I’ve seen a number of people post pictures and descriptions of what they carry with them every day. Shawn Blanc just linked to a picture of what he was carrying from 2007 and it inspired me to do the same.

A few years back I decided I wanted to go extremely minimalist with what I had on my person at all times. Not a whole lot of describing to do of the items.

• Apple iPhone 4 (AT&T) - This is probably the device that makes it possible to carry so little physically since I am carrying access to so much virtually. I rarely actually use it as a phone. You can’t see the skin on the back, but it is I like Birds by ExplodingDog.
• Slimmy Wallet by Koyono - This is a great, super thin wallet. It has enough room for maybe 3 credit cards, a bit of cash and the random miscellaneous cards one needs (license, insurance, ACLU membership card, etc.). I upgraded to get the exciting red interior which you apparently can’t get anymore.
• Keys and car fob - At the moment I have 4 keys on my keychain. I could almost certainly get it down to 3 and possibly 2 if I really needed to. I may do that. So, there it is. Super minimalist. And I can’t think of anything else I would require to have on a daily basis.

Honesty first, I am a fan of Apple products, I have been for a while and I don’t see that changing. I hope I avoid the fanboy title, but I can’t probably argue too much if it is applied to me. A bad habit I have been indulging in recently could probably be called “Android-baiting.” Tweeting about things like Android OS Fragmentation, Slow Uptake of Ice Cream Sandwich, or the Overabundance of Android Phones. It is all in good fun and I think my Android using (and loving) friends take it in that spirit (I hope so at least).

Recently, a friend responded to a tease by saying “How is the 4G on your iPhone? :)” A valid question that shows a clear technical difference between some of the Android phones and Apple’s iPhones. It is very true to say that as a group, Android handset manufacturers push the technical envelope faster than Apple does.

While I grant that that is a true statement, I don’t really care; it makes no difference to me. That got me thinking; why don’t I care?

I am a geek, have been for years, will probably always be. I build my own servers, I get my enjoyment from upgrading operating systems or setting up IPv6 in my house for no practical purpose. So why don’t I care what specific technology is used in my phone?

As odd as it may sound, I don’t think I categorize my iPhone and iPad in the same mental bucket as my computers.

** What it is vs. What it does for me**

This morning at about 1am that thought came to me and I think that is the proper distinction for how I look at these devices. Things like computers and servers and networks still fall into the standard geek “I care about what it is” category. Faster CPUs, bigger disks, cooler, more esoteric networks. These are all fun pursuits that I can really get into.

I don’t look at my iPhone and iPad that way. I care what they do for me. My concern is not whether it has Edge, 3G, or 4G or a Dual or Quad core CPU. I just don’t care. What I care about is whether I can effortlessly get my email, or play a game, or read the New York Times. That isn’t to say that the technical specs aren’t relevant, just that they are secondary. They are a means to an end. So, for example, my original iPhone was Edge only. While it worked, it definitely was slow to check email, so the update to the 3G model was a welcome improvement. Will 4G make my email experience better, maybe, but I doubt it will be a informational experience.

I don’t like using the word “appliance” but I think that is the best name for devices that fall into the bucket where “what it does for me” is the criteria for success. Rarely do I see people debate the wattage of microwaves as a buying criteria in and of itself. The question is “how quickly can I defrost the meat?”

I like the fact we are moving this way. When my mother calls about her iPad and I can hear the genuine excitement in her voice, it is not excitement about the fact it has 3G or an A5 processor. It is that she just rented a movie online and it showed up on her device and she enjoyed watching it. Those are the things that matter to most people.

[caption id=”” align=”alignright” width=”260” caption=”Demographic of Republican Caucus-goers in Iowa”][/caption]

I will start by saying that I (nor anyone that I have heard) would imply that the demographics of the people participating in the Iowa Caucuses last night would be a representative sample of the population of the United States.

But damn; seriously? This is what is being used to cull the field?

A 99% white participation differs considerably even from the nationwide Republican demographics [1. CNN: Iowa caucus-goers, by the numbers ]. A Gallup survey [2. Gallup: Republicans Nationwide Are Similar in Composition to 2008] showed that nationwide, the Republican party is only 87% non-Hispanic white. So a 12% point difference between Iowa and the rest of the party.

So I think it is fair to say that Iowa represents an extremely homogeneous subsample of the Republican party at least ethnically, but I would argue that it could be stretched to say culturally as well.

