, the daily visits to Wikipedia to finally get the right answer. We watched YouTube videos about planes and ships over and over. Without further ado, here's my son's 2007 zeitgeist:

• The Airbus A380 is the biggest passenger plane in the world. It is made in Toulouse. You can find an amazing 7 minute video of the assembly of the plane on YouTube. 873 people can evacuate an A380 in 77 seconds.
  
• The Antonov An-225 "Mriya" is the biggest cargo plane in the world. It is bigger than the Lockheed C5 Galaxy. It has six engines. It takes of soo slow.
  
• The Spruce Goose (aka H4 Hercules) beats all of them. But it only flew once and is now stored in a museum in Oregon.
  
• The smallest plane in the world is the Bumble Bee II.
  

• The biggest ship in the world is the Knock Nevis, a Norwegian owned super tanker.
  
• The biggest container ship in the world is the Emma Maersk.
  
• The biggest passenger ship in the World is the RMS Queen Mary 2.
  
  
• The list of most populated cities in the world: Mumbai, Karachi, New Dehli, Sao Paolo. Although the list changes a bit when you include larger metropolian areas: Gran Buenos Aires metropolitan area is number 17 with over 13 million people. You can imagine what will happen if they make it to the World Cup final next time.
  
• The longest river in the world is the Nile (6650km) (list of rivers by length)
  
• When completed the Burj Dubai (598.6m) will be the tallest building in the world, dethroning the CN Tower (553.3m) in Toronto. Although the tallest structure is the KVLY TV Mast (628.8m) in (list of tallest structures and buildings)
  
• Our Volvo V70 can drive to Los Angeles (340 miles) in one tank of gas.

And I am leaving the questions about gas consumption of the different hybrids, the country with the most cities, the fastest car, the fastest production car, the fastest car by acceleration, the biggest of the rocky planets, etc etc etc etc etc etc but luckily no questions yet about Britney or Lindsay.

Where's the bacon?

When the world was still ruled by the tobacco companies, you could buy a pack of chocolate cigarettes at the candy store. My favorite candy was always original "coca-cola gummies". But you ain't seen nothing yet. My kids got over the Christmas break a pack of Uncle Oinker's gummy bacon. It is even packed the same way bacon is packed and contains four tick slices of bacon. Luckily it doesn't taste like bacon: it is strawberry flavored. The safe handling instructions advise you to keep in a cool, dry place and to "not attempt to fry or microwave". Made in China for Accoutrements :(

A picture every day

One of the best Simpson episodes aired last Sunday. I originally posted a link to the video on YouTube or DaiyMotion. Twentieth Century Fox kept going after them (Hey, Twentieth Century Fox, why do you keep taking the video...). How ironic, since the Simpsons got the idea from Noah Kalina's YouTube video: http://www.everyday.noahkalina.com/

Torture me!

For many months, I've been part of an advanced Toastmasters club, the Agile Articulators, both as a member and as the VP for Public Relations. Toastmasters is all about becoming a better public speaker. Our small club is an advanced club: it combines speech with debate. Every meeting there is a prepared speech, and either a short 1-on-1 debate or longer 2-on-2 debates. The debates are forensic style debates [1] [2]. The topics are current affairs and are voted upon by the members. Tonight's dabate: resolved, that no agency of the United States government should use torture during interogations of prisoners under its control. Unfortunately, I had to argue the affirmative. This was unfortunate not because I like torture but because 80% of the debates are won by the negative side. I really wanted a win this time. Tonight our team lost again against a USC forensic debate pro and his debate partner. Dear fellow Americans I hereby apologize, we lost the torture proposal. Get ready to be waterboarded!

• Agile Articulators
• Toastmasters
  
• PresentationZen
  

Suck on that, Belgium!

Mute!

At Sun, subscription to Sun internal/external aliases was managed using a centralized tool, which allowed you to enable, disable and select digests, control whether the alias was public or not.

Regularly email storms would erupt when a new employee or a clueless employee would email "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to a large email alias (such as sun-all-employees). Many would respond to all with information on how to (un)subscribe. This would be followed by a storm about 'do not reply to all!" - flame - flame. The email thread would not die quietly.

Gmail added a nice feature recently, called "Mute":

If you're subscribed to a mailing list, you've no doubt been subjected to the 'thread that just won't die!' If you're part of a long message conversation that isn't relevant, you can 'mute' the conversation to keep all future additions out of your inbox.

So simple ... yet so useful.

Lightning + Gcal provider + Google Calendar

Almost all my events are tracked in Google Calendar: my personal events, my wife's appointments, the kids school schedule, the soccer games, tech events in the Bay Area, Google developer events and of course birthdays. Specific calendars are shared with my friends and family. Everybody is in-synch ;)

I like the Google Calendar interface. The most useful feature beyond sharing calendars is the SMS notification.

I also use Thunderbird and was looking to tie it all together. Using Lightning and the GCal provider, I now can synchronize my calendars (in an open way). The setup is very simple. Here are the pieces that make up the solution:

1. Mozilla Lightning for Mozilla Thunderbird 2
2. Provider for Google Calendar
3. Instructions on how to synchronize with Google Calendar or LifeHacker instructions
   

Alternatively, LifeHacker documents another solution, which looks much more complicated to set up.

Image: courtesy of LifeHacker

Sinterklaas

In the midst of all the Christmas shopping and appearances of Santa Claus in the US shopping malls, we kept the European tradition of Sinterklaas on December 6th alive. While other years he drops by in person, he was terribly busy this year (as he wrote in a letter to our kids). Hence he only dropped by in the middle of the night and left the presents and candy in the living room. And lo and behold, the horse of Sinterklaas ate the carrots my kids left in their shoe. It was a great morning. All was well.

Wikipedia has some interesting facts about the history of Sinterklaas and his relation to Santa Claus:

Sinterklaas is the basis for the North American figure of Santa Claus. It was during the American War of Independence, that the inhabitants of New York City, a former Dutch colonial town (New Amsterdam) which had been swapped by the Dutch for other territories, reinvented their Sinterklaas tradition, as Saint Nicholas was a symbol of the city's non-English past. The name Santa Claus is derived from older Dutch Sinte Klaas.

West Vleteren - St. Sixtus

I have been catching up on reading the newspapers of the week. The front page of the Wall Street Journal of Thursday November 29, 2007 is an article by John. Miller about what is labeled the best beer in the world: St. Sixtus Trappist of West Vleteren in Belgium. Come to think of it, I've never drank this beer. And after reading the article, it might be difficult to even put your lips on a glass of West Vleteren. It will be definitely on my to-do list when we visit Belgium next year. (Or if anybody in Belgium reading this post could arrange a couple of bottles.)
So far my favorite beers include (in no particular order):

• Duvel (Brewery Moortgat)
  
• Brugse Trippel
• Lindemans Geuze
• Scaldis (Brewery Dubuisson)

Trappist Command: Thou Shalt Not Buy Too Much of Our Beer
John W. Miller, WSJ

WESTVLETEREN, Belgium -- The Trappist monks at St. Sixtus monastery have taken vows against riches, sex and eating red meat. They speak only when necessary. But you can call them on their beer phone.

