How to get around in Silicon Valley

1. Back to the future style - with a skate board or via rollerblades. You'll look very 'green' and counter culture. But really, to and from the bus stop is all you can do.
   
2. Bicycle messenger style - You'll look like a dare devil in San Francisco or like a geek-superman (as opposed to the geek-fatso). The final wagon of Caltrain is reserved for you. Carry a small laptop in your Timbuktu messenger bag and you'll fit right in. If you are more the romantic type, check out the Bay trails for long rides along the bay. Bicycle lanes are rare, but several bicycle bridges will help you get across highway 101 or the caltrain train tracks.
3. The Tortoise - Although the green tortoise is known among the more adventurous traveler visiting California, the lesser known brother is the local bus system (i.e. VTA). A bus ride from San Jose to Palo Alto will take you a few hours, as the bus stops literally every 500 meters. Come on Bay Area, it won't hurt to walk a block or two. Use the tortoise if you want to hang out with the transients and homeless on the 22 or 66. Line 66 will take you past the homeless shelter. It will never be boring and you'll hear some exciting stories and political view points.
   
4. On not your grandpa's train - the Caltrain will get you from San Jose to San Francisco in under an hour via the baby bullet train. Caltrain offers also special service for the games of the San Francisco Giant or the San Jose Sharks. The ACE train (the Altamont commuter express) even has wireless access to get online and read your email. For the collector of trainpasses, try also VTA's lightrail (aka the Tortoise on rails) or BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport). I watched documentaries about BART when I was still in Belgium about how wonderful it was. But BART must be the only rail system which has its own hourly traffic report on delays and failures in the system.
5. Hail to the shuttle army - Caltrain, BART, Lightrail, bus, are just a subset of all the public transportation offerings in silicon valley. And then, planner forgot to hook them up properly. So, when you arrive in San Jose Diridon caltrain station, for years you needed to walk a few miles to get to the lightrail. Or when you arrive in San Francisco by train, start walking 10 block to get to a BART station. So, private or company sponsored shuttle services popped up all over the place. I currently use a few days a week the company shuttle from the Santa Clara campus to my office in Menlo Park. The picture below will soon become a relic, as starting next week, the Sun shuttle service will change from Xerox (yes, the copier company also runs shuttles) to New Century (no affliation with the film company, as far as know). Note you can even put your cycicle on the rack in the front of the shuttle.
   
   Our shuttle service is bare minimum. Other shuttles are luxury coaches with nice seats, wonderful shocks and even wireless internet access.
   

Over the years, I have used (and continue to use) a combination of various ways to get around. In winter, I use primarely the company shuttle and occasionally catch a carpool ride with a friend. In summer, California weather is perfect for hopping on my bicycle + {caltrain,shuttle}. Many companies have showers in the office, which my colleagues are thankful for.

Knowing all the different shuttles schedules or merely its availability was difficult. Lining up the schedules of two services wasn't that easy. Luckily, 511.org solved the problem. It is a great place to find everything you want to know about getting around in silicon valley. From carpool, to bicycle paths, to the list of the shuttle schedules.

Technorati:transportation train bike Silicon Valley

Google Finance charts are off

Google finance is off the chart. It has a number of great features currently lacking in Yahoo finance. However, Yahoo finance does seem more complete. I currently follow SUNW closely. The shares of Sun Microsystems finally made it across the $5 mark. And that's when something odd struck me with the charts of Google Finance. The Y-axis of Google Finance is wrong. It starts 4.8 - 4.9 - 4.0 - 5.1. Odd. I've been thinking how algorithmically this could happen, but haven't come up with a program which accidentally could make such an error. Even worse, I haven't seen it with any other stock symbol yet. In either case, I've reported it to Google Finance.




3/29/2006: UPDATE: It's fixed now.

Technorati:google finance

Blue Vinyl

Last night, I watched Blue Vinyl, an investigative documentary in the style of Michael Moore about PVC (aka polyvinyl chloride, aka vinyl). Is vinyl harmful? Is the fabrication and disposal of vinyl harmful? Many new homes today are full of vinyl products from PVC piping to the siding of may homes. The documentary found it roots when the filmmakers' father decides to replace the rotten wooden siding of the house with vinyl.

