A foolish consistency

The Bubble Redux

Russell Beattie is getting a lot of links to this post on Web 2.0, and he should.  While he claims his post is not an "anti-Web 2.0 sytle backlash", he manages to skewer virtually all the sanctified elements of Web 2.0.

Scrape engines - "most are just leaches"

Mash Ups - "Yes, it’s so neat you can add a free map to your database of geo-data. Good for you. Thank Google for giving god-knows-how-much money to Navteq for you every time you query their data and render a map. Even the GOOG can only throw so much money out the window for so long, so I wouldn’t plan on that lasting very long."

WebApps - AJAXy, Tagged and Shared: Calendaring, To Do Lists, Email, Notes, Word Processors, Project Management, Databases, and anything to do with Getting Things Done. Have fun with all that, but 99.9% of the people out there will still be using Microsoft Office and Yahoo! (Yes, my employer, but I’d say that anyways.) Really. Look, I don’t *trust* your site to keep my personal (and definitely not my professional) data safe, okay, and I’m not going to change my daily habits to include a site that may disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow.

Social Anything, File Sharing, Content Management - his basic attitude is summed up in "honestly, if you describe your site like, “It’s like Flickr, but with [insert file type here]” then you’ve got serious problems. No, really. No, no, really".

RSS - "a pretty great technology, but really, how many more startups munging RSS feeds do we need? ... if your service is described like, “We take the RSS feeds and do [insert cool sounding agent/filtering/analysis technology here]” you’re in trouble."

This is one part I couldn't say better myself, so I won't: 

My general problem is not really with the effort involved in the above types of apps and companies, I’m sure they’re all working hard as hell in their own way. It’s just both the innovation and the ambition of this stuff is so lacking. They all seem to be aiming at the quick hit. The simple win. Someone said to me today, most of these sites are just sort of features not actual services, and it’s true. It’s so depressing.

It just seems that no one is trying to change the world any more. No one is aiming to create “insanely great” products or do the impossible. Why not? Why are so many people grasping at the low-hanging fruit, when there’s so much more goodness for everyone if they just stretched a little higher?

That’s just on the product functionality side - I haven’t seen anything interesting on the business side either. No one seems to be coming up with the next interesting new business model. I’m not looking for anything wacky, but there’s got to be better ways for your site to make money than waiting for Google to send you an AdSense check every month. Seriously, everyone seems to think the Text Ad Train is just going to keep on rolling forever. It’s not. Where is the new innovation to keep things moving? Remember, Google stumbled upon the way to do it right, but someone came up with the Contextual Advertising concept first and his name was Bill Gross. Where is that type of new innovator?

Actually, where are all the personalities, period? Where is the hubris of Jobs? Where is the unrelenting focus of Gates? Where is the arrogance of Ellison? Come on, let’s get some new budding tech-industry stars out there! I want to see someone’s face on the cover of freakin’ Time soon, you know? It’s been at least a year since Larry and Sergey… Come on! Who’s next?

Space Station marks anniversary

MSNBC has a fluffy Reuters article regarding 5 years of occupancy at the International Space Station.  NASA has a much deeper article.  I find it sad.  After 5 years and umpteen billions of dollars, here's what they lead with:

Since Expedition 1 arrived on the scene Nov. 2, 2000, the space station has grown and evolved into an unprecedented, state-of-the-art laboratory complex. Offering a microgravity environment that cannot be duplicated on Earth, space station continues to further humankind’s knowledge of science and how the human body functions for extended periods of time in space—all of which will prove to be vital on long-duration missions to Mars.

The article goes on about learning about living in space, repairing the station, etc. are all important to learn how to visit Mars.  Blah blah blah.  Same old same old.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge space fan and have been my entire life.  And NASA and the US space program is just so wrong headed it saddens me.

Examine the "we're studying the human body in order to prepare to go to Mars" story.

Going to Mars seems incredibly wrong headed to me given the current social, economic, and political climate of our country. The US can't realistically pay for it so it's not going to happen. And no international consortium can pay for it either.  Thus, billions upon billions of dollars spent year after year spinning around in orbit studying microgravity ad nausem in order to prepare for such a trip is a waste.

Further, microgravity research strikes me as a transparent justification for manned space flight.  There is one thing that remote operated unmanned vehicles absolutely can't do, and that is replicate the effects of microgravity on the human body.

The Last Titan

The successful 50 year legacy of the Titan program ended last week with the launch of the last Titan, a Titan IV B.