Monks have been brewing Westvleteren beer at this remote spot near the French border since 1839. Their brew, offered in strengths up to 10.2% alcohol by volume, is among the most highly prized in the world. In bars from Brussels to Boston, and online, it sells for more than $15 for an 11-ounce bottle -- 10 times what the monks ask -- if you can get it.

For the 26 monks at St. Sixtus, however, success has brought a spiritual hangover as they fight to keep an insatiable market in tune with their life of contemplation.

The monks are doing their best to resist getting bigger. They don't advertise and don't put labels on their bottles. They haven't increased production since 1946. They sell only from their front gate. You have to make an appointment and there's a limit: two, 24-bottle cases a month. Because scarcity has created a high-priced gray market online, the monks search the net for resellers and try to get them to stop.

"We sell beer to live, and not vice versa," says Brother Joris, the white-robed brewery director. Beer lovers, however, seem to live for Westvleteren.

When Jill Nachtman, an American living in Zurich, wanted a taste recently, she called the hot line everybody calls the beer phone. After an hour of busy signals, she finally got through and booked a time. She drove 16 hours to pick up her beer. "If you factor in gas, hotel -- and the beer -- I spent $20 a bottle," she says.

Until the monks installed a new switchboard and set up a system for appointments two years ago, the local phone network would sometimes crash under the weight of calls for Westvleteren. Cars lined up for miles along the flat one-lane country road that leads to the red brick monastery, as people waited to pick up their beer.

"This beer is addictive, like chocolate," said Luc Lannoo, an unemployed, 36-year-old Belgian from Ghent, about an hour away, as he loaded two cases of Westvleteren into his car at the St. Sixtus gate one morning. "I have to come every month."

Two American Web sites, Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, rank the strongest of Westvleteren's three products, a dark creamy beer known as "the 12," best in the world, ahead of beers including Sweden's Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter and Minnesota's Surly Darkness. "No question, it is the holy grail of beers," says Remi Johnson, manager of the Publick House, a Boston bar that has Westvleteren on its menu but rarely in stock.

Some beer lovers say the excitement over Westvleteren is hype born of scarcity. "It's a very good beer," says Jef van den Steen, a brewer and author of a book on Trappist monks and their beer published in French and Dutch. "But it reminds me of the movie star you want to sleep with because she's inaccessible, even if your wife looks just as good."

Thanks to the beer phone, there are no more lines of cars outside the monastery now. But production remains just 60,000 cases per year, while demand is as high as ever. Westvleteren has become almost impossible to find, even in the specialist beer bars of Brussels and local joints around the monastery.

"I keep on asking for beer," says Christophe Colpaert, manager of "Café De Sportsfriend," a bar down the road from the monks. "They barely want to talk to me." On a recent day, a recorded message on the beer phone said St. Sixtus wasn't currently making appointments; the monks were fresh out of beer.

Increasing production is not an option, according to the 47-year-old Brother Joris, who says he abandoned a stressful career in Brussels for St. Sixtus 14 years ago. "It would interfere with our job of being a monk," he says.

Belgian monasteries like St. Sixtus started making beer in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which ended in 1799. The revolt's anti-Catholic purge had destroyed churches and abbeys in France and Belgium. The monks needed cash to rebuild, and beer was lucrative.

Trappist is a nickname for the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, who set up their own order in La Trappe, France, in the 1660s because they thought Cistercian monasteries were becoming too lax. The monks at St. Sixtus sleep in a dormitory and stay silent in the cloisters, though they speak if they need to. Today, though, Trappists are increasingly famous for making good beer.

Seven monasteries (six are Belgian, one, La Trappe, is Dutch) are allowed to label their beer as Trappist. In 1996, they set up an alliance to protect their brand. They retain lawyers in Washington and Brussels ready to sue brewers who try use the word Trappist. Every few months, Brother Joris puts on street clothes and takes the train to Brussels to meet with fellow monks to share sales and business data, and plot strategy.

The monks know their beer has become big business. That's fine with the brothers at Scourmont, the monastery in southern Belgium that makes the Chimay brand found in stores and bars in Europe and the U.S. They've endorsed advertising and exports, and have sales exceeding $50 million a year. They say the jobs they create locally make the business worthy. Other monasteries, which brew names familiar to beer lovers such as Orval, Westmalle and Rochefort, also are happy their businesses are growing to meet demand.

Not so at St. Sixtus. Brother Joris and his fellow monks brew only a few days a month, using a recipe they've kept to themselves for around 170 years.

Two monks handle the brewing. After morning prayer, they mix hot water with malt. They add hops and sugar at noon. After boiling, the mix, sufficient to fill roughly 21,000 bottles, is fermented for up to seven days in a sterilized room. From there the beer is pumped to closed tanks in the basement where it rests for between five weeks and three months. Finally, it is bottled and moved along a conveyor belt into waiting cases. Monks at St. Sixtus used to brew by hand, but nothing in the rules of the order discourages technology, so they've plowed profits into productivity-enhancing equipment. St. Sixtus built its current brewhouse in 1989 with expert advice from the company then known as Artois Breweries.

In the 1980s, the monks even debated whether they should continue making something from which people can get drunk. "There is no dishonor in brewing beer for a living. We are monks of the West: moderation is a key word in our asceticism," says Brother Joris in a separate, email interview. "We decided to stick to our traditional skills instead of breeding rabbits."

The result is a brew with a slightly sweet, heavily alcoholic, fruity aftertaste.

One day recently, the wiry, sandy-haired Brother Joris returned to his office in the monastery after evening prayers. He flipped on his computer and went online to hunt for resellers and ask them to desist. "Most of the time, they agree to withdraw their offer," he says. Last year, St. Sixtus filed a complaint with the government against two companies that refused -- BelgianFood.com, a Web site that sells beer, cheese, chocolate and other niche products, and Beermania, a Brussels beer shop that also sells online. Both offer Westvleteren at around $18 a bottle.

"I'm not making a lot of money and I pay my taxes," says BelgianFood.com owner Bruno Dourcy. "You can only buy two cases at once, you know." Mr. Dourcy makes monthly two-hour car trips from his home in eastern Belgium.

"Seek the Kingdom of God first, and all these things will be given to you," counters Brother Joris, quoting from the Bible, adding that it refers only to things you really need. "So if you can't have it, possibly you do not really need it."

174 days and counting

And still no government in Belgium. After two full months of negotiations Yves Leterme, the strongman of the Flemish Christian democrats, handed Saturday afternoon for the second time his mission as formateur of the next government back to king Albert.

A parody on Yves Leterme is also no longer in my favorite countdown list, de Afrekening on Studio Brussel. It is written in Dutch by two popular radio-presentators Peter Van de Veire and Sofie Lemaire, of the Flemish broadcast Studio Brussel. They sing the text on the fragile music of ‘Hey There Delilah’ from the US-band Plain White T’s.



For details about the ongoing creation of a new Belgian government, check out http://crisisinbelgium.blogspot.com

Shopping Season Bah!

Black Friday, Cyber Monday are becoming known terms even in Europe. They are referring to the kick-off of the American shopping season, which traditionally starts the day after Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November). On Black Friday, stores hope to stop bleeding red ink and to start turning a profit for the year. Cyber Monday is the Monday after when people return to work and find refuge for their shopping addiction on the intenet It is typically a big day for Ebay and Amazon. On Black Friday, you can find great deals. From early morning until 11am, stores will offer big discounts. Early morning becomes earlier and earlier: some stores opened at 4am. Four A - M!