My father’s answer to rotten wood…
Everyone assured me vinyl siding was safe, and would only let off toxic gas in the rare event of a house fire. But after my experience with cancer caused by DES [a synthetic estrogen and anti-miscarriage drug prescribed to my mother and millions of other women], I figured any material so loaded with synthetic chemicals had to pose some kind of risk. Later I asked my dad, "If you had known that over the course of its lifecycle, from the factory to the incinerator, vinyl produces a wide array of deadly pollutants that threaten our future with a global toxic crisis, would you still have put it on the house?" "I hope not, honey," he said. "But they didn't write that on the box." So, with a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand (a remnant from my parent’s house) I took off – on a journey to re-write the outside of the box.
(Transcript from http://www.bluevinyl.org)

As the documentary unravels, the filmmakers from New York go in search of alternatives to vinyl. ... and they end up in Marin County, California. Of course. Where else in the USA would you find the dedication to nature as in Marin County and the Bay Area. Many people in the Bay Area (and especially San Francisco and Marin county) have strong believes and walk the talk. Whether it is about politics, banning of guns, free sex, not eating meat, tasting marijuana, the Bay Area is your place to be. It is quite remarkable how many people here are truely dedicated to an environmental friendly livestyle. And not because the government taxes make you sign up to be a member of greenpeace. The Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid rule. The Altamont wind farm is one of the biggest in the world and produces over 650 M kWh. And you see solar panels on many roofs. So, it wasn't too much of surprise that the filmmaker came to San Francisco for help.

In San Francisco I cut a deal with a “green” straw-bale house builder to come home with me to Long Island to help talk my parents into stucco.

If you are looking for expert advise on building a green house, take a look what our friends are building in the middle of San Francisco: the Bernal Sustainable Homes Project.

The Bernal Sustainable Homes Project is a joint effort of two families to build their dream homes in San Francisco, California. For us, dream homes are not about building the biggest house possible or the house with the most expensive features. For us, its about building stylish, modern homes, using the greenest building techniques, services and products possible.

Links:

• Get the movie and more background at http://www.bluevinyl.org
• http://www.myhouseisyourhouse.org/

Technorati: Blue Vinyl Environment

Inbev in the heart of Argentina

I was in the middle of Argentina, in San Luis, in need for a beer. A serious beer. They don't kid around here. 30cl bottles are a luxury. Beer comes the big bottle 3/4l bottle. And there it was, right in front of me: Stella Artois, the pils beer from Leuven and key brand of InBev.

Inbev, headquartered in Belgium, was created out of Interbrew and Companhia de Bebidas das Américas (AmBev) and is now the world's largest brewer, by volume, selling 202 million hectoliters (hl) of beer and 31.5 million hl of soft drinks in 2004. In the picture of above (which include 85% of the brand in the store. Heineken and Mar del Plata were not in the picture), Iguana, Brahma and Quilmes are also owned by Inbev Argentina. Stella Artois seems to be picking up in Argentina. Many bars carry the beer on tap. You see many billboards, bar umbrellas and advertisements for Stella Artois.

Other key ingredients of daily live in Argentina include:

of course carne argentina (meat)

dulce de leche (caramel spread)

yerba for mate

PS: Dear Inbev, Dear tourist office of Argentina, I'll be awaiting my check for promoting your products.

Just put the gas can on top

It struck me, while driving around in Argentina, that many car had a gas can on top of the car. Since labour is cheap in Argentina, I figured, this might be a 'we fill your gas can service while you sit at home'. I wouldn't be surprised: you can order ice cream to be delivered, right in time for desert; or you can even your prescription medication to be delivered. This comes in handy when you are on your sick bed.

Two scoops of chocolate con dulce de leche and a pack of morphine, please. Yes, to be delivered. Can you also add napkins and a siringe? Thanks!

I learned however that a gas can or, in the poorer neighbourhoods, a plastic soda bottle, ment 'for sale'.

How about putting a sign with details of the car, and the price? It won't fall of when you drive around.

(Oh, and if you were curious about a Peugeot 504 taxi. That's the one. Thousands of them roam the streets of Buenos Aires. As if it were the 80s.)