So why couldn’t they make up their mind last night? [3. NY Times: Romney Wins Iowa Caucus by 8 Votes]

If we look at only the top three candidates, Romney, Santorum, and Paul who probably represent the viable candidates at this point, the breakdown is crazy close. I’m guessing that just by looking at the graph, you can’t tell who won.

The current status seems to be a hard division between fiscal conservatives (Romney), social conservatives (Santorum), and libertarians (Paul). From my perspective, I just don’t see how this has an easy shake out.

The social conservative block has problems with Romney’s historical stance on issues like abortion, something they rarely budge on. And not to mention the unspoken bias against his Mormonism. Paul’s isolationism stance turns off a huge number of people. And his desire to massively trim down the federal government even to a point that it makes some Tea Party people nervous. Santorum just doesn’t seem to have much depth beyond his social issues. [4. NY Times: First Vote Reinforces G.O.P.’s Ideological Divide]

At this point I think it is obvious that Romney will take New Hampshire. I feel like Santorum has a good shot at South Carolina. But that doesn’t seem to settle anything yet.

Gingrich Calls Romney a Liar

This needed more than 140 characters to link to, so I’m trying a mini blog post. This article is a perfect example of why the public (or at least this member of the public) is so fed up with politics. Of course Romney lies, but so does Gingrich, so does every politician out there. It is probably safe to say that to be a politician is to lie. Some more, some less.

I would argue that our form of democracy (ok, republic) requires that politicians be liars. It is almost certainly impossible to get a majority of the population to vote for you without saying things you know are not true or at least not the whole truth. I’m not even sure I am bothered by that fact, as long as it is done with moderation. For me, the kicker is the hypocrisy. The blatant opportunism of it all.

It has been 2 months or so now since I left my job at Swisslog. For those that see me on a regular basis, this is no great surprise, but I have been reluctant to write about it. Partly the words have not quite been there to describe my motivation and some of the mixed feelings I have had.

“Educational.”

Educational is the best single descriptor I have been able to come up with to describe my time at Swisslog. I strongly feel that education as a result is always a positive thing, but the inputs to that education can be positive or negative. Swisslog provided its fair share of negative items to learn from. There is no reason to list their faults because I believe that many of them are inherent to the larger company structure and the industry as a whole.

Like myself, the material handling industry is going through a transition. 20 years ago, “logistics” was all about getting physical products from point A to point B so they could be sold. It was a generally simple affair with large warehouses that would stock up on products to gloss over the variances that occurred in supply and demand. But as the retail model worked to trim costs and players like Target and Walmart became national retailers, the trick to making their operations more efficient was to reduce the inventory both in their stores and in their warehouses. “Just in time” delivery became the watchword.

I will state as a fact that while logistics still needs people to move physical objects from point A to point B, success in the industry is no longer a matter of atoms and molecules, it is one of bits and bytes. In order to efficiently run a nationwide or global company efficiently, you must know where everything is at any given moment and move it around reliably and efficiently.

The logistics industry is now a software industry. And the business strategies and operations of a software company are different than a manufacturing company.

Unfortunately, I think the big players in the industry, Swisslog being one of them, have failed to realize that. Maybe they do intellectually, but not instinctively. Conveyors, cranes, robotics are becoming more and more commoditized and will continue to do so. Software is the area where companies can show distinction. But that requires a change in mindset of the companies. And it means a change in the way a company handles its projects, employees, and business model. Sadly, I did not see Swisslog do that in my tenure.

Reinventing itself is a challenging thing for any company to do. I have my doubts if it is possible once a company has reached a certain size and attained a certain level of inertia. It will be the small, nimble companies that will eat their lunch. Unfortunately, for a software person, the need for change was obvious, but not supported by the business. This was frustrating to say the least.

I learned many things not to do. I believe my philosophy for managing people was solidified from theory into practice. I was forced to work outside my box of purely technical topics and found that I was good at a broader range of topics. All of these were good lessons to learn. But it was time to move on.

I am looking forward to doing better at 3M.

I don’t think much of it anymore, but many people still keep their media (audio and video) on shiny pieces of plastic which they store in pieces of furniture near their entertainment areas. Dutifully extracting them from their cases each time they want to listen to or watch them. I was a very early adopter of digitizing my audio and then of video and now take it for granted that I can have all my media anywhere I want it.

Devices such as the iPod and services like iTunes Match and Spotify make this easier for music and for individual devices, but there is still a challenge with keeping huge amounts of media available and sharing it with different listening or viewing devices in the house.

I’ve built a system at our house that works for me. It is clearly a geek system and not for everyone, however, a number of people have asked questions about it, so I thought I would share some of the details for others to benefit. Before I get into the details, I will state from the beginning that I am a huge fan of the Apple ecosystem and while not all components of my system are Apple branded, most of them are. If this is not your style, that’s cool, but you may not find this as interesting.