Other than shoes and a few long sleeve shirts for the kids, we avoided the shopping malls. As a matter of fact, as my wife braved the mall on Sunday, I went to a local small coffee shop and worked on my presentation of the past week. 

Throughout the last few years, I condensed my shopping to some clothes while in Argentina, taking advantage of the favorable dollar-peso exchange rate. Even now, my shopping list remains small:

1. Something for my wife and kids
2. Undershirts
3. Pure black t-shirts without a logo or design. 
4. Mock turtle neck (perhaps)

My long term shopping list includes: 

1. Replacement for my 2MP vintage digital camera
2. Replacement for my aging 5 year old Titanium Powerbook

So you will not see me in the malls. I will be counting down a little bit to MacWorld 2008.

In the dark

View Larger Map

Extra caution is required when boarding an aircraft at Santa Barbara Airport. At San Jose airport, a makeshift tunnel guides you from the gate on the tarmac to the occasional propeller plane. You can not mistakenly hop on the wrong airplane. At Santa Barbara airport, all planes are boarded from the tarmac. At 5am in the dark, it is a little tricky to find your plane. Especially if the plane of United Airlines happens to be operated by SkyWest Airlines, and bears no United Airlines logos. They should add a light box in the front similar to bus signs. It doesn't hurt to double check the destination when entering the plane. Helllooo Denver!

Goleta - Santa Barbara Airport

This week I flew in the smallest commercial plane so far: the Embraer 120 is a turbo propeller plane and seats about 25-30 people. It was operated by United Airlines. It is noisy but very stable, unlike the smallest Cesna I flew while in Argentina.


I flew from San Jose to Santa Barbara. The airport of Santa Barbara at Goleta is the cutest airport I've seen. It is a colonial style building. Looking from the outside, you would never know this is airport. You actually get the feeling you landed somewhere in Mexico.

Headline 2014: USA in the World Cup final

It is a bold prediction: USA, the country of baseball, NBA basketball and NFL fatsos, will play semi-final or final of 2014 world cup, if not earlier. Major League Soccer (MLS) is the poor brother of many of bigger sports leagues in the US. Television ratings are so and so. Stadium attendance is up but not like the other sports. And the sports is still mentioned in the same sentence as yawn. The fact that David Beckham and Cuauhtemoc Blanco joined respectively the L.A. Galaxy and Chicago Fire brought some excitement to the game. Even the arrival of old Ruud (Gullit) as the coach for the LA Galaxy brings in hope for the league.

Team USA has been a strong performer in recent world cups. In Germany 2006, except for the first game against the Czech Republic, the US showed great attacking soccer (although the score did not reflect this). During Korea/Japan 2002, the US made it to the round of 16th and lost against Mexico.

However, neither the star power of the MLS, nor the games during previous world cups, show what goes on at the many community parks in the evenings. Impromptu goals are being set up, coaches are fighting for a patch of green to train the many many youth soccer teams. It reminds me a bit of the green parks or along the freeways to Buenos Aires. Everywhere do you see the next Messi or Maradona score his goal. It is a little bit like that in the Bay Area. My son plays soccer for the South Bay soccer league. The excitement at the games is in true American fashion. They are not kidding around. The kids are getting excellent soccer skills. And the believe they can take anyone on in soccer. Soon you will see a US soccer team which will rival the traditional soccer world powers.


Technorati: Soccer USSoccer FIFA

South-Africa 2010

Belgium did not qualify for Uefa Euro 2008. Since I do not have cable television, it is not easy to follow the European Championship qualifying games in the US. I missed a couple of the earlier games of Belgium. And before I realized the qualifiers were going on, the headlines in the Belgian newspapers predicted dooms days. Oh, what an optimism! But they were right: we did not qualify. Belgium (18pts) ended up fifth in Group A, behind Poland (28pts), Portugal (27pts), Serbia (24pts), Finland (24pts), and ahead of Kazakhstan (10pts), Armenia (9pts) and Azerbaijan (5pts).

Today was the drawing for the qualifying groups for South Africa 2010. Belgium was unlucky and ended up in a strong group 5, with Spain, Turkey, Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Estonia. Chances will be slim, however traditionally Belgium plays better against stronger teams. Anybody remember the game against Brazil in Japan? If we don't qualify, there will always be Messi and Riquelme.

xkcd

I spent this week between a lab somewhere in North San Diego (at a location I can not disclose) and a hotel room on Shelter Island in the bay of San Diego. The hotel Kona Kai supposed to be 3.5 stars. I snagged it for a decent rate a Hotwire. I rate it 2.5 stars. The hotel is in front of the Navy base at Coronado.

Our software testing was progressing nice. Our co-conspirators had posted two improvised swords and this cartoon of xkcd against a cubicle wall.


It was my introduction to a fabulous geek cartoon of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Check out the background story at Wikipedia. As our test scenarios were progressing, I browsed older xkcd posts. Here are a couple of my favorites:




(You can get the last one even on a cool geeky t-shirt)

The case of the lazy server

Despite the non-standard and closed protocol, the slow performance, lack of Firefox support, lack of basic server side calendar features (e.g. alarm email, SMS, iCal/webdav calendar feed), I've tried to make the Microsoft Exchange server work for me. ... mmh ... trying to play nice ... However, I keep on failing. It is a case of a lazy server:

I entered "meeting minutes" in the search box. The answer:

Your search returned more results than can be displayed. Refine your search and try again to reduce the number of results. 651 results for "meeting minutes" in all folders and items

Can't handle 651 results? Ok, then. I expected too much. Did it show the first few hundred? Oh-nooo. That would be too much work. How would I know how to refine my search. Perhaps "meeting minutes - project replace Exchange" will do the trick. Helloooo Google, shall we dance?

5.6 Earthquake in our backyard

October 30, 2007, 8:04pm
Calaveras Fault
Alumn Rock area, San Jose, CA
5.6 on the magnitude scale

(Images courtesy of USGS, San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle)

Nobel Belgians

A colleague of mine is very skeptical about global warming and believes humans have little effect on the warming of the globe. So when Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Price, I knew he would drop by for a little chat. What does Al Gore and co have to do with fostering peace? "It's all political", he said. We decided to look up the list of previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Indeed you wonder why some did earn the price.

I was surprised to see four five Belgians on the list. Although most of them won in a by gone era, when Europe was the center of the world and when Belgium was a little more relevant in the world.

• 1904 : Institut de Droit International
• 1909 : Auguste Marie François Beernaert, Member of the Cour Internationale d'Arbitrage.
• 1913 : Henri La Fontaine, President of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
• 1958 : Georges Pire, leader of L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde, a relief organization for refugees.
• 1999: Artsen zonder grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres) (Wikipedia incorrectly listed them as French/Swiss, although Nobel organization lists them as Belgian)
  

Here's a chart of the number of Nobel Peace price laureates by country. (It is not perfect since e.g. Mother Teresa gives both Albania and India a point.)

Disco in my pants

Halloween, celebrated on the night of October 31th, is always a big deal in the United States. I hear it has become a big deal even in Belgium.

