The Dragon Never Sleeps (DRM-free kindle-compatible edition) was a difficult book for me to read. The first time I tried to read it, I couldn't become interested in the characters, and abandoned it. However, at this year's WorldCon, Cook mentioned that it was one of his proudest novels, so I went back and read it again.
The universe Cook weaves is a compelling one. You've got organic military vessels that are nevertheless non-sentient. Starships travel through space on strands of the Web, which turn out to harbor a deeper secret. The war against methane breathers comes with deeper intrigues. Planet-side, the feudal structure of the milieu provides us with a key source of human intrigue. Just as interesting, cloning is an option and is frequently used, and used imaginatively by the author. Yet all this is done without long expositions. It all just happens inside the text. Cook is the master of the brief sketches and dialog that brings out character, and he uses that in this novel in spades. As you might expect, there are no plot-holes here. Everything makes sense if you've been paying attention, yet the surprises are genuine. It's also interesting that the science fictional world portrayed is one where technology is more or less static, and has been for thousands of years, so one military force (guardships) could be designed for immortality without the risk of obsolescence.
There are flaws in this book. The big one is that there are too many characters for you to properly care about, and the important characters aren't fully high-lighted, so if you're going along rapidly you might have to go back and re-read a passage when one reveal or another happens. Cook also flips between nick-names, titles, and real names all the time, which could be confusing, especially since the character cast so so large. All this combined together to make an unusually long (by Cook's standards) book means that the reading gets too dry at times and I had to take breaks. It took a long time to finish this book.
Nevertheless, if you're a fan of Cook's characters, matter of fact exposition, and want to see what he does with science fiction, this is definitely recommended (unlike Passage At Arms. Just don't expect it to be a quick airplane read.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Location Still Matters
This year's been interesting as I got invited to several startups either to talk or to give advice. Usually, I try to mix it with another visit if it's in the city, so I don't make the trip to San Francisco just for one thing.
One of the fascinating things is that San Francisco has a pretty active startup scene, but many of them are hurting for engineers. After talking to several startups with ambitions of growth but who can't seem to hire decent engineers no matter what, I'm coming to the conclusion that the more technically challenging your startup, the more important it is that you be in Silicon Valley, rather than being able to locate elsewhere.
Why is that? For technically challenging problems, you want people with a decent amount of experience doing the engineering. I'll take an example: Facebook managed to get Jeff Rothschild to lead its engineering team fairly early on. Jeff, by the way, doesn't get nearly enough credit for making Facebook as successful as it has been. It is doubtful that Facebook would have been able to recruit and retain Jeff if it was in San Francisco rather than Palo Alto. The same probably would have gone for Google's Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemewat. For whatever reason (people tell me it has a lot to do with schools), parents prefer living in the South Bay. I've lost count of the number of people I know who moved to the city when they were single and childless, and then moved back down south once they had a kid.
The result: if you want to grow past your first 50 engineers or so, you'll either have to settle for a less technically competent population, or you'd have to move south. What's surprising to me is how things I wouldn't have expected to be technically challenging turn out to be such. For instance, I would have guessed that Twitter wouldn't need Google-quality engineers, but that turns out not to be true.
This doesn't mean that San Francisco startups can't be successful and make lots of money. For instance, AirBnB and Zynga will be incredibly successful. Zynga has a famously low technical bar, and one of my friends came back from an interview saying that being the smartest person there wasn't enough even if it did make her rich. Obviously, being in Silicon Valley is also no guarantee that you'd be able to attract technically competent employees (Friendster was in Mountain View, for instance). But by and large, I've been amused to watch Cloudera move steadily south (from Burlingame to San Mateo and now Palo Alto). By the way, I don't think Zynga's wrong to have a low technical bar: there's no need to pay for top-end talent if your problems don't need top-end talent to solve it.
Many designers have argued to me that design talent is easier to get in San Francisco. I'm not a designer, so I don't really know, but let's say I give you that point. The problem is, to realize your design, you probably need only 1 designer for every 10-20 engineers. And of course, Apple is right in Silicon Valley, and whatever you might say about Apple, you can't argue that their design is inferior.
Ultimately, if you're a startup, think carefully about what your business is. If you never need more than about 50 engineers, I think San Francisco is fine. If you believe you're really in the media business, San Francisco's probably better (be very careful, though --- Yahoo! thought it was in the media business --- that turned out to be false!). But if your startup idea needs a sizable number of Google-quality engineers to succeed in the long term, you really should be in the valley.
Now the real puzzle to me is that there should be far more startups in the Berkeley area than they are. They've got Cal, which has a strong computer science department, so recruiting for engineers should be no problem. My guess is that the city of Berkeley does not view startups in a friendly fashion, and it would be very difficult to find cheap space in the area. Inktomi (founded by Cal professor Eric Brewer), for instance, famously moved out of Berkeley (to Foster City) as soon as it had to scale.
One of the fascinating things is that San Francisco has a pretty active startup scene, but many of them are hurting for engineers. After talking to several startups with ambitions of growth but who can't seem to hire decent engineers no matter what, I'm coming to the conclusion that the more technically challenging your startup, the more important it is that you be in Silicon Valley, rather than being able to locate elsewhere.
