RIP Dennis Ritchie

October 12, 2011
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Dennis Ritchie passed away this evening at the age of 70. I doubt it’ll get the play in the papers that Steve Jobs death did even though Ritchie’s impact was greater in my opinion. For those unfamiliar a brief writeup on Unix and its founders. Rob Pike posted a note re: Ritchie’s passing. A true passing of an era. And man does it make me feel old. I still remember first using Unix back in 1979 and then used it pretty much constantly ever since. The  most apropos send off comes from Muppet Labs, albeit no relation to the Muppets or their infamous lab.

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Proof of God’s Existence

September 14, 2011
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Atheists always ask for proof of God’s existence. Some wonder if God has a sense of humour. I figure humanity should be enough proof for the latter. But what of the former? Well, I give you “The Gore Effect”. It seems that every time that Al Gore speaks in a public forum about Global Warming excessively frigid weather arrives. He is to speak in the US midwest tomorrow (I believe). The temperature forecast is 20F. Obviously, unseasonably cold. It may even snow — it’s snowing in Colorado, in fact. The curious can enjoy a weather report here. So, there you go. Proof there is a God. Proof he has a sense of humour. What more can atheists ask for?

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Praying Instead of Doing

August 7, 2011
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I’ve no problem with prayer. I have no problem with those of faith — so long as they leave those who don’t believe as they do alone. What I do have a problem with is when people fall back on prayer as the means to an end instead of getting off their sorry asses and doing something about the predicament they’re in. With the financial/economic fiasco in the US I had hoped to hear concrete solutions to solving their problems, along the lines of what Chretien and Martin did in the mid-90s here in Canada. Namely, raise taxes and cut spending while also shoring up various social programs that are necessary. That pain we went through in the 90s has done us well. Sadly, we should have sucked up the pain a bit more and dropped the entire set of surpluses onto the debt. From 199x to 2009 we were in surplus. Had we dumped those surpluses onto the debt we’d be so much better off. I just wish people would realize that paying off the debt is equivalent to a huge future tax cut. The sooner we get rid of the debt the sooner we get all that money

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Darth Vader: Venture Capitalist

May 28, 2011
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I’ve been through a number of start-ups and friends of mine are still toiling through theirs. And although I have rejoined their ranks as a CTO in a research-oriented startup I don’t miss the turmoil associated with trying to please investors, customers, and employees all before you have a product. Especially when it seems that you don’t get to include yourself in that mix of who has to be pleased. Like most geeky types I’ve been watched the Star Wars series repeatedly. My kids watch the original three at least twice a year, with my son and I’ve come to notice something: Darth Vader is a venture capitalist. Now, you may think me nuts — I’ve been called that before, usually before heading off on another start-up adventure — however, hear me out. When you listen to Darth Vader motivating the troops or attempting to get the upper hand on the competition (i.e., the Rebel Alliance), he speaks like a seasoned venture capitalist. I’ll provide some examples although this may mean you can never watch the Star Wars saga in the same way again. On Deals I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further. When

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Sales, Salespeople, and Salesmanship

May 15, 2011
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In my prior entrepreneurship entry I talked about the key hires that a company had to make early on in its life. I purposely left out one of the most important: the sales team. This could be a VP of Sales, a Director of Sales, whatever, but for a company to succeed it needs to have qualified, dynamic, hungry salesmen (and women). That’s a given. The question though is not whether to have them but when! A company lives on cash. For VC funded companies the initial infusion of cash comes from VC Funds that invest a part of a given fund into a company. Obviously, if this is the only cash the company ever receives it won’t be long for this world. A revenue flow is required. To attain that flow sales must occur. But how? That’s the trickiest question of all. How do we get sales? Fortunately it’s simple: provide customers with a product or service that scratches a particular itch and one that results in a demonstrable return on investment (ROI). Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy to quantify nor to find those first customers — those “early adopters” who effectively will wish to live their startup aspirations

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Quote of the month

April 22, 2011
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The invention of writing formed the real beginning of civilization. As language distinguishes man from other animals, so writing distinguishes civilized man from the barbarian. – William F. Friedman

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Boulangerie I: Days 3 and 4

April 2, 2011
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Boulangerie I: Days 3 and 4

Continuing on with my latest culinary adventure, here’s Days 3 and 4. Day 3 Day 3 was to be quite the adventure. We were about to make another 3 loaves but also play with “dead dough” for decorative purposes. Those of us with little artistic skills were going to have a hard time. But I was at least game, even if the outcome might be who knows what. First up was fougasse provencale. Fougasse is well known to bread lovers. The open holes, the various toppings and fillings. Fougasse is one of those lovely breads that look hard to make but turn out to be quite easy in the end. To add to the joy of fougasse is that it makes an amazing pizza dough! Although mixing and making the dough was similar to the other doughs the difference was that the forming required rolling the dough out fairly thin, about 1cm. The next step was to place the rolled dough onto a sheet pan and then cut slits with the bench scraper and then pull those open (the results can be seen in the photos). We had enough dough to make 2 large fougasses. Mine was filled with olives

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Boulangerie I: Days 1 and 2

April 1, 2011
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Day 3 Production

This past week I decided to take another “staycation” and take the Boulangerie I course at Le Cordon Bleu here in Ottawa. Once again my good friend Alberto joined me and we spent the week, Monday to Thursday, at Le Cordon Bleu learning about and how to make bread! As I mentioned in the Viennoiserie post last year, he and I had wanted to take the bread making course initially but it wasn’t offered as far as we could tell in 2010. It was offered last week of of March 2011, so we jumped at the chance to again take a course at Le Cordon Bleu here in Ottawa. Much like last time the school and education exceeded our expectations. Herein is the tale of those 4 days. The course is known as a “Short Course”, which means it’s 4 days divided into 3 hours of Demonstration and 3.5 hours of Practical. Practical is just what it sounds like, you get to be practical and practice in a real industrial kitchen everything you learned the prior 3 hours. The difference over the pastry course last year is that only the first day has an in-class portion followed by 3.5 hours

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Ambient Overload

March 10, 2011
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Nicholas Carr talks about Ambient Overload. A fascinating take on “information overload”. Instead of it being a “failure of filters” it’s instead the success of filters that we’re seeing, allowing information of interest to flood our screens and inboxes. I’d not thought of it that way, but I think he’s right. We can find just about anything. And the Internet provides it to us immediately. When pulling “interesting bits of information” from an infinite supply should it be any surprise that we end up with a near infinite quantity of interesting tidbits? His closing paragraph sums it up nicely, so I include it here: “When the amount of information available to be filtered is effectively unlimited, as is the case on the Net, then every improvement in the quality of filters will make information overload worse.”

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Entrepreneurship: Staffing a CEO

March 6, 2011
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I tend to view things fairly simply. From coding to business I’ve found that this works exceedingly well. There are always special cases, but I tend to handle those on a case-by-case basis. I try to keep the general workings of my code, my life, and my business fairly straightforward. It’s saved me from a lot of agonizing over finding the perfect way to do a given thing. I also tend to hold specific truths to be self-evident. One of these truths is that if a CEO is required he or she should be brought in early, rather than later. Either a new CEO was required from day one or a new one wasn’t. If they always were, bringing one in early is best for the company, for morale, for logistics, and just generally. Of course finding the right CEO is no easier and may in fact be harder earlier than later, but I stand by my assertion. I didn’t always think this way.   CEO: Now or Never Jim Collins’ new book Good to Great is a prequel to his eye-opening Built to Last that discusses what it takes to get a company from good to great. From a

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

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