The term Halloween (and its older rendering Hallowe'en) is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the evening of/before "All Hallows' Day", also known as "All Saints' Day". ... On Halloween night adults and children dress up as creatures from the underworld (e.g., ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches and goblins), light bonfires, and enjoy spectacular fireworks displays (despite the fact that such displays are usually illegal). Halloween was perceived as the night during which the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred so spirits of the dead and inhabitants from the underworld were able to walk free on the earth. It was necessary to dress as a spirit or otherworldly creature when venturing outdoors to blend in. The children knock on the neighbors' doors, in order to gather fruit, nuts, and sweets for the Halloween festival. Salt was once sprinkled in the hair of the children to protect against evil spirits. (Wikipedia)

Last year, I missed the company Halloween party as I was on a business trip. However, I helped build on our Disco Scarecrow. Disco shoes $5; a John Travolta suit ($19), a disco ball for his head ($19); a wig, some materials from Osh, a stroboscope in his pants ($25). Kicking marketing and core engineering's butt while having fun with your services teammates ... priceless.

A milestone

(picture by Leo Reynolds)

August 27, 2004 was the beginning of my blog. Since then I tried to post regularly, often once a week, sometimes once or twice a month. My goal was to focus on creating new content and start writing in English. I did not want my blog to be a check-out-this-link listing. This is blog post number 100.

For a while I also posted in the "Carnivals". Carnivals are organized by bloggers: on a given topic (e.g. frugality), the frugal carnival is posted each time on a new blog. The post is list of blog posts on different blogs discussing frugality. The next month, the carnival moves to another blog. It is a great traffic source.

I use Google Analytics to track readership. I do not have the readership nor run my own server to warrant scripts like used in the wide finder project. A couple of tidbits:

• I do have readers from all over the world, with the US in first place and Belgium in second place, and a couple of readers from Australia, Canada and several countries in Europe.
• Firefox represents fifty percent of the browsers visiting my blog. Internet explorer takes 35%. I even had visitors using Opera and Portable Playstation.
  
• Top content includes: Home is where the tank is parked (probably because it was cross posted by various carinvals); Farewell Luis Rest in Peace; Netbeans CND; Lake Wobegon (Not all content is included as the early content (2004) was not part of the tracking.)
  
• Google and Google blog search is the top referred; though LinkedIn ranks higher than technorati. Interesting. Also the blog of my dad refers a steady stream of readers.
  

flanders.california.usa ... ongoing

What were the English thinking?

I overheard my dad explaining my 5 year old son how the scoring works in tennis. It was the US Open tournament and Belgian's Justine Henin was in the final. "Love" is "zero". You increase from "fifteen," to "thirty," and then (not forty-five, but) "forty". Then you switch between "deuce" and advantage". What were the English thinking? The scoring in soccer was so simple. Where did the scoring system used in tennis come from. I had to look it up.

Although the origin of "love" as a "zero" score is often heard of as representing the French word l'œuf (meaning 'egg') due to the similarity in shape between an egg and a zero, it is more plausible that it originated from the phrase 'to play for love' (of the game). The origins of the fifteen, thirty, forty scores are somewhat unclear - one common explanation is that the scoring system was copied from the game sphairistike, which was played by British officers in India during the 19th century. That game's scoring system was based on the different gun calibres of the British naval ships. When firing a salute, the ships first fired their 15-pound guns on the main deck, followed by the 30-pound guns of the middle deck, and finally by the 40-pound lower gun deck.

The scoring system is also sometimes said to have medieval and French roots. A clock face was used on court, with a quarter move of the hand to indicate a score of fifteen, thirty, and forty-five. When the hand moved to sixty, the game was over. Previously, tennis had a scoring system like table tennis or "ping pong". This explanation seems unlikely since Medieval France predates the advent of mechanical clocks, with sundials being the chronometer of choice at the time.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_score

Argentinean Tidsbits

While on vacation in Argentina, I kept track of a couple of tidbits. Did you know?

• Buenos Aires counts over 58,000 taxis, all colored black with a yellow top? (I recently observed City Taxi in San Jose, with the same color scheme.)
  
• It hadn't snowed in Buenos Aires since 1918. People were going nuts for the little white things coming from the sky. It might get cold in winter, but snow is extremely rare. Traffic stopped. The long distance buses did not leave a day or two. Especially not in the direction we were heading.
  
• Soccer wunderkind Lionel Messi plays with number 18 in the Argentinean selection. Official kid-size t-shirts go for about 150 pesos or $50. I could however buy a black market shirt for about 40 pesos. The only gotcha, it has the name Messi on the back and number 19.
  
• Es lo que hay - That's what it is. Although inflation is under control for many years now, one can still run into shortages occasionally. On our trip, we ran into laundromats closed because of a shortage in water, a shortage of milk and closed gas stations. Because of speculation with natural gas, drivers switched from running the engine on natural gas to gasoline causing a temporary shortage. One could only gas up 20 pesos worth of gasoline.
  

Thieves

It is the call you do not want to receive: "Hello, this is officer Gretzky, I am in your house. Your house has been burglarized. Please come to your house." It was 2pm in the afternoon.

On my way home, I went over the set of items of value in our house. Luckily the list is rather small. And after today I plan to keep it that way. (It has been on my to-do list for a while to make an inventory sheet with serial numbers.)

I wondered why the police was already in my house. How did they know there was a burglary? How did they even get my cellphone number? The first answer popped immediately into my head: Jim! No burglary alarm can replace vigilant neighbors. I am lucky, very lucky, to have a retired neighbor across the street who loves to smoke a cigarette outside in front, while he talks with his cats. The answer to the second question became clear later on: the list of contact numbers we keep on the fridge for the baby sit.

It is weird to see close to ten police cars in front of your house. And they never park neatly. Apparently, there had been close to 15 cars in the street when the burglary happened. Four officers were combing through my house, taking pictures and fingerprints. A couple others were taking statements from people in the street.

Luckily they caught the @#$%#$@$ards. Two of them. A third was in a car on the look out and evaded capture. It was all thanks to a quick call from Jim. He noticed two people who did not belong in our neighborhood, and especially not walking up to our house. A big black gang banger with a T-shirt to his knees, and another fella, which Jim couldn't describe very well. They were hanging around the place for a while, rang the bell and then went to the side of the house. A look-out car stopped in front. The cops apparently were here very quickly. First an officer on his bicycle. Then many many police cars and officer with guns drawn running behind the thieves.

Our stuff is almost all recovered as the big bags were left when the cops were hot on their tales. There are a couple of items missing and we are still checking which other items might be missing. The fence was broken down as the apparently fat burglar wasn't able to jump it, and thus ran straight through it. He broke a few more fences down his path.

The list of items which were removed from the house show these guys were out to make a quick buck. Beyond the obvious items (necklaces, digital camera, etc.), they even took

• My son's piggy bank (why carry all those pennies and quarters?)
• Toy walky-talkies (range: 5 meters)
• DVDs: a spindle of empty DVD-R and a collection of Pixar DVDs.
• 24/7 timer (which they needed to disconnect from the lamp)
• two big traveling bags (to carry the loot)

We were very lucky. Great response from the police force. And especially thanks to Jim!

The carpool lane

One of my early blog posts was a plea for California sponsored road safety infomercials. Simple things make a difference on the roads. We, in the Bay Area, can learn a thing or two about traffic efficiency from the South.