Why is that? For technically challenging problems, you want people with a decent amount of experience doing the engineering. I'll take an example: Facebook managed to get Jeff Rothschild to lead its engineering team fairly early on. Jeff, by the way, doesn't get nearly enough credit for making Facebook as successful as it has been. It is doubtful that Facebook would have been able to recruit and retain Jeff if it was in San Francisco rather than Palo Alto. The same probably would have gone for Google's Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemewat. For whatever reason (people tell me it has a lot to do with schools), parents prefer living in the South Bay. I've lost count of the number of people I know who moved to the city when they were single and childless, and then moved back down south once they had a kid.
The result: if you want to grow past your first 50 engineers or so, you'll either have to settle for a less technically competent population, or you'd have to move south. What's surprising to me is how things I wouldn't have expected to be technically challenging turn out to be such. For instance, I would have guessed that Twitter wouldn't need Google-quality engineers, but that turns out not to be true.
This doesn't mean that San Francisco startups can't be successful and make lots of money. For instance, AirBnB and Zynga will be incredibly successful. Zynga has a famously low technical bar, and one of my friends came back from an interview saying that being the smartest person there wasn't enough even if it did make her rich. Obviously, being in Silicon Valley is also no guarantee that you'd be able to attract technically competent employees (Friendster was in Mountain View, for instance). But by and large, I've been amused to watch Cloudera move steadily south (from Burlingame to San Mateo and now Palo Alto). By the way, I don't think Zynga's wrong to have a low technical bar: there's no need to pay for top-end talent if your problems don't need top-end talent to solve it.
Many designers have argued to me that design talent is easier to get in San Francisco. I'm not a designer, so I don't really know, but let's say I give you that point. The problem is, to realize your design, you probably need only 1 designer for every 10-20 engineers. And of course, Apple is right in Silicon Valley, and whatever you might say about Apple, you can't argue that their design is inferior.
Ultimately, if you're a startup, think carefully about what your business is. If you never need more than about 50 engineers, I think San Francisco is fine. If you believe you're really in the media business, San Francisco's probably better (be very careful, though --- Yahoo! thought it was in the media business --- that turned out to be false!). But if your startup idea needs a sizable number of Google-quality engineers to succeed in the long term, you really should be in the valley.
Now the real puzzle to me is that there should be far more startups in the Berkeley area than they are. They've got Cal, which has a strong computer science department, so recruiting for engineers should be no problem. My guess is that the city of Berkeley does not view startups in a friendly fashion, and it would be very difficult to find cheap space in the area. Inktomi (founded by Cal professor Eric Brewer), for instance, famously moved out of Berkeley (to Foster City) as soon as it had to scale.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Span of Controls
Coincident with the launch of Startup Engineering Management, I'd been asked to help out at a few startups, two of which were Obvious and PlayMesh. A common question that came up at both places was: What's the appropriately wide span of control in management.
I believe the answer to that question is: "It depends." If you look at industry wide span of controls, they're somewhere around 6 to 1. That is, every 6 engineers will have a manager. If you examine that carefully, however, what you'll notice is that this arises typically in larger corporations. In those corporations, what's happening is that aggressive go-getters who don't get promoted will quickly leave, and the only way to retain such people is to give them management positions long before they're ready. (An alternative is to set up a separate engineering ladder, which was advocated as far back as The Mythical Man Month. That doesn't work as well as its advocates will have you believe) Effectively, at large corporations sporting a 6:1 engineer/manager ratio, what you are doing is training engineering managers on the job, where the manager is essentially still expected to perform individual contributor duties in addition to doing management.
At well-run startups where most engineers who are brought in do not need a lot of coaching, the appropriate span of control is closer to 20 engineers. At that level, the manager can't do a lot of coaching, but more importantly, he can't possibly do any micro-management, which is irritating if you've hired high performance engineers. Essentially, the manager has to lead by setting direction, not provide management or mentoring at the task level. That doesn't mean he can be non-technical, because you need to be capable of understanding detailed software/hardware architecture in as much as it affects your product. To give an extreme example, Wayne Rosing in his early days at Google had all 100 engineers directly reporting to him. Having participated in those structures before (as described in An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups), it was extremely exhilarating, and yet Wayne (and Bill Coughran) always knew what the problems were and how they could help every time I came to one of them with one (very often, the way they helped was to send a one word e-mail: "Approved.").
If you're promoting engineers into management positions who have not managed before, you will need to be closer to the industry 6:1 ratio. However, if you're hiring a manager from outside, your bar needs to be a lot higher: they need to be able to handle a span of control of 20:1. Many startups do not hold incoming managers to that standard, and therefore end up with poor management. I'll give you a concrete example: Facebook does not hire managers from outside, because they've discovered that the practice does not work. However, they do hire directors from outside with some degree of success (though less so than with directors who were promoted from inside), and one reason for that success is that most directors hired from outside have already proven themselves capable at the 20:1 ratio.
At the tech lead level, however, you probably will still need the 6:1 ratio. But tech leads are by their nature not going to provide the full range of management functions.