On October 19th, a rocket blasted off from Vandengberg Air Force Base - the last Titan rocket. Carrying a payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office, the successful Titan IV B launch brings to a close the Titan program whose first launch was in 1959. Originally designed as an intercontinental ballistic missle, the Titan rocket ultimately evolved into a heavy lift workhorse, launching defense, commercial, and scientific payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. In fact, many historic space explorations began with Titan launches, including manned Gemini missions, the Viking missions to Mars, the Voyager tours of the outer solar system, and the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Cassini's probe Huygens accomplished the most distant landing on another world, while Voyager 1 is now humanity's most distant spacecraft. (source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051027.html)

Future heavy payloads will be launched using the new Delta IV Heavy, built by Boeing. It also uses the Titan style approach of a two stage main booster combined with two additional first stage external boosters.  The Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 will also be used; it uses a unique configuration of a central two stage boosterwith three to five solid first stage external boosters.

Lana's 11th birthday party

My youngest daughter Lana turns 11 next week, and her party is today.  The party event was ice skating at Castle Ice in Renton, for Lana and 6 friends, my middle girl Lisa and a friend of hers, and of course Theresa and I.  Lea didn't come since she was busy with Newport High School's homecoming events. 

The girls seemed to a pretty good time on the ice.  Most had not ice skated much, but everyone got the hang of it quickly enough.  I'm not much of an ice skater myself, but at least I didn't fall.

Now the girls are downstairs watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I understand is excellent - even my wife says so.  I suppose, but I'm hiding out surfing the web on my laptop.  There are 11 females in the house, 12 if I count the cat.  Just too many for safety.  Maybe I'll venture out with the Jet City pizza delivery arrives.

Pumpkin Push 5K

I ran the Pumpkin Push 5K around Seward Park this morning, with Tony, Scott, and Rob (all members of the IE team).

This was a real 5K, unlike the last one I ran where the distance was messed up.  The weather was gorgeous, just incredibly sunny and warm for this late in October.  My goal was to beat 24:00 and set a personal record, but I missed it with a time of 25:20 or so.  The hardest part by far was climbing the hill up to the loop in the center of the park.  I did set a new personal record heartrate of 203.

Many runners were in costume, and there were awards for best costume.  I particularly liked the Gingerbread Man ("Run, run as fast as you can!  You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!").   And indeed, I couldn't catch him...

Tony's blog has a good writeup including a GPS track and some photos.  Check it out.

Update: My results: 107th of 266 men, 21st of 44 in my age group, 25:21.5 overall time, 8:10 pace.  I'm happy with that...

Team IE runs the Woodinville Country Slough Run

Today a bunch of us from the IE team ran the Woodinville Country Slough Run together.  We signed up as "Team IE" and had 9 members - Sharon, Tony, Kellie, Rob, John, me, Jon, Scott, and Laurel.  We all wore various IE team T-shirts:

While this was more of a "fun run" and less of a race - no chip timing, no starter gun - it was still my first actual 5K race.  I finished in 22:43!  That's 90th out of a field of 430.  Quite a surprise, actually, because I usually tell myself I'm not very fast, and yet here I was running a 7:19 5K.  I know 7 :19 pace isn't "fast" as 5K times go, but it was damn good for me, and it was easier than the last time I ran a fast 5k.

Update: The course was mismarked!  They didn't use their certified course, and they're saying that that "overzealous" volunteers turned people around at the wrong marker. The actual distance ran was about 2.88 miles (according to Tony's GPS), not the full 3.1 miles.  Had we ran a "real" 5K, my finish time would have been about 24:25.  So I didn't set a PR, and my PR stays at 24:00 for a treadmill 5K.  I don't know what a road 5K would be.

Race results: 90th of 430 overall, 68th of 198 for men, 14th for 50 for men 40-49.  Not bad - I'm sure it's not as competitive as some races, but hey, I'm happy with it.  BTW, the winner of the race was a 49 year old man with 15:48.

Rob and I stay together the whole run.  Having a race partner was fun, and I'm sure our competitive streaks pushed us to finish faster than we would have racing alone.  The whole team finished under 30 minutes.

I was really happy I didn't have any problems with my ankle (it's been having problems since the marathon).  I had the plan of running 8:30 or so - training pace - to avoid injury, but as I started out I just felt great, no problems at all, and I just kept the pace up the whole race.

I'm going to put some 5K races into my Ironman Arizona training schedule.  I'm sure I've got a sub 20 minute 5K in me.