• Take for example the carpool lane, officially called High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane. Typically one needs to have 2 or more people in the car to ride int he carpool lane. A lot of rubber necking starts when cars from the carpool lane need to cross over to take an exit. Building a HOV specific off-ramp overpass does pay off. Such changes to the high way 101-85 merge in Mountain View solved a lot problems. On the other hand, the 101 South commute through San Jose is hampered by two merges: 101-87 and 101-880. In both cases, car pool riders need to cross all lanes to take the exit.
  
• Weaving in and out of the carpool can be avoided by creating small separators between the lanes. Highway 5 near Rancho Bernardo is a great example of how traffic flow is encouraged by limiting when people can get in and out of the HOV lane.
  
• In the Bay Area, the HOV lane rules apply between 6-9am and 3-7pm. A look outside my office shows that the traffic continues well beyond 9am, and starts as early as 1-2pm. Reward commuters by making the HOV lanes 24/7. (LA Times: Car pool lane revolution)
  
• Traffic lights regulating the inflow to the freeway is a great idea. However, in the Bay Area, only one car is allowed to advance per green light. In San Diego, the traffic flow is smoother and stop and go traffic is reduced by allowing 2 or 3 cars to enter the high way per green light.

Common Sense Index Funds

The message of The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, by John Bogle is simple: Buy index funds and you'll do better than most investors. Yet the book counts 214 pages. Each chapter almost reads like a FAQ (frequently asked question). When it comes to investing, at the end, it all comes down to a single number: how much is left over.

"It may not be as exciting, but owning the classic stock market fund is the ultimate strategy. It holds the mathematical certainty that marks it as the gold standard in investing, for try as they might, the alchemists of active management cannot turn that own lead, copper or iron into gold. Just avoid complexity, rely on simplicity, take costs out of the equation, and trust the arithmetic."

"Remember, O stranger, arithmetic is the first of the sciences and the mother of safety." (Louis D. Brandeis, 1914)

"The two greatest enemies of the equity investor are expenses and emotions"

The lessons in the book are clear:

rule 1: Own businesses; don't speculate on emotions

• Total investment returns - the gains made by businesses - were remarkably steady: 8 - 13% each year and averaging 9.5%.
• The speculative return has added just 0.1% to the annual investment return.
  

rule 2: Own all businesses (best risk reducing strategy)
Don't look for the needle. Buy the hay stack.

• Only 3 out of 355 equity funds (since 1970), or 8/10 of 1%, have survived and mounted a record of sustained excellent.
• During the 39 year period (1968 to 2006) the S&P500 index fell into the bottom quartile of large cap core funds, in only 2 years and has not done so since 1979. The index has outpaced the average fund in 26 of the 35 years, including 11 of the past years.
  

rule 3: gross market return - costs = net return for the investor. Costs matter: compounding costs will eat your lunch and dinner
The "all-in" cost of equity fund ownership can come to as much as 3-3.5%/year. This includes the expense ratio, sale charges and initial sale charge. Compounding over 50 years, the investor who puts up 100% of the capital and assumes 100% of the risk, earned only 31% of the market return.
For 1980 - 2005:

• S&P returned 12.5%/yr; $10,000 will grow to $170,800 before inflation (3.3%/yr); after inflation: $76,200.
  
• Average Fund returned 10%/yr; $10,000 will grow to $98,200 before inflation (3.3%/yr); after inflation: $40,600
  
• The impact of compounding costs over 25 years is a difference of 53%!
  

rule 4: gross market - costs - market timing and selection penalties = net return earned by mutual fund investors
There is a investment time lag which costs investors dearly. When you calculate it out, the $10,000K investment will grow to:

• S&P invested: $76,200 (after inflation)
  
• Average Fund: $16,700 (after inflation)
• The impact of costs, counter productive market timing and selection penalties over 25 years is enormous: 22%! of what could have been if invested in an index fund.

rule 5: taxes are costs too. High turn over = taxes
Continuing the calculation:

• S&P invested: 12.3% return - 0.6% (tax cost) - 3.3% (inflation) = 8.4%; $10,000 grows to $65,000.
  
• Average fund: 10.0% return - 1.8% (tax cost) - 3.3% (inflation) = 4.9%; $10,000 grows to $23,100
• Again the impact is substantial when compounded over many years.
  

So, this brings us to a simple summary: Bogle recommendations

1. Serious money account = 95%
   Funny money account = 5%
2. Invest serious money account 100% in index funds
1. <>
2. 85% S&P index
3. 5% small cap index
4. 10% value index
5. short term bond fund
6. inflation linked bonds
3. Invest funny money (experiment)
   
1. some in stock
2. some in mutual funds
3. commodity funds
4. Avoid other funancial constructs
4. Asset allocation: bond % == your age or (age -10) %
   

Unclutter

Unclutterer.com is on my list of favorite blogs to read. For the last month we have been uncluttering our house and most importantly our garage. We had "inherited" numerous items from our friends who moved back to Belgium. Last weekend I took inventory of our regular drinking glasses. This does not include wine glasses or shot glasses. The picture on the left is exhibit A. No wonder our cupboards were full. We uncluttered to a simple set of glasses. We also kept the specialty beer glasses, such as a set of six Duvel beer glasses.

Buenos Aires, city of the thin

People in Buenos Aires always look in great shape. Women are obsessed by their looks (even more so than in many other places). But also men are in great shape (regardless of the amount of beef, beers, empanadas or media lunas consumed). I am impressed about the amount of sports done in this big city:

• Soccer is everything in Argentina. In the parks of Buenos Aires, or on any patch of green, you'll find many impromptu games of soccer. Soccer is everywhere. Day and night.
  
• Dogwalkers keep in shape by walking 10, 20 or 30 dogs at once.
  
• I have not heard of any famous cyclist from Argentina (except for Rebellin exchanging his Italian passport for a dark blue Argentinean one) in order to participate in the Olympic Games. However, on the route from the airport to down town, in the cold of mid winter, we encountered many cyclists on the freeway to the airport (Sunday 10am). They all were in great shiny outfits of the major European teams.
• Jogging along Avenida Libertador
  
• Rugby is very popular, although I did not see any game or people playing it.
  
• Tennis is gaining strong in popularity, thanks to a group of excellent male players, including Nalbandian.
  
• During the winter, I noticed a fair amount of people with squash rackets.
  
• Polo, although more a game for the rich and famous.
  

Countries visited in the world: 18 (8%)

Obviously there is still a lot of untouched ground. Two continents stick out: Africa and Oceania. A trip to Canada would be nice as well. The last couple of years we have however been visiting the same countries over and over again.

create your own visited countries map

or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Save @ and / !

I spent most of the month of July in Argentina on vacation. Vacation however does not mean I will turn  the computer off entirely, nor access to the (internet) world. I read my personal email regularly and kept up to date with the blogosphere. Argentina is quiet computer savvy. There are many internet cafes, and many people have broadband internet. The computers on the other hand are often a little dated, because of the cost. (We did bring an Apple iMac Mini for my brother in law. The price difference between the US and Argentina is substantial: more than 30%.)

One thing kept bugging me however: the Spanish keyboard layout. I am not referring to the fact that the punctuation keys are swapped. The two basic internet keys: @ and / are hidden away.