Is there a way to short cut this process? Yes. One of the best tips in Startup Engineering Management is actually one that came from Yishan Wong: when hiring engineers, try to look for engineers who've managed before and are willing to come back as an individual contributor. This lets you promote from within once you need managers, and also gives you managers that don't consider management an more important job than engineering.
One interesting note is that these numbers are extremely similar to what the U.S. military uses in the army: a squad leader commands a group of 8, and a platoon commander commands three squads for a group of 24. The squad leader is very much like a tech lead, and the platoon commander is the lowest level officer in the army. While you might argue that military jobs aren't as cognitively challenging or creative, I'd counter that you should be also much more demanding in your recruiting process than the military, hence the similarity.
I believe the answer to that question is: "It depends." If you look at industry wide span of controls, they're somewhere around 6 to 1. That is, every 6 engineers will have a manager. If you examine that carefully, however, what you'll notice is that this arises typically in larger corporations. In those corporations, what's happening is that aggressive go-getters who don't get promoted will quickly leave, and the only way to retain such people is to give them management positions long before they're ready. (An alternative is to set up a separate engineering ladder, which was advocated as far back as The Mythical Man Month. That doesn't work as well as its advocates will have you believe) Effectively, at large corporations sporting a 6:1 engineer/manager ratio, what you are doing is training engineering managers on the job, where the manager is essentially still expected to perform individual contributor duties in addition to doing management.
At well-run startups where most engineers who are brought in do not need a lot of coaching, the appropriate span of control is closer to 20 engineers. At that level, the manager can't do a lot of coaching, but more importantly, he can't possibly do any micro-management, which is irritating if you've hired high performance engineers. Essentially, the manager has to lead by setting direction, not provide management or mentoring at the task level. That doesn't mean he can be non-technical, because you need to be capable of understanding detailed software/hardware architecture in as much as it affects your product. To give an extreme example, Wayne Rosing in his early days at Google had all 100 engineers directly reporting to him. Having participated in those structures before (as described in An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups), it was extremely exhilarating, and yet Wayne (and Bill Coughran) always knew what the problems were and how they could help every time I came to one of them with one (very often, the way they helped was to send a one word e-mail: "Approved.").
If you're promoting engineers into management positions who have not managed before, you will need to be closer to the industry 6:1 ratio. However, if you're hiring a manager from outside, your bar needs to be a lot higher: they need to be able to handle a span of control of 20:1. Many startups do not hold incoming managers to that standard, and therefore end up with poor management. I'll give you a concrete example: Facebook does not hire managers from outside, because they've discovered that the practice does not work. However, they do hire directors from outside with some degree of success (though less so than with directors who were promoted from inside), and one reason for that success is that most directors hired from outside have already proven themselves capable at the 20:1 ratio.
At the tech lead level, however, you probably will still need the 6:1 ratio. But tech leads are by their nature not going to provide the full range of management functions.
Is there a way to short cut this process? Yes. One of the best tips in Startup Engineering Management is actually one that came from Yishan Wong: when hiring engineers, try to look for engineers who've managed before and are willing to come back as an individual contributor. This lets you promote from within once you need managers, and also gives you managers that don't consider management an more important job than engineering.
One interesting note is that these numbers are extremely similar to what the U.S. military uses in the army: a squad leader commands a group of 8, and a platoon commander commands three squads for a group of 24. The squad leader is very much like a tech lead, and the platoon commander is the lowest level officer in the army. While you might argue that military jobs aren't as cognitively challenging or creative, I'd counter that you should be also much more demanding in your recruiting process than the military, hence the similarity.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Startup Engineering Management gets .mobipocket and .epub
One of the workflow changes I made when publishing Startup Engineering Management was to use Adobe InDesign instead of Microsoft Word or Open Office. It's more cumbersome, given that it's an entirely text book, and it makes proofing hell, but the new version of InDesign actually makes it somewhat straightforward to produce EPUB and Mobipocket files (via Calibre).
The result: you now get the book in all 3 formats (PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket) when you buy it. If you've bought the book and want it in other formats, please let me know and I'll rectify the situation.
The result: you now get the book in all 3 formats (PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket) when you buy it. If you've bought the book and want it in other formats, please let me know and I'll rectify the situation.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Independent Cycle Touring in Europe: The Presentation
Independent Cycle Touring in Europe
View more presentations from Piaw Na.
If you've been following this blog, you know that I've been giving a series of presentations at REI about Independent Cycle Touring. I hadn't put up the slides before because they were under revision all the time (especially between presentations things would change), but now I think I've gotten it stable, so those who're interested can view it.
If you're in the Bay Area, the last two presentations are September 19th at Saratoga, and September 29th in Mountain View. Registration is free, so show up and see the slides in full resolution! In addition, I'll always provide pre-flight entertainment for those who show up early. The reception to these presentations, no matter the size of the crowd, has always been very positive, and you can't beat the price.
Now Shipping: Startup Engineering Management
My latest book, Startup Engineering Management is now shipping.