Guess the object

You will find this object in every street in Argentina. It is a little metal basket about 1.5m above the ground.


No, it ain't a cheap version of a basketball ring (in honor of Argentina's hero, Manu Ginobili). Here's a hint: Guess the city - item 5.

Guess the city

1. The fire marshall is on a leave of abscence: when leaving an appartment building, you need a key to open the front door from the inside.
2. A 'California stop' (a rolling stop) has a whole new definition.
   
3. Elevators have two sliding doors
4. A favorite picnic and bbq place is along the freeway from the international airport to downtown.
5. Tony Soprano is making a killing: trash is picked up daily at night
6. Webvan should have taken a lesson and focus on one core business: Ice cream is delivered to your dinner table
7. Carseats are for losers (baby though talk)
8. My Peugeot 504 just reached 3 million kilometers and shows no sign of slowing down. Headlights have a '1/2 on' setting.
9. A mullet (aka Bundesliga) haircut is in.
10. The amount of cellular phones is up. Cellulitis is down.
    
11. Showing skin has never been out.
    

Just go to 7-Eleven

Around the corner from where we live is one of the little china town centers [see also Chinese 101 - not thank you]. It is a place where all the commercial places are Asian. Signs are Asian. The grocery store is Asian. The restaurants are Asian. The beauty salons are Asian. You can find a lot of good food there, and get a cheap haircut at any day of the year. Even on Christmas or New Year. On Saturday, my wife went by the hair and beauty salon, one of the many there, to ask if they do eyebrow waxing. The lady replied: "Oh-no, no waxing. Go to 7-eleven for waxing!" Remind me not to enter that little backroom at 7-eleven.


[Translation for tourists: 7-eleven is the little convenience store, open almost 24 hours, which you find throughout the US at many corners. They will sell you among other things: toilet paper, stale 12 hours old coffee, donuts, the newspaper, lottery tickets, icecream, beer (and aspirin). It is similar to a more general purpose 'gazettenwinkel' in Belgium, or the store you find in every village with the old lady selling from candy to screwdrivers.]

Where in the world is SGI?

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is an old Silicon Graphics building. I drive almost daily past the GooglePlex, also ex-SGI. And the surrounding buildings now house a number of smaller companies, such as Pathscale. It made me wonder: where in the world did the shrinking Silicon Graphics retreat to? Sure, I could have looked it up on their website, but it is more fun to drive around in search of SGI.

The Mountain View Area between Shoreline and San Antonio has quite a history. Many years ago, not only was it home to the big campus of SGI, also rival Sun Microsystems had its campus there. Only last year did Sun move out of its last Mountain View building and brought the Sun Labs team to the Sun Menlo Park campus. Today, the old Sun Campus houses Intuit. Google moved into SGI buildings, as well as some buildings formerly leased by Sun.

GooglePlex in Mountain View at the old SGI buildings

Driving around the neighbourhood, just before getting to Shoreline Park, I made a right onto Crittenden Lane. From far away, it looks like the road will end up near the big NASA Ames windtunnel. A great picture opportunity, I thought. Out of nowhere popped up the current SGI campus. "Legacy campus," it is called. Here are a few pictures I snapped on a dark cloudy Friday evening, when the rest of the Bay Area braces for the incomming storm tonight.

Technorati: Silicon Graphics Inc, GooglePlex

When old meets young

One of the perks of living in Silicon Valley is that a lot of the excitement happens just down the street. There are plenty of "geek user groups" happening every night: the SVOSUG (aka Silicon Valley Open Solaris User Group), the SVLUG (Linux User Group), BayLisa, the SForce user group, the Ruby geeks, the Pythons, etc. A real treasure are a bunch of old timers meeting in Mountain View: the Computer History Museum (at the old SGI building on 101 and Shoreline) I've been visiting the museum a number of times, attended some presentations and lectures, even organized a company event there. If you are in the Bay Area, and you middle name is geek, check it out and look up the events for that time. Yesterday, when browsing Google Video, I came across a wonderful recording of a Computer History Museum event: Bob Sproull and the brothers Sutherland. And there is more of the same.

Technorati: Computer History Museum