• @ is Alt Gr + 2
• / is shift + 7

In the age of the internet, it is time the keyboard layouts are updated.

Hangar One

The history of the Bay Area intrigues me, especially how it became the center of computer technology. I´ve spent many hours in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and have even organized corporate events there. This story in the The Register tells the story about the big hangar at Moffett Airfield.

By Austin Modine in Mountain View

Published Friday 13th July 2007 21:02 GMT

On the morning of May 12, 1932 — long before the area was transformed into the nation's technology hub— more than 100,000 spectators braved traffic on the still-uncompleted Bayshore Freeway to congregate at the Mountain View-Sunnyvale border.

The crowd had arrived to watch the arrival of "sky-queen," a jewel of America's lighter-than-air craft era dock at Hangar One. Standing at 211 feet, the still-incomplete Navy structure would be home only briefly to the USS Akron as it made its way to Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Less than a year later, the "sky-queen" would crash off the coast of New Jersey, killing 73 of the 76 officers aboard — among them Admiral William Moffett who helped establish the base that housed Hangar One, and for whom the airfield is now named. Eight days after the tragedy, the station was commissioned.

For 71 years, Hangar One has remained a cherished landmark in Silicon Valley. And for 71 years, the hangar has poisoned the landscape around it.

The structure's toxic secret wasn't discovered until 2003 when Navy, NASA, US Environmental Protection Agency and local government officials began looking for a source of contamination in the nearby Moffett Field wetland, which flanks the NASA Ames center.

Several endangered species make their home in the adjacent tidal marsh, such as the California clapper rail and Alameda song sparrow — which spend their days fluttering about the waters that have been tainted by polychlorinated biphenyl, DDT and various toxic heavy metals.

Officials first assumed the pollution came from the Moffett airfield runway, but the chemical trail soon lead environmental investigators on a b-line for the massive blimp garage instead.

It was already known that Hangar One was bad news. Its insides are filled with chemicals known to cause cancer and neurological damage, its outsides are coated with lead-based paint and the roof panels are made of materials high in asbestos and PCB. What wasn't apparent, however, was that toxins were washing off the hangar every rainy season and turning the marsh into a chemical broth.

The debate on whether to destroy Hangar One or pay more to clean it up has made little progress over the years. The Navy, NASA and government officials have created the perfect storm of long-term environmental studies and government bureaucracy to analyze the situation. The Navy wants to destroy the building for $12m and be done with it, but an organization called Save Hangar One Committee has fought tooth and nail to preserve one of Silicon Valley's last few remaining historical structures.

Hanger One

Last evening, attendance was sparse at the Restoration Advisory Board Meeting as Navy officials reported that no progress has been made since the last meeting two months ago.

Solutions continue to trickle in. One private group is seeking funding to pay for Hangar One preservation costs to turn the hangar into a NASA museum.

A local architect suggests that Hangar One could be covered in a Teflon-coated Fiberglas fabric, sealing the outer toxins from leaking into the marsh. The cost for the installation of materials and fabric would run about $12m — money NASA doesn't have to spare.

What remains to be seen is if Silicon Valley cares enough about a landmark to raise the money. Mountain View and the surrounding suburbs seem content to let historical sites such as the original building for Shockley's Lab become an abandoned fruit stand, and simply slapping a historical marker on the original Fairchild building before calling it a day.

Apparently, toxic material isn't enough to light a fire under anyone's ass. Maybe when mutant Alameda song sparrows start attacking, we'll be singing another tune.

Three B-S of design reviews

I am in San Diego this week to be at the critical design review (CDR) of my main project. In a CDR, we present the software architecture, go over design decisions made, discus risk items and schedule. A CDR takes about 4 hours (when lucky), but they can get very long depending on the questions and side discussions. To keep CDRs within schedule, I picked up a great tip: the 3 B-S of design reviews

1. Be Sincere - when you do not know the answer to a question, say so. Don't try to wing it or dance around it.
   
2. Be Succinct - be short and clear in your answers.
3. Be Seated - answer the question and close it. Don't linger, or leave answers half open. It is just an invitation for others to put in their 2 cents, a comment or open a can of worms.

A WholeMeal

This week, I was on business in Fair Fax (Fair Lakes), Virginia. It was the first time I visited Virginia. I spent three days in the Fair Fax area. On the last evening, I made the 45 minute drive into Washington D.C. to see the squeeky clean center and the national monuments.

During the day, I went for lunch with the team of the company I was visiting. In the evening, I was on my own. On the way to my hotel, I decided to stop for a bottle of sparkling water at Whole Foods in Fair Lakes. It is always an experience to walk into Whole Foods. This one was wonderful and very spacious, unlike the cramped Whole Foods stores in the Bay Area. While strolling around, I noticed a lot of people were dining inside Whole Foods. I am not referring to the tables at the end of the checkout, where you can eat the food you just bought inside the store. No, in the middle of the stores, at various locations, you find tables and chairs, or a counter to sit at.

I ate tuna prepared with miso and sesame seeds in the middle of store and right in front of the fresh fish counter. The food was delicious, made right in front of me. The scenery is fun: people strolling by, grocery shopping. The price is like a medium priced restaurant ($15 I believe). A nice detail is that there is a no tipping policy. ("We already get paid enough by WholeFoods", the waitress told me.)

The next day, I checked out the meat counter. Pork is smoked right in front of you. This is a great idea. I will keep my WholeFood shares a little longer.

Premium Passengers

You've read it before: everybody is equal; just some are more equal than others. This was especially obvious when you have to go through airport security. I snapped this picture at Washington Dulles Airport (IAD). But I've seen similar signs at San Francisco Airport (SFO). The plebs is separated from the Premium Passengers into shorter and special lines when approaching airport security. The only thing missing is a red carpet for the "premies" so their feet don't get cold when taking of their shoes. I thought airport security was run by the federal government, and not by the airlines.

Among space engineers

I just returned from the Infotech@Aerospace conference in Rohnert Park. It is small conference (about 300 people), especially compared to the big (~15000 people) JavaOne conference going on concurrently downtown San Francisco. The location of the Infotech conference was wonderful: at the end of Sonoma Wine Country. The evening smooze fest was a nice wine tasting of small wineries (which loosened the tongues a bit).

The conference is organized by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), of which I am a member. I presented a paper on Standards-Based Plug-and-Play Data Distribution, and the work we are doing with plug-and-play research satellites.

The conference is much different from an OracleWorld, JavaOne or FooCamp. Some differences:

1. You'll see a lot of gray hair and hear quiet a few stories about building the real-time kernel for the Space Shuttle. Budget cuts must have killed a lot of (young) aerospace companies.
   
2. Suits are in. Plus you'll run into the occasional military uniform, both US as foreign military.
   
3. You'll find presentators from the big university laboratories at Carnegie Mellon, MIT Lincoln Labs, Jet Propulsion Lab, Utah State University Space Software Lab.
   
4. Many of the space engineers run one person consultancies, subcontracted to these big labs and NASA programs.
   

waffletchnlgy

When I was looking for an internet pseudonym to obfuscate my identity, I came up with 'waffletchnlgy'. After all, I am from Belgium (and I do like waffles). Furthermore, I am a geek working on computer technology. I don't recall the exact instant messenger program, but one of them had a character limitation. So I stripped out the vowels from the technology part. Yes, I admit it is geeky. Thanks to Laughing Squid I found the appliance to go with the name. I introduce to you: "waffle-technology".

Coffeehouse Investor

I recently finished reading a small book by Bill Shultheis called "The Coffeehouse Investor". It reads easy and is written in a conversation style. The moral of the book is (1) to ignore Wallstreet: they only make money when there is movement in the market and (2) use a simple index investing style: don't try to outsmart the market. Make sure you at least match the market. For a preview of the three key principles of investing: outlined in the book, check out its website: http://coffeehouseinvestor.com/
The name of the book is based upon a weekly gathering of friends in a coffeeshop.
There are only two things puzzling about the book: (a) How did the author get out the door to have a coffee on a rainy Seattle Saturday morning at 5:45am (!) and (b) How did he convince his friends to join him.

Farewell Luis, Rest in Peace

My friend Luis Aldaz passed away in a tragic car accident in San Mateo on March 24th. I never met anyone who lived life to the fullest as Luis did. Rest in Peace. [1] [2] [3]

A decade in the Valley

(Artikel geschreven voor Agora, tijdschrift van de Katholieke Hogeschool der Kempen)

Meer dan tien jaar geleden namen we afscheid van onze ouders in de luchthaven van Deurne. Wij waren net afgestudeerd aan het HIK als industriele ingenieurs electronica en waren op pad naar California voor een avontuur van vier maanden. Via een samenwerking tussen het HIK en het International Education Program (IEP) van Foothill College in Los Altos, gingen we drie maanden lang werken en leven in California. Nadien liet ons visum ons toe nog een maand lang rond te reizen in de gouden staat. Karel Geyskens, docent Engels, was de drijvende kracht aan het HIK van de uitwisseling. De job varieerde van kampleider bij de YMCA tot een ingenieurs stage bij een eletronica bedrijf. Gelukkig had ik een job kunnen strikken als ingenieur in de communicatie groep van VLSI Technology (dat nu deel uitmaakt van NXP, de recentelijk afgesponnen semiconductor groep van Philips.) Drie maanden lang werkte ik er in het labo aan mixed signal telecommucation chips. Van chip design had ik echter maar weinig kaas gegeten. Mijn specializatie was in digitale technieken. Chip design was nog maar net toegevoegd aan het curriculum van industrieel ingenieur en slechts een handvol ingenieurs hadden zich ingeschreven. Het midden van de jaren negentig was het begin van de "BOOM" in Silicon Valley. Nog voor mijn drie maanden voorbij waren, werd mij een permanente job aangeboden. Op het moment dat mijn collega HIKers op rondreis trokken door de fantastische nationale parken van de Westen van VS, stond ik aan te schuiven in de Amerikaanse ambassade voor een nieuw werk visum. (Ik bespaar U alle paperassen werk, maar na menige visa kende ik het immigratie systeem van de VS van binnen en van buiten.)

Mijn diploma van industrieel ingenieur werd toen vergeleken met dan van bachelor in de VS, gedeeltelijk omdat hier het Belgische systeem onbekend is. Gelukkig is dat met het verdrag van Bologna en de recentelijke besluiten in Belgie aangepast en mogen we ons gelijkstellen met het masters diploma van vele andere landen. Hopelijk hebben beide ingenieurs groepen in Belgie (VIK en KVIV) ingezien dat bachelors vs masters geen Belgische interne kwestie is, maar vooral hoe beide diplomas vergeleken moeten worden met deze van buitenlandse ingenieurs.

Na vier jaar chip design en vooral system design gebaseerd op onze communicatie chips, was ik op zoek naar een job in een echt systeem bedrijf. Ik vond een job als software ingenieur in de I/O technologies group van Sun Microsystems. Sun was toen aan een exponentiele groei periode bezig: iedere dot-com kocht Solaris Sparc servers van Sun Microsystems en routers van Cisco. De sfeer binnen Sun was enorm goed: work hard, play hard and kick ass. Iedereen werkte 60+ urenweek. Sun zorgde dan ook voor de entertainment: goodies, bier, chique restaurants, big parties, etc. De kater van de "bust" was des te groter. En de lessen blijven ook des te langer bij. Sun was een fantastische ervaring, met enorm slimme ingenieurs en aan het hart van vele belangrijke uitvindingen (van Network File System NFS, tot Sparc processoren, Solaris operating system en vooral Java). Vooruitgangen van dergelijk kaliber (Sun, Apple, Google, Intel, Netscape) zijn eigen aan de no-rules-based en can-do cultuur van Silicon Valley. Sommigen voelen zich als piraten van de vallei (zoals het Macintosch team bij Apple). Anderen zijn meer het hippie type, en komen zonder schoenen, met lange baard naar 't werk. En er zijn er die gratis werken, en die binnen breken om hun favoriete project te voltooien, zoals Ron Avitzur vertelt in the graphic calculator. Natuurlijk vind je ook de serieuze ingenieur in grote getalen. Veel is hier mogelijk, zelfs de naakte ingenieur - the nudist on the late shift .

Werken in Silicon Valley heeft ook andere voordelen. Het noorden van California is een mooie streek. Het weer is aangenaam en niet zo warm als in Los Angeles of San Diego. Regen zie je niet meer vanaf mei tot soms eind oktober. San Francisco is een vrij Europese stad, van mentaliteit. Voor Surf city Santa Cruz en de grote golven van Mavericks moet je slechts de berg over. En in de winter ben in enkele uren rijden in de ski resorts rond Lake Tahoe. Voor zeer goede wijn (en jammerlijk vrij prijzig) moet je naar Napa en Sonoma, een van de belangrijkste wijnstreken van de VS.

Silicon Valley mag dan wel een mekka zijn voor de ingenieur, het is hier niet allemaal rozegeur en maneschijn, zoals de bust van de dot-com bubbel ons leerde. Even snel als men aangenomen is, ligt men hier buiten, met of zonder afscheidspremie. Het leven raast hier verder tegen 200km/uur: net zoals in Belgie kloppen ingenieurs vele uren. Met het hoge tempo van vele start bedrijven en veel concurrentie wordt die soms een beetje overdreven. Slaapzakken onder de bureau is hier niet ongehoord. De vele ingenieurs (,MBAs en nu ook bio-ingeneurs) in een nauwe vallei heeft tot een schaarste aan woningen geleid. Voeg daar nog aan toe de gouden eieren van de dotcom, en je leert snel dat hier alles peperduur is. Een kleine wonig op een lapje grond met drie slaapkamers kost U snel $600000. Stuur uw 5 jaar oud kind naar preschool en U ziet uw maandelijks inkomen inkrimpen met bijna $2000. En als belangrijke Belgische prijs barometer, de prijs van de patatten is hier ongeveer $2 per halve kilo. Een pint bier (engels maat) kost U snel $5.

Na bijna acht jaar bij Sun, ben ik in het voorbije jaar overgestapt naar een klein bedrijf (60 werknemers): Real-Time Innovations. We hebben middleware voor real-time data distribution: distributed systems die in tijd-deterministisch data uitwisselen gebruiken onze software. Bijvoorbeeld: control software in vliegtuigen en schepen, alsook het uitwisselen van stock quotes op de beurs van Wallstreet.

Silicon Valley is een echte melting pot. Slechts 2 op 10 ingenieur is blank; 1 op 20 is amerikaan van originele afkomst (en daar bedoel ik niet mee "Native-American"). Er zijn hier veel Indische ingenieurs, meestal in de software branche. Ook veel Chinezen en Iraniers. Europeanen vind je ook overal en van alle landen. Bij RTI werken bijvoorbeeld een Italiaan, twee Noren, twee Fransen, twee Nederlanders, twee Spanjaarden en tot voor kort waren we nog met twee Belgen. De melting pot brengt ook zijn problemen mee kwestie van manier van werken en manier van communicatie. Indiers zijn bijvoorbeeld veel minder direct. Veel aziaten zullen weinig vragen stellen als hun baas er bij zit, kwestie van geen zwakte aan te tonen.

Belgische ingenieurs (alhoewel er hier maar weinig zijn) kennen een goede reputatie, vooral kwestie van algemene opleiding en basis principes. De cursussen die mij vooral zijn bijgebleven zijn (voornamelijk omdat die in mijn dagelijkse job aan te pas komen):

• heuristieken, pseudo en pascal programmeren
• (de twee uren per week en slechts twintig paginas tellende cursus) digitale technieken
• Labo met Labview en het programmeren met de 68K processor

Jammerlijk heb ik toen niet meer tijd geinvesteerd in de labos, kwestie van blijven tinkeren met de processor of die steppen motor. 't Ja, het labo meet en regel technieken was vrijdag ochtend (een pover excuus).

Enkele verschillen met de opleiding in de VS is dat hier meer nadruk wordt gelegd op:

1. Presentatie en communicatie: even belangrijk als goede software code, is een goede presentatie. Niet alleen voor een sales ingenieur die direkt met klanten in kontact komt, maar ook om uw ideen te verkopen aan uw baas of zijn baas.
   
2. Praktische ervaring: vele studenten, meestal omwille van financiele redenen, zoeken jaarlijks een zomer stage in hun branche. Sommigen gaan op zoek naar een international stage (gelijkaardig aan Erasmus) of werken mee aan een open source projekt. Die ervaring, zowels technisch als het werken in teams, maakt groot deel uit van de opleiding van vele ingenieurs.
   
3. Elke avond zijn er hier meerdere bijeenkomsten en tutorials in een of andere user group: de robotics geeks, de python scripters, de Java junkies, de technoArtists die kunst maken van computers, linux user group (svlug), etc. Ook in Belgie vind je dergelijke groepen, maar vaak slechts nabij de grotere universiteiten. Bijvoorbeeld, BEJUG is vrij bekend.
   
4. Entrepreneurship en studeren gaan hier hand in hand. Het beginnnen van een bedrijf wordt gestimuleerd aan de universiteit. Er zijn zelfs 'labo' projecten waar men een idee leert voorstellen aan venture capitalists (de investeerders).Er zijn trouwens genoeg voorbeelden van bedrijven die begonnen zijn als een studenten project aan de universiteit: Google of Sun (Sun staat trouwens voor Stanford University Network.)
   

Over de jaren ben ik wel in contact gebleven met Belgie. Natuurlijk is er de familie die af en toe op bezoek komt. Het Belgisch nieuws, nieuws over Club Brugge en o.a. Tom Boonen lees ik via de Belgische kranten online. 's Morgens luister ik naar de Belgische avondspits via Studio Brussel, of naar de Afrekening via hun podcast. We hebben hier ook een hechte Belgische vriendengroup, onder wie trouwens enkele ex-Hikkers. Belgische tradities worden verder gezet: Sinterklaas komt op bezoek voor onze kinderen. Onze kinderen spreken trouwens Nederlands (alhoewel omwille van het school, onder mekaar het Engels de voertaal is). Op het menu vind je soms koniijn, frietjes en stoofvlees of vol-au-vent. Regelmatig gaan we het Belgisch bier (van 't vat) nog eens controleren in de pubs van Palo Alto. Inbev zou ons trouwens hiervoor moeten sponsoren.

Ben je in de buurt, of zoek je contacten om een tijdje naar Silicon Valley te komen werken, laat gerust iets weten.

New Google Service Ideas

1. Time converter: similar to the Calculator or Currency converter, the Time Converter would be able to answer "2PM PDT in MDT"
1. Update: Related to this, it was pointed out that "Time In" provides you the current time. I.e. Time in Albuquerque
2. Update: What time is it provides you the current time and in other time zones.
   
2. Microsoft Error Code Lookup Service aids in deciphering "Error code 00000024, parameter1 001902fe, parameter2 f7a57904, parameter3 f7a57600, parameter4 f738b923" and correlates the error to Microsoft information, postings in Google Groups, Blogs and related newsgroups. Next up: VxWorks Error Code Lookup Service. And eventually the Universal Error Code Lookup Service.
3. Manual and Warranty Locator helps in locating manuals and warranty information for different products, by manufacturer and model, or by barcode.
   

Technorati: Google

"Daar is 'm ... daar is 'm"

The most mythical goal of Belgians Red Devils: Belgium - The Nederlands, 1985, world cup qualifier to go to Mexico.

Sport-Voetbal Magazine heeft het doelpunt waarmee Georges Grün België in 1985 ten koste van het Nederlands elftal naar Mexico kopte uitgeroepen tot meest mythische doelpunt ooit van de Rode Duivels. Ook Rik De Sadeleer op zijn best.

• "Ze gaan lopen ... ze gaan lopen"
• "Daar is 'm ... daar is 'm"
• "'t Is om er geel van te worden"
• "Dank U George"
  

(Telegraaf)

Castello di Amorosa

Napa Valley is about an hour and a half drive from our house. I've visited Napa Valley many times, sampled many wines and taken many many pictures of the beautiful wineries and landscape. Yet, it is not my favorite wine destination. Napa has become overly touristy and very expensive. If you want to sample a couple of sips of the Napa wine, it will easily cost you $9. An average bottle of wine runs about $20. Sonoma Valley or Livermore are more affordable and less crowded. My favorite wine region is Mendoza region of Argentina: the wines are excellent (Malbec is their specialty), and very afforadable. Sampling several glasses of wine at a winery cost you about 4 pesos, or $1.50.

Our trip this weekend to Napa Valley did not have wine in mind. We were invited to visit Castello di Amorosa. The castle hasn't opened yet to the public, though a friend of mine knows the owner Daryl Sattui (who is also the owner of V. Sattui winery). The castle is inspired on a Tuscan castle and is unbelievable. This is not a Vegas style copy of a castle with fake walls. No no noo, real walls built with stones of Europe and real painted walls (as a matter of fact artists were working still on the wallpaintings in the church). The many caves are already filled with barrels of wine and we encountered a small gathering in a small back room, three levels down, sampling some of the wine. Check out the links below to see some of the pictures inside. I did take a couple of pictures, but my camera does do well in poor light. (Plus it doesn't feel right to publish pictures before it is officially ready.).



Links:

• Official website of Castello di Amorosa
• Pictures of the castle
  
• Castello di Amorosa (LA Times)
  
• The empire that Sattui built (San Francisco Chronicle)