Until now, all my books have been relatively independent of each other: there's no reason to believe that one person would buy An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups and Independent Cycle Touring at the same time. The topics are very different, and you're unlikely to be in the mood to read one book or the other.
However, folks are likely to want to read Startup Engineering Management right after (or before) An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups, so for the first time, I've provide one single page shopping cart where you can buy any (or all) of the books on one page. As a bonus, if you buy $50 worth of books (any 2 books), I'll provide free shipping. Obviously, this only applies to paper books, as electronic copies always have free shipping.
Incidentally, I recently met with both Obvious and PlayMesh to discuss engineering management, and the feedback on the material that we discussed (which all went into the book) has been very positive. There are other reasons to read this book even if you're not going to be a manager, and I'll get into that in the future. Watch this space.
Until now, all my books have been relatively independent of each other: there's no reason to believe that one person would buy An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups and Independent Cycle Touring at the same time. The topics are very different, and you're unlikely to be in the mood to read one book or the other.
However, folks are likely to want to read Startup Engineering Management right after (or before) An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups, so for the first time, I've provide one single page shopping cart where you can buy any (or all) of the books on one page. As a bonus, if you buy $50 worth of books (any 2 books), I'll provide free shipping. Obviously, this only applies to paper books, as electronic copies always have free shipping.
Incidentally, I recently met with both Obvious and PlayMesh to discuss engineering management, and the feedback on the material that we discussed (which all went into the book) has been very positive. There are other reasons to read this book even if you're not going to be a manager, and I'll get into that in the future. Watch this space.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Review: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught
I've been buying all the previous Lost Fleet novels on Kindle mostly because they were priced right, and written pretty much as airplane fodder. You don't have to think very hard, and it's a lot like eating candy: you won't get overfull, and you can eat a lot of it at a go. The books are relatively thin, and you can easily zip through a couple of them at a shot.
Campbell's publisher has decided that Campbell's (aka John G Hemry) popularity means that they can price his books as a hard cover, so Dreadnaught, which begins a new series now spots the cover price of $15.82 (and a Kindle price at $12.99), which puts it easily out of the impulse buy range.
Unfortunately, in length, plot, characters, and interest, this is pretty much the same as any of the previous novels. We have John Geary confronting impossible situations in his fleet, making quick decisions that allow him to escape nicely as background problems escalate. There's a cliffhanger at the end, but most of the book can easily be zipped through like the airplane fodder that Campbell's so good at delivering. Nevertheless, the series is getting a bit old, and the reveals are starting to feel like they're deliberately drawn out to milk the series for all its worth.
Not recommended. Wait for the entire series to come out, or check it out from the library if you must.
Campbell's publisher has decided that Campbell's (aka John G Hemry) popularity means that they can price his books as a hard cover, so Dreadnaught, which begins a new series now spots the cover price of $15.82 (and a Kindle price at $12.99), which puts it easily out of the impulse buy range.
Unfortunately, in length, plot, characters, and interest, this is pretty much the same as any of the previous novels. We have John Geary confronting impossible situations in his fleet, making quick decisions that allow him to escape nicely as background problems escalate. There's a cliffhanger at the end, but most of the book can easily be zipped through like the airplane fodder that Campbell's so good at delivering. Nevertheless, the series is getting a bit old, and the reveals are starting to feel like they're deliberately drawn out to milk the series for all its worth.
Not recommended. Wait for the entire series to come out, or check it out from the library if you must.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Charts and Tables from Independent Cycle Touring
One of the things I wanted to do but kept forgetting to was to extract all the charts and tables from Independent Cycle Touring and put it in one document so readers could easily print out copies and use them for packing or planning trips. I finally got around to doing so and you can now download all checklists and tables.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Review: Girl Genius Omnibus 1
Girl Genius has won the Hugo for best comic several years running. While they have everything on the web, it's much faster to read comic books on paper, so when my local library had the book I picked it up.
Humor is tricky. For instance, some people find fart jokes funny, others not so much. Some find zany characters like Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 to be great, I personally characterize it as: "her idea of character development is to add more characters."
Unfortunately for me, Girl Genius falls into the latter category. The philosophy is to just keep adding more characters in the hopes that you'll find something funny somewhere. You could approach Girl Genius as a serious story, but that doesn't work very well either. The plots are unbelievable, and while there's a long running plot, most of the time you get just one gag after another, without a lot of plot exposition. There're also plenty of digressions that seemingly add nothing to the story. I say seemingly, because of course something might turn out to be relevant a few books later, but I haven't got the patience (nor do I necessarily want to spend the money) to run out and buy the books or click through the web pages just in case there's a pay off in the future.
All in all, if you like Ranma 1/2 or love lots of gags, this is the comic for you. For everyone else, I'd suggest paging through the first few pages to see if it grabs you.
Humor is tricky. For instance, some people find fart jokes funny, others not so much. Some find zany characters like Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 to be great, I personally characterize it as: "her idea of character development is to add more characters."
Unfortunately for me, Girl Genius falls into the latter category. The philosophy is to just keep adding more characters in the hopes that you'll find something funny somewhere. You could approach Girl Genius as a serious story, but that doesn't work very well either. The plots are unbelievable, and while there's a long running plot, most of the time you get just one gag after another, without a lot of plot exposition. There're also plenty of digressions that seemingly add nothing to the story. I say seemingly, because of course something might turn out to be relevant a few books later, but I haven't got the patience (nor do I necessarily want to spend the money) to run out and buy the books or click through the web pages just in case there's a pay off in the future.
All in all, if you like Ranma 1/2 or love lots of gags, this is the comic for you. For everyone else, I'd suggest paging through the first few pages to see if it grabs you.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Review: Big Bang Theory Season 3
I saw episodes at random times, mostly on the N1. This is the season that made Jim Parsons a major star (or rather, the critics finally agreed that he wasn't a fluke), and it shows. Nearly every episode is hilariously funny, and the writers take pains to get all the details of geekdom correct.
The season even ends with a cliff-hanger! All I can say is, I don't usually watch TV, but this series will have me watching every episode I can get my hands on. The Stan Lee episode definitely had me laughing out loud while sitting on a train. Highly recommended.
The season even ends with a cliff-hanger! All I can say is, I don't usually watch TV, but this series will have me watching every episode I can get my hands on. The Stan Lee episode definitely had me laughing out loud while sitting on a train. Highly recommended.
Review: Jack of Fables Vol 2-4
While Fables keeps going from strength to strength, Jack of Fables was for me, a bit of a dud. I read the first 6 issues but it didn't compel me to spend money, so I checked Vols 2, 3, and 4 from the library to see if got any better.
The story has to overcome several problems. First of all, Jack himself is an incredibly unsympathetic character. Secondly, the problems encountered in Jack of Fables aren't all that interesting. You get impatient with the character's inability to see the obvious, and one would think that with immortality, even the most insipid personifications would eventually realize that his capers are repetitious and his continuing attempts to get rich never end well.
The art is good, but not so good that you can forgive the relatively lame stories. The introduction of the literals also draw a yawn, which is one of the many things that made Fables 13 boring and silly.
The mystery of why Fables was so much better was solved when I met Willingham, who said he handed over Jack of Fables to Matthew Sturges, because he felt that Matthew deserved a break. Well, Sturges' talent isn't in the same caliber as Willingham's, and it shows.
This series is only worth checking out from your local library.
The story has to overcome several problems. First of all, Jack himself is an incredibly unsympathetic character. Secondly, the problems encountered in Jack of Fables aren't all that interesting. You get impatient with the character's inability to see the obvious, and one would think that with immortality, even the most insipid personifications would eventually realize that his capers are repetitious and his continuing attempts to get rich never end well.
The art is good, but not so good that you can forgive the relatively lame stories. The introduction of the literals also draw a yawn, which is one of the many things that made Fables 13 boring and silly.
The mystery of why Fables was so much better was solved when I met Willingham, who said he handed over Jack of Fables to Matthew Sturges, because he felt that Matthew deserved a break. Well, Sturges' talent isn't in the same caliber as Willingham's, and it shows.
This series is only worth checking out from your local library.
Review: How To Train Your Dragon
At WorldCon, there was a panel entitled "The Real Revenge of the Nerds", where the theme was the recent spate of movies where the hero is a nerd and indeed gets the girl. How To Train Your Dragon would be exhibit #2 in that discussion. Exhibit #1 properly belongs to The Social Network, not only because it single-handedly raised CS enrollment nation-wide, but also because the antagonists, the Winklevosses, are classic good looking athletes.
The story revolves around Hiccup, who's the lone weakling in his village whose only hope of achieving social acceptance is to kill a dragon. When he finally gets a chance, he finds that he's too much of a wuss to do so... and to say more would be to spoil the story.
The animation is so-so, though the animators have cleverly avoided the uncanny valley. What's great is that our hero doesn't succeed through brawn: he succeeds through a combination of clever engineering, intelligent observation of critters, and ultimately, with kindness. To say that there is a total lack of such examples in typical children's movies (especially with male protagonists) would be under-stating it. In fact, it's the heroine of the story who supplies the brawn.
What's more, the protagonist sacrifices something real at the end of the movie in order to achieve his results. While everything does end well, the sacrifice makes it feel real in a way that recent Pixar movies (for instance) do not.
Highly recommended if you're a nerd.
The story revolves around Hiccup, who's the lone weakling in his village whose only hope of achieving social acceptance is to kill a dragon. When he finally gets a chance, he finds that he's too much of a wuss to do so... and to say more would be to spoil the story.
The animation is so-so, though the animators have cleverly avoided the uncanny valley. What's great is that our hero doesn't succeed through brawn: he succeeds through a combination of clever engineering, intelligent observation of critters, and ultimately, with kindness. To say that there is a total lack of such examples in typical children's movies (especially with male protagonists) would be under-stating it. In fact, it's the heroine of the story who supplies the brawn.
What's more, the protagonist sacrifices something real at the end of the movie in order to achieve his results. While everything does end well, the sacrifice makes it feel real in a way that recent Pixar movies (for instance) do not.