Storage

The first realization one has when digitizing media is that it requires huge amounts of storage. An average CD can run from 100MB to 150MB which is not so bad anymore, but a movie can easily top 1GB. Therefore, the heart of any system is storage. Many people, myself included, started by storing their media on their computer itself. This is the simplest way to do so and the default for any media program (my choice being iTunes). However, as your collection grows and as many of us switch to either using laptops as their primary computers or switch to using SSDs, storage is limited on your computer. External hard drives can extend this lifetime for a little while, but they quickly become clumsy. Network storage becomes the answer.

In my system, I have a dedicated storage server on my network (you can read about its early creation here). This server runs Open Indiana (a descendant of Open Solaris) given that operating system’s ability to handle huge amounts of storage. It currently has approximately 11TB of storage space. This is clearly overkill for most people and more technical hassle than most people want to deal with (myself included, sometimes). But, there are plenty of low maintenance network attached storage (NAS) devices on the market that can serve the same purpose. I used to use a device from ReadyNAS (now a part of Netgear) and it did a great job with minimal fuss.

Any of these systems will let you access your music over your home network. I configure iTunes to use the server as its primary storage location, so it is transparent to me.

Software

As I mentioned above, I use iTunes to manage my media. While iTunes is not perfect, it does bring with it many benefits as part of the Apple ecosystem. Syncing my music and video to my iPhone or iPad is simple and transparent. Streaming audio and video to other devices (more below) is also simple.

While iTunes is capable of ripping CDs to be used digitally, they do not provide the same facility for getting video you already own on physical media onto your computer. There are any number of apps out there to accomplish the task, I have been very happy with Handbrake. Once I have the media files in iTunes I can properly label the movies or TV shows.

Watching and Listening

While listening to music and watching video on a computer is ok, it is hardly ideal. Being able to use a TV or stereo to listen to your collection is ideal. For music, I have an Airport Express hooked up to a great 70’s era Harmon Kardon stereo in the living room. iTunes is able to stream audio to that device from my computer and have it play through the stereo. It can be controlled from the Remote app on either an iPad or iPhone. The Airport Express hooks up to your wireless network, so it can be placed anywhere in your house. (It can also act as your only wireless base station if you need it to be.)

For video, I rely on the AppleTV. I now have both a first generation and a second generation one. The second generation ones are far superior to the originals. The new units allow you to stream any media from iTunes to an attached TV. It can also stream video from Netflix to expand your viewing options beyond the media you own.

Given the connection to iTunes, media can be transferred or streamed to any Apple iOS device.

Limitations

I am very happy with what I have set up. but there are limitations. iTunes is designed to be used by a single user on a single computer. While I store the media on a server that other computers in the house have access to, only 1 copy of iTunes can manage it. This poses some challenges for us as both Tiffany and I have our own computers and portable devices. We haven’t come up with a great solution yet.

All of my setup is designed to be used within the house. The only way to move media outside the house is by transferring it one of our devices (iPod, iPhone, or iPad). This is great if you know what you want when you go on a trip for example, but not so great if you are traveling or at work and all of a sudden want o listen to music you didn’t bring with you. again, I don;t have a great solution. I can get to my home network and transfer files, but it is always clumsy. I looked forward to iTunes Match being able to help with music, but I exceed their 25,000 song limit. Hopefully that will be increased eventually.

Miscellaneous

As I said earlier, media is big. If you plan on moving lots of it around your network, a fast network is critical. While we have wireless at home and that works great for playing media, all of the machines that might need to copy files around are wired for greater speed.

I spent half a day last week trying something new. I have a very good relationship with the Cohen Career Center at William and Mary and have been on their Advisory Board for a year or so now. But this was my first time working directly with students by conducting mock interviews. This is a great opportunity for the students to get some idea of what being interviewed is like but more importantly get feedback beyond either an offer letter or a black hole of nothingness. Learning by binary response is quite hard.

I had one interaction that stuck with me. One student when I asked them why they had chosen their major that they had looked at the earning potential of careers. I am sure this is a very common thing to do and I understand the temptation. It is an easy metric to compare, it translates very well into the American “stuff” culture, and it is much easier to compare than “happiness.”

What I have realized over the last 4 years is that being happy in your career is a far more important than purely money. (And before someone says it, yes, I know there is a baseline level of income for safety and security that must be met.) I tried to share with this student that he should choose the career path that he feels passionate about, that will bring him personal fulfillment, that will surround him with great people; making that choice will bring happiness in the long term.

