Heavy Rotation Updated

All new material ( to me ) from artists that I already really like. She & Him ( Him == M. Ward, Jive Soweto is another volume of the The Indestructible Beats series, I can’t believe I didn’t have all the Thievery Corp Albums, and the new Black Keys album. Enjoy.

She & Him - Volume One	Jive Soweto (The Indestructible Beat Of Soweto Volume 4)
Thievery Corporation- Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi	The Black Keys - Attack & Release

Good Reading | Fiberevolution: Revisiting the PON vs P2P debate

Benoit at Fiberevolution has a good post on FTTH issues Fiberevolution: Revisiting the PON vs P2P debate. I particularly like his conclusion

The final conclusion I recently came to on this issue - and you might say I could have figured it out earlier - is that you should not trust vendor discourse on this issue. Unfortunately, they speak with the loudest voices. …

Here are the points covered.

• Don’t confuse technology and topology
• Homerun vs Passive star
• Cost differentials should be looked at at the active layer
• OPEX savings
• PON and unbundling

Long Live vi/vim

I always get a smile when I see evidence that vi/vim is still kicking

For example. The Tao of Mac Blog has a good vi/vim post that includes a set of links to cheat sheats and apps.

On another tack. A few weeks ago I was talking “Mac” with Bill R and he was amazed that OS X included vi/vim (and that I actually use it occasionally).

Thank You, Marshall Goldsmith - WGHY != WGHT

I really needed What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. The list of 20 bad behaviours and strategies to change them was very enlightening. I particularly liked the discussion on “adding too much value, “saying thank you” a lot more, and “active listening” to make the talker feel like the most important person in the room.

A key part of his message is that — It is not how you view yourself that counts, it is how other people view you that counts. It is the disconnect between how we view ourselves and how others view us that is the problem. Thus we need others to help us find and solve the problem.

The section on follow-up was fantastic. It takes 12-18 months to truly change, it’s a process that you have to work at, one really has to “follow-up” to change. This section had my favorite “story” in which Goldsmith regales us with his motivation for “strong follow-up”. It can be summarized with the following Q&A.

Q. “Does anyone actually get better by taking one of your courses?
A. I had to sheepish say I don’t know.

This is a very popular book and there are a ton of reviews on Amazon

You can also check out his blog. Here is a good post on listening and responding. Marshall Goldsmith Blog » Is It Worth It?

I found out about this book via Harvey Schacter’s 2007 top ten business books. It was number 2 behind “Made 2 Stick“. I listened to the audible version. I’m trying to work on saying “Thank You” and “listening better”.

Rockin’ PC Heat Sinks!

I’ve always enjoyed the synergy between complex semiconductors and cooling technologies. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the latest heat sink. I found this while perusing the Home Theatre PC system guide at Ars.

So Cool

Why ASICs are Important (PA Semi & Apple )

There are few product platforms that can support the development of unique processor or ASIC. Apple is one of those companies that has product platforms that drive enormous volumes. For semi developers this shrinking list of prospects is a nightmare - you win apple or you don’t. If you lose, you have nothing. Thus there are fewer application specific devices getting developed by semi-vendors these days.

This feels like Cisco’s Quantum Flow device thought process. I’ll speculate that it goes like this “We are the leader - we are the market - it’s all about software”. Hmm what hardware are we going to use? There is no processor being developed that fits our needs. We’ll have to sub it, but the sub only has us as a customer. We’ll have to show them what to do. Then the sub will try to sell this to our competitors who will have an equivalent hardware platform to develop software on. Yuck. Let’s do it ourselves. Bottom line — these monster platforms can be vertically integrated if they want to.

Links

• PA Semi Wikipedia
• Apple disses Intel’s Atom, buys PowerPC designer P.A. Semi - Ars Technica
• Apple Buys Itself a Little Chip Company Known for Super Efficient Processors - Gizmodo
• Apple enters IC market, buys PA Semi - EETimes.com

Relevant NPU & SoC Posts

• System-on-a-Chip (SoC) vs Network Processor (NPU) - What’s the Difference?
• NPU Positioning - Where do they win?
• Cisco hasn’t given up on hardware … New Quantum Flow NPU

bye bye yahoo mail plus

I had to phone in my cancellation of service for yahoo mail plus today

I was going to let my cancellation of yahoo mail plus go by silently. I felt that I’ve posted too much wrt/ my Yahoo mail problems, but then the “cancel service” button didn’t work online

I had to phone it in. “Can you say Irritating”.

Hackintosh - Mac OSX on PC Hardware

Last week Bill tipped me off to Hackintosh

which led me to this cool article on Lifehacker Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800

Then today there is a post on GigaOm’s Web Worker Daily Psystar - $400 Mac?

This site … looks like a “beautiful time waster” OSx86 Project

Internet Traffic Growth ~ 60% YoY

My favorite line is in the conclusion “The Internet core is so far from being overwhelmed that Odlyzko suggests ISPs should attempt to stimulate more usage rather than limit it“

Ars Technica has a good article on Internet Traffic Growth - Keeping pace? Torrents of traffic and the Internet backbone. It’s big, but not a “flood”.

Ars gets data from — Data source: Telegeography

Oops — 1, 2, 3, 7 — Doesn’t Work :-(

Can’t say that I haven’t done this before

I like how Marshall Goldsmith explains that following problem solving steps 1, 2, 3, 7 always leads to failure It’s not politics. If I want my idea to be implemented I’ve got to do the leg work! I’ve got to sell my solution - up, down, and sideways within my own organisation. This is not politics. This is the way it is.

I wrote about this in Connect-Part 7 from the perspective of a project that is handed down from the top. In this situation there is tremendous inertia to omit the “woo sideways” and “woo down” steps because you’ve got executive “buy in”. But I’ve found that in “top-down” situations “wooing sideways” and “wooing down” is the most important thing that needs to be done because none of those people “believe” the “top” has any good ideas (period). They initially believe that ideas from the “top” only employ step 7

Problem Solving Steps

1. Assess
2. Isolate
3. Formulate
4. Woo up ( to get buy in )
5. Woo lateral ( to get agreement )
6. Woo down ( to get acceptance )
7. Implementation

Parting Note

I’m almost finished Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. It’s been enlightening. I’m gonna learn to say, “Thank You” a lot more often. I’ll review it in more depth soon.