Highly recommended if you're a nerd.
Review: Why We Get Fat
I've pretty much ignored all the Paleo/Atkins/Low Carb diet craze the last few years, and Cynthia recommended Why We Get Fat as a way to see what it's all about.
Taubes has a good writing style and a lucid, clear argument as to why conventional diet and exercise doesn't work:
Yet a few questions have answers that aren't very satisfying. For instance, why are the Japanese skinny? They eat plenty of rice (as do most Asian countries), and when you visit Japan, you're not going to see a lot of fat people around. Taubes says that these countries don't drink a lot of soft drinks, which is true, but a trip to your local Japanese supermarket sees plenty of sweet drinks. I'm not sure that this book holds the complete story: there's a lot about nutrition that we don't know.
Then of course, there's the assertion that exercise doesn't work. That one's weird, since I certainly know plenty of people who's lost weight from exercise. In any case, I found the book interesting as far as being an introduction to what all this high-protein/high-fat/low carb craze is about. Recommended.
Taubes has a good writing style and a lucid, clear argument as to why conventional diet and exercise doesn't work:
- The poorest people in the world don't eat a lot of meat but get fat anyway.
- The hunter-gatherers that exist today eat as much fatty meat as they can get their hands on.
- Carnivores are lean while Hebivores are fat.
- Insulin has been shown to be the agent converting sugars to fat. Having a constantly elevated level of sugars basically floods your body with insulin and therefore eliminates your ability to burn fat.
- The Atkins-type diets have been shown in some studies to reduce weight faster than other comparative diets.
Yet a few questions have answers that aren't very satisfying. For instance, why are the Japanese skinny? They eat plenty of rice (as do most Asian countries), and when you visit Japan, you're not going to see a lot of fat people around. Taubes says that these countries don't drink a lot of soft drinks, which is true, but a trip to your local Japanese supermarket sees plenty of sweet drinks. I'm not sure that this book holds the complete story: there's a lot about nutrition that we don't know.
Then of course, there's the assertion that exercise doesn't work. That one's weird, since I certainly know plenty of people who's lost weight from exercise. In any case, I found the book interesting as far as being an introduction to what all this high-protein/high-fat/low carb craze is about. Recommended.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups now on the NOOK
Note that as with the Kindle version, this is the first edition. I have no expectation of significant revenue, but the BN store front was easy to use, so it didn't cost very much time.
I'm not expecting a Mac version. The iBookstore requires owning a Mac, which I haven't done since 2009 (and even that Mac ran Windows since I found myself repeatedly booting into it in order to run Quicken, etc).
I'm not expecting a Mac version. The iBookstore requires owning a Mac, which I haven't done since 2009 (and even that Mac ran Windows since I found myself repeatedly booting into it in order to run Quicken, etc).
Long Term Review: Garmin Edge 800
(Please also see First Impressions)
I've now lived with the Edge 800 for over 1700 miles, including quite a bit of hiking. The unit has survived a tour of the Alps with rain and plenty of sweat. A few notes:
I've now lived with the Edge 800 for over 1700 miles, including quite a bit of hiking. The unit has survived a tour of the Alps with rain and plenty of sweat. A few notes:
- The unit's pairing with the cadence/wheel sensor is great. The only time I've seen problems with speeds being inaccurate is if the magnet is misaligned and hits the wheel sensor instead of zipping past it. When that happens expect to see speeds of 100mph or more. The cadence magnet slips easily, but is easily solved if you tape the magnet to the crank instead of relying on the zip-tie.
- Battery life is good. At 15 hours, you can expect 2 full days of touring on a complete charge if you forget to charge it one day. The battery drains at the rate of 5% per hour if the unit is not routing, which in practice means 20 hours. With routing, the drain is around 7% per hour.
- Routing is the same was other Garmin units, though sometimes address searches can get wonky.
- The unit really does work with full fingered gloves. This is due to the display technology, which also means that button pushes on screen are sometimes clunky. That's not a bad thing.
- In tunnels the wheel sensor pairing works well. In particular, Phil, who had the same unit, had his unit confused in tunnels and locked up, so I'm not sure how optional the wheel sensor is. A reboot solved the problem.
- Unit uploads are fast!
Review: Air Berlin
This year was the first time we flew Air Berlin. If you're a cyclist, there are only three viable airlines to Europe if you wish to bring your bike. Air Berlin, Air Canada, and British Airways. On British Airways, bikes fly free, but you have to fly through London Heathrow Airport, which many people hate (I've never had an issue with London Heathrow, but nightmare stories abound). On Air Canada, there's a $50 each way, which is reasonable, but they're not always the lowest cost carrier.
Air Berlin is almost always the lowest cost carrier, and they have a bike policy that's extremely friendly to cyclists: sign up for the topbonus Service Card, and you can carry your bike (at up to 32kg!) on any number of flights you take with them. The annual fee is 79 EUR, but in addition to unlimited bike carriage, you also get free early checkin for flights the night before, and an increased baggage allowance. You also get to make seat reservations (which is apparently a paid sevice). That makes it a good deal.
Good deals are useless if the airline loses your bike the way US Airways does. I'm happy to report that Air Berlin has excellent customer service. The staff is always courteous, and usually goes beyond the call of duty to get things done for you. Air Berlin schedules flights the way Germans schedule trains. That means connections are very closed together and you will find yourself in customs wondering "How the heck am I going to clear customs and make my next flight within 50 minutes?" Wonder of wonders, the German customs at Dusseldorf (Air Berlin's hub) are incredibly efficient and provided you don't dilly dally you will make your flight. We lost no baggage, and things were mostly on time. I can therefore recommend Air Berlin to cyclists wishing to bring their bikes to Europe and back.
Air Berlin is almost always the lowest cost carrier, and they have a bike policy that's extremely friendly to cyclists: sign up for the topbonus Service Card, and you can carry your bike (at up to 32kg!) on any number of flights you take with them. The annual fee is 79 EUR, but in addition to unlimited bike carriage, you also get free early checkin for flights the night before, and an increased baggage allowance. You also get to make seat reservations (which is apparently a paid sevice). That makes it a good deal.
Good deals are useless if the airline loses your bike the way US Airways does. I'm happy to report that Air Berlin has excellent customer service. The staff is always courteous, and usually goes beyond the call of duty to get things done for you. Air Berlin schedules flights the way Germans schedule trains. That means connections are very closed together and you will find yourself in customs wondering "How the heck am I going to clear customs and make my next flight within 50 minutes?" Wonder of wonders, the German customs at Dusseldorf (Air Berlin's hub) are incredibly efficient and provided you don't dilly dally you will make your flight. We lost no baggage, and things were mostly on time. I can therefore recommend Air Berlin to cyclists wishing to bring their bikes to Europe and back.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Review: Olympus EPL-1
When my brother ran off to Europe for 6 weeks last year, he bought an Olympus EPL-1 for not much more than the Canon S95. What convinced me to recommend that camera was the DPReviews with the comparison shots that clearly showed the EPL-1 as being superior to many other more expensive cameras. Well, my brother shot tons of photos but didn't post any of them, so I had no idea what the photo quality was like.
Since XiaoQin was driving this year, weight was a non issue for her and she could carry the Olympus EPL-1, which we borrowed from him. There are a few annoying things about the Olympus EPL-1:
Since XiaoQin was driving this year, weight was a non issue for her and she could carry the Olympus EPL-1, which we borrowed from him. There are a few annoying things about the Olympus EPL-1:
- It stamps all photos with the caption OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA. Yes, this is a camera that shouts at you and demands that you remove all those captions.
- It has no orientation sensor, so you have to manually fix the orientation of all the photos that are shot vertically.
- It does not have a rear control dial, so exposure control requires cumbersome button presses.
- The auto-focus is piss poor.
Conclusion and Thoughts
If the Tour of the German Speaking Alps last year was an example of everything going wrong, this year nearly everything went right.
- We started a week later, and thus only had a couple of days of poor weather at the start.
- We booked a hotel nearly next to the airport avoiding the possibility of losing luggage right from the beginning.
- We scheduled the hiking at the start of the self-supported touring part of the trip, enabling us to ship our hiking stuff back to our airport, which enabled us to travel lighter and faster once we started riding.
- I'm getting older. We only had a couple of days exceeding 100km and 2000m of climb. As I get older and slower my days of doing those 100km/2000m days back to back seem to be gone. Part of it is that Sleep Apnea forces me to carry more weight up and down the hills, but the other part of is that my recovery isn't what it used to be. Last year I could pretend that it was the tandem's fault. Not this year.
- We actually did more cycling once we lost use of the car. The car enabled us to skip to "the good parts." The reality is, though, that cycle touring is about all the parts, not just the good parts.
- This is my first year where I could do both the French side and the Italian side back-to-back. The result: no contest, the Italian/Swiss/Austrian Alps are way prettier than the French alps. People who only ride in France because that's where the Tour de France is don't know what they're missing.
- If you're going to have rain for a week on the trip, having it at the end is much better than at the beginning. At the beginning you just lose shape and motivation. At the end, you're ready for a rest!
- When coordinating with a car, make sure that you pick good locations to meet up. In particular, meeting in the center of strange towns is going to make your driver very antsy, as towns are harder to navigate than country side. It's far easier to arrange to meet at an intersection or a very small town.
- Having a car was very nice: Phil said, "The car was totally worth the money!" We definitely had to thank XiaoQin for driving. A lot of the days would have been unmanageable or we would have had to take a less than optimal route when cycling. That said, I loved the unsupported part of the trip every bit as much, so I wouldn't go out of the way to get a car in Europe if everyone was up for riding every day (as was the case in the past).
- Remove the plastic dust caps from valve stems before mounting bikes on cars!
- We did our hiking in the St. Moritz Area instead of the Bernese Oberland this time. Compared to the Bernese Oberland, St. Moritz is less pretty, and not as interesting. It was worth doing once, but I don't think I'll revisit. Having now stayed at Wengen, Grindelwald,Lauterbrunnen, Rosenlaui, and Murren, I would recommend Murren for first time visitors and Rosenlaui for people who would like to get away from the Rick Steves/Lonely Planet crowd. Wengen is nice, but not as nice as Murren, and definitely not as nice as Rosenlaui.
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Day 31, 32: Epilogue
We woke up in the morning to gloomy skies, despite attempting to sleep in. We were due at noon at a restaurant downtown to meet Stefan, so we had a bit of a leisurely breakfast before heading to town on our 24 hour ticket.
The restaurant featured Swiss German food, with an entry way granting us great reasons to not smoke in the area. Stefan told us stories about his trip to the Himalayas. The trip proper sounded really fun, but the stay in Kathmandu and the aftermath of the consequences of the stay were ugly and off-putting. Stefan does a far better job than I did of explaining it, so I won't attempt to paraphrase him. Stefan as an outdoor enthusiast is second to few others, and his preparation was thorough and complete, so if bad things happened to him and his girlfriend, I'm not sure I want to risk something similar.
Stefan took us on a river side stroll back to the train station, and it was lucky that he stayed with us because the train back to Kloten had a problem. We ended up hopping onto the train to the airport and then taking the airport shuttle back to Hotel Flyaway.
At 6pm, we went to the airport with our bikes and checked baggage, and made use of the early checkin to get our boarding passes and to get rid of the bikes. With the TopBonus service card, we did not have to pay to use this feature, and our cards let us bypass the line to pay to checkin! We then spent the rest of our swiss francs on dinner and on some extremely expensive Truffles du Jour at the Sprungli store, as recommended by Stefan.
The rest of the stay was uneventful, as was the flight proper. I'm happy to report that one and a half N1 batteries was all that was necessary to get me through the flight. (I did spend 2 hours on the X201 sorting pictures in lightroom --- when you run heavy duty photo-processing on the Thinkpad, the battery just doesn't last as long as when you're just typing away on Emacs) Phil performed the super human task of packing all the chocolate in his carry on baggage (he did not want to risk losing any of that precious cargo!), and not eating any of it on the flight. I did not trust myself, and checked all but one bar of chocolate, and that bar did not survive the flight. All our chocolate arrived safely, and now a month later, a lot of it is already gone!
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 |
| From Tour of the Alps 2011 |
The restaurant featured Swiss German food, with an entry way granting us great reasons to not smoke in the area. Stefan told us stories about his trip to the Himalayas. The trip proper sounded really fun, but the stay in Kathmandu and the aftermath of the consequences of the stay were ugly and off-putting. Stefan does a far better job than I did of explaining it, so I won't attempt to paraphrase him. Stefan as an outdoor enthusiast is second to few others, and his preparation was thorough and complete, so if bad things happened to him and his girlfriend, I'm not sure I want to risk something similar.
 |
| From Tour of the Alps 2011 |
Stefan took us on a river side stroll back to the train station, and it was lucky that he stayed with us because the train back to Kloten had a problem. We ended up hopping onto the train to the airport and then taking the airport shuttle back to Hotel Flyaway.
At 6pm, we went to the airport with our bikes and checked baggage, and made use of the early checkin to get our boarding passes and to get rid of the bikes. With the TopBonus service card, we did not have to pay to use this feature, and our cards let us bypass the line to pay to checkin! We then spent the rest of our swiss francs on dinner and on some extremely expensive Truffles du Jour at the Sprungli store, as recommended by Stefan.
The rest of the stay was uneventful, as was the flight proper. I'm happy to report that one and a half N1 batteries was all that was necessary to get me through the flight. (I did spend 2 hours on the X201 sorting pictures in lightroom --- when you run heavy duty photo-processing on the Thinkpad, the battery just doesn't last as long as when you're just typing away on Emacs) Phil performed the super human task of packing all the chocolate in his carry on baggage (he did not want to risk losing any of that precious cargo!), and not eating any of it on the flight. I did not trust myself, and checked all but one bar of chocolate, and that bar did not survive the flight. All our chocolate arrived safely, and now a month later, a lot of it is already gone!
Previous
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Price Drop on Independent Cycle Touring
While at WorldCon, I had a discussion with Sandra Taylor of Schlock Mercenary, who told me that I could get full color books printed in China at about $5 each, instead of paying the $15/copy that I'm paying right now. The problem? I'd have to print 5,000 copies at a time. Well, that's ok if I sell enough copies, so I'm going to start pricing the books as if I was going to get them from China and see how things go.
As of right now, Independent Cycle Touring is $29.95 for the paperback, and $14.95 for the digital edition. If you want both, it's $34.95. If this experiment works, the price change will be permanent. If not, prices will have to go back up. There's no way I'm ordering 5,000 copies of anything if it doesn't sell. Storage at my house is not infinite, and it'll be squeezed if I have too much inventory.
As of right now, Independent Cycle Touring is $29.95 for the paperback, and $14.95 for the digital edition. If you want both, it's $34.95. If this experiment works, the price change will be permanent. If not, prices will have to go back up. There's no way I'm ordering 5,000 copies of anything if it doesn't sell. Storage at my house is not infinite, and it'll be squeezed if I have too much inventory.
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