Evan Williams, former CEO of Pyra (creators of Blogger; bought out by Google), writes about running a business on web apps:
One interesting thing about starting a company today versus a few years ago: Lots of cool web apps are now available that you can more or less run you company on.
He goes on to list some of the web applications they are using at Odeo, then writes,
The improved efficiency of having these apps available, and not having to install and maintain servers for them is huge.
The Red Couch tells the story of how ad man Hugh MacLeod and PR guy David Parmet helped world-class Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon from relative obscurity to international renown through blogging:
MacLeod says he started filling Mahon’s “head with Cluetrain and blogging stuff,” and slowly Mahon got interested. “We started thinking that if Mahon could talk about tailoring on a blog about the same way that Seth Godin talks about marketing, then the people who care will see it. Mahon wouldn’t try to sell suits on the blog. Instead, he would show his knowledge and love of the craft. He would explain the labor, and materials involved and why the cost of each suit was justified.” The idea was that the people who cared either about suits or how a master craftsmen creates them would find their way to the site.
I want to believe that any world-class craftsman could reach the same success merely by keeping a blog on his work. I want to believe that, but I can’t. Too much of Thomas’s success is tied up with Hugh’s immense popularity. Thomas brought a great story, but Hugh brought the audience to hear it.
AccelChip has a family of products that allows you to synthesize a DSP from a MATLAB algorithm:
AccelChip DSP Synthesis allows algorithm developers to take designs created in MATLAB and automatically synthesize a high-quality silicon implementation. A synthesis and verification environment, the product automatically converts MATLAB design from floating-point to fixed-point, then generates synthesizable VHDL or Verilog models, providing designers the ability to verify the algorithm and its implementation sooner.
Definitely a neat idea, if it works. When I see “automatically synthesize a high-quality silicon implementation” it brings out my inner skeptic. When going from a very high-level description to a low-level one, a synthesis tool needs to make intelligent guesses about the designer’s intentions. Does it optimize for speed or power consumption or die size? Does it try to balance the competing needs? The danger is that the compiler synthesizes a correct implementation that is perfectly useless because it fails to meet some other important criteria. Lisp solves this by allowing programmers to give the compiler hints about performance. I wonder if AccelChip DSP Synthesis has a similar facility.
If you happen to find yourself in Moscow and need some tips on how to get along, look no further than eXile’s entertaining Field Guide to Moscow:
Humbertus Humbertus spends most of its time in office buildings within the Boulevard Ring attempting to add a veneer of European propriety to the Russian oil conglomerate it works for. This species only leaves the office at night, when it prowls the bars of Moscow in search of its prey after purchasing Viagra (the one Russian word it knows) at an underground kiosk. Although the Horny Expatriate prefers to win its sexual conquests by charm and false promises of marriage, it often finds itself hailing a cab to Oh La La at 3 a.m., its instinctual urges having overcome its stinginess.
There’s been some noticeable progress on the basement reno. Over the past two weekends, nearly all of the walls are now framed.
On the first weekend, I laid out and installed the plates. I used a Remington 476 Powder Actuated Hammer to attach the bottom plates to the concrete floor. When loaded with a .22 caliber charge, a wack to the handle with a hammer causes the charge to explode, driving a nail into virtually anything. Having never used one of these before, I wasn’t sure what to expect from using one, but what a blast! Literally! After the first shot, I was gun-shy for the rest of the day.
Last Saturday, Mandy’s father, Paul, came by to help install the studs. This man has a lot of experience, to put it mildly. He built his own house. Needless to say, his advice was very welcome.
His hands were welcome too. By the end of the day we had nearly all the walls complete. Paul handled all the tricky tedious bits, while I plugged away at the straightforward stuff. I’m much further ahead of where I would have been had he not helped. Thanks a bunch, Paul!
A virus that caused the death of two million people in 1957 has been accidentally shipped to 3700 labs as part of a flu testing kit. According to the New Scientist article:
A few of the CAP kits were sent to labs in Asia, the Middle East and South America, as well as Europe and North America. The kits originators had to know what they contained, in order to evaluate the test results. However, when Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg identified the strain on 26 March, it alerted the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Worryingly, it initially found the potentially deadly virus in a sample unrelated to the test kit – meaning it had already escaped within the lab.
Worryingly, indeed. Today, with the increased mobility of the world’s population, I’d hate to think what havoc this bug could wreak today if it found its way out of the lab.
UW Innovate is holding a 4-day camp aimed at anyone with definite plans to launch or participate in a new venture. It is being held at St. Jerome’s University Conference Centre, April 25-28.
From the UW press release:
Professional speakers and discussion leaders lead the participants through the camp’s focused, practical business start-up topics each day. The past camps, and the follow-on services coordinated by UW Innovate, have helped many previous participants to get their new ventures off the ground.
More details on the boot camp website.
Since writing a review of the Nautilus NT-CC1, some readers who, for whatever reason, did not receive the manuals when they purchased their workbench have asked where they can locate a copy. So without further ado, and until I receive a cease and desist letter from Costco, Nautilus, or my web hosting provider, here is the Nautilus NT-CC1 Assembly Manual in PDF (thanks to Kevin Mackie).
If you are only interested in a single page, here are scanned images of each one:
The owner’s manual will follow shortly.
Cognitive Daily explains Why we can’t all be divas. Rita Wolpert of Caldwell College separately recorded a singer and her accompaniment, then later processed the accompaniment so that it played a tone higher and mixed it with the original vocal track. She then played the synthesized recording for 40 nonmusicians and 10 professional musicians.
Only 5 of the “nonmusicians” — which actually included 7 people with over 6 years of musical training — could conclusively tell that two of the arrangements were sung in a different key from the accompaniment. Meanwhile, the musicians uniformly reacted with disgust, easily identifying the problem with the flawed arrangements.
While 42 percent of the nonmusicians did mention the key as potentially a problem, the remainder didn’t mention it at all, and none of the nonmusicians indicated that the bitonal arrangements were at all unpleasant.
So an aspect of music which musicians find critically important and (often painfully) obvious is simply unnoticed by most listeners.
One of many reasons that musicians don’t hang out at Karaoke bars.
From the University of Waterloo press release:
A University of Waterloo student team placed fourth Wednesday (April 6) in the 29th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, hosted by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University — which also fielded the winning team.
Members of the “Waterloo Black” Team were Ralph Furmaniak (second-year Pure Mathematics), Matei Zaharia (second-year Computer Science) and David Narum (second-year Mathematics exchange student from Norway). The coach of the team was Prof. Gord Cormack, School of Computer Science in the Faculty of Mathematics.
Bravo, Ralph, Matei, David, and coach Cormack! Ralph was also on the team that placed fourth in the recently announced Putnam Math Competition.
They answered seven problems out of ten. Considering the problem set, I’d say that’s pretty damn amazing!
Ken Dyck 
