President’s Cup — Awesome Action & Spashing

I’m loving the President’s Cup. The four-ball is fantastic The guys are going for it … Singh & Appleby were something like 10 under in 14 holes!

And some times going for it has it’s repercussions … like Woody Austin I think that it is cool that he went for it. He had to give it a go, good to see that he had a good sense of humour about it.

Here is the water shot clip

Remember when 3Com was a leader?

I just read that Bain Capital is acquiring 3Com. My first reaction was “What has 3Com done lately?” If memory serves, the last time they were a leader was over 10 years ago

good luck Bain.

• Light Reading – Ethernet – 3Com Tastes the Bain – Telecom News Analysis
• 3Com Announces Agreement to Be Acquired by Bain Capital Partners for $5.30 Per Share in Cash: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance
  

Wow! More Orson Scott Card – Speaker for the Dead

This is a great book It was very hard for me to put this one down. I can easily blame my slow blogging on this book. It took up every spare minute I had this past week.

It’s interesting that it is so different than the earlier book Enders Game. This book deals with loss and emotions in a way that is not often found in Sci Fi. The genre usually has lots of blastem’ up scenes, but little description of how it affects the “shooters”. This book is all about Ender’s life after the big “shot”. It deals with terrible and ugly feelings. Very powerful. Very cool It often reminded me of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, especially when the role of “Speaker for the Dead” is described.

I listened to it, the audible version is great. But had to get the book from the library as well. The language is difficult at times and I needed to see the words.

Which one is better? Ender’s game is the better Sci-Fi book and Speaker for the Dead is the better “real life” book.

Van Gogh’s Letters in NY

Tip to blog.pmarca.com for commenting on a Reuters article discussing the upcoming display of 20 Van Gogh letters at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. The opening quote is great and there are quite a few more.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh had a simple philosophy for producing good work — “you have to eat well, be well housed, have a screw from time to time, smoke your pipe and drink your coffee in peace.”

Amazon’s New MP3 Service – Not in Canada

amazonmp3 &&& it requires a US based credit card

Bummer

slow blogging lately :-(

Don’t know why. I think it has to do with September kid schedule overload

Hopefully I’ll be able to post comments on the first few chapters of Gary Blank’s Customer Development book later this week.

Lotsa great music in the last few weeks too. Spoon’s “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga“, Shout out Louds “Our Ill Wills“, Miles Davis “Live at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival“, and Theolonius Monk “Monk, Alone In Paris“.

I also broke down joined “Linked In”. Here is my profile. Now I’ll have to start “linking”

Ender’s Game – 20th Anniversary Edition Audiobook – Fantastic!

Upon reading my post on Spook Country my Internet buddy Andrew@Nyquist recommended that I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. He also noted that he wondered why it hadn’t been turned into a movie.

Later I looked the book up in Audible and found that there was a 20th anniversary edition Ender’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition (Unabridged). I was very excited because this looked to be an audio production done with a “real” budget. I purchased it right away.

I wasn’t disappointed. This is how Audiobooks should be done. The narrator’s were great The story is fantastic

Thanks for the recommendation Andrew. This is great stuff.

Author’s postscript

This was interesting. At the end of the audiobook the author describes how he came up with the book over 30 years ago, the reason why it has taken forever to turn this book into a movie ( Hollywood wanted to change it, ’cause its kids under 16, and that it takes place in Ender’s mind), and why he believes this audiobook is the “best” means of presenting “Enders Game” (’cause he is a playwright at heart).

On the movie

Looks like it is on the way. I found a blog dedicated to its progress. It will be based on Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow. It’s listed in IMDb as in pre-production — The Movie (2008?) .

Note – If you haven’t read the book — don’t go to the Wikipedia page for “Ender’s Game”. It includes a full plot summary which gives the whole book away.

Entrepreneurship Talks – Fizz

I presented my first of two talks on entrepreneurship to UBC “Fizzers” yesterday. The presentation, references, and recommended reading links can be found on my Fizz page.

Blogging Software – Mars Edit 2.0

You may have noticed that I’ve added the MarsEdit badge to my right hand border. This is a nod of appreciation to Daniel over at MarsEdit for promptly addressing my “international credit card” issues that reared their ugly head while trying to upgrade to version 2.0.

That said I’d recommend Mars Edit to anyone regularly publishing blog content. I’ve been using Mars Edit almost every day for over six months and really like it. I like how it is integrated with the NetNewswire Reader, I like the “post with MarsEdit” browser script, I like how I can live preview html, I like the scripting, and I like how easy it is to post & update to WordPress.

There is much that I haven’t dug into as well. I’d like to figure out how to edit/maintain my blogs “static” pages.

On the new version –I have yet to dive into the new features, but the Flickr integration looks like a great new feature. I’ve activated it and it appears very useful.

MINTS — Great Internet Traffic Resource

In the comments of a recent Andrew@Nyquist post The Bandwidth Explosion Myth lies a gem provided by Frank C.

The gem is a pointer to Andrew Odlyzko’s Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies site(MINTS). It’s a great resource

I’ve always enjoyed Andrew O’s papers and this site doesn’t disappoint. The only bad news about this site is that … I can spend hours diggin’ thru it