I can say that with certainty because that is what I have been able to do recently. After almost 4 years, I have left my job at Swisslog and have taken a job at 3M Cogent Systems. 3M Cogent is the descendant by acquisition of 3GI, so in a sense I am coming home to my roots. (3GI being my first employer after college.)

It is an understatement to say I am very excited by the move. I have a great team of engineers and even in the initial week I think we have gelled well and will do great things. As I get more into things, I hope I will feel inspired to share observations and lessons I have learned.

Good morning. All of you should be asleep tight now as it is 4am on the east coast. After a very long journey involving 2 planes, 2 trains, a bus, a “gondola”, and a 1.8km walk, I arrived at Stump’s Alpenrose yesterday afternoon. I slept moderately well on the plane, so I wasn’t in too bad of shape and was able to make it through an early dinner and actually go to sleep at a decent time of 9:30pm local time.

The meetings this morning don’t start until noon, so after a standard European breakfast that sadly lacked pretzel rolls (laugenbrotchen) which I can eat at any time of the day. I decided to do another little video entry (see gondola link above for first).

Enjoy

[iframe width=”640” height=”510” src=”/images/6DiS12z2Kg0?rel=0” frameborder=”0” allowfullscreen]

Recent days have showed with clarity that my brain has limited stack space. I have been noticing that I am executing the mental equivalent of Linux’s Out of Memory killer. (You didn’t think you would get a post without geek references, did you?) Basically I find that I am culling things that I just don’t have enough mental energy to deal with at the moment.

The curious thing is that the disposition, good or bad, is irrelevant to hitting that mental limit. There are great things happening in my life right now (like getting married!) as well as less than positive things being worked on. I initially thought that somehow adding more good things going on would counteract the bad things, like matter and anti-matter, but it seems that the effects are purely additive. It is just more things to have to process.

So, my goal in the next few weeks is to try to resolve items so that I don’t feel like I have to ignore things which are important.

Question: If you have effectively immortal galactic dynasties is it possible to have stable control by the eldest? Is infighting inevitable?

Literary analysis has never been my strong point (just ask my AP English teacher), but as I was reading my book over lunch yesterday it sparked a thought I was having fun exploring. Judas Unchained is the second half of a story by Peter F. Hamilton (Pandora’s Star being the first) which at the highest level deals with the conflict of two very different galactic cultures as they meet. This is a very normal plot for science fiction but Hamilton is skilled in creating very deep and wide plotlines that he juggles and intertwines almost to the point of chaos but eventually pulls together. The topic that spurred my question originated in the prequel to this series, Misspent Youth, which, sadly is kind of a shallow book, but introduces the reader to the beginnings of what medical rejuvenation can do to a person. By the time the reader gets to Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, medical rejuvenation is an integral part of society.

In Hamilton’s world, rejuvenation is what it sounds like. As a person reaches an age where they feel the onset of age, they have the ability to be returned back to their 20 year old self. The process takes 9 months during which they are effectively in a coma, removed from society. Optionally memory can be cleaned up, excised, or backed up while they under. This can be done indefinitely; effective immortality. Death is even taken care of as long as you have a recent backup.

The society has formed around two major pillars; the multi-planet government, which I won’t touch on, and the long-lived major family Dynasties which I will. The concept of a familial dynasty is a natural part of human society (think Kennedy, Bush, Windsor, etc.) but practical rejuvenation adds a whole new twist. Death adds a limiting factor to any dynasty for while the family name may continue, the patriarchs and matriarchs are changing as generations age and die. But what happens when you remove that limit?

Hamilton portrays the inevitable growth of the dynasty with the same leadership as the true strength of the organization. Led by a council of the eldest members of the dynasty, it leaves the younger generation free to participate (or not) supported by the great wealth of these families.

I’m not so sure. Being born into a dynasty where your place on the “still alive” family tree can never move up seems like it would result in two main behaviors depending on your personality. If you are not terribly ambitious, riding on the coattails of the dynasty seems to be the obvious choice (and one certainly taken by any number of people even in current day dynastic families). The ambitious personality is where things get tricky for me. If you can be assured the eventually the leaders in your family will die off, patience is a route one can take to power. But without that assurance, where does it lead? Politics? Infighting? Murder? And to make matters worse, if “normal” killing isn’t permanent, what effort do you really have to go through to get rid of someone?

It seems to me that the concept of a family dynasty with rejuvenation is just not sustainable. You either have stagnation as the younger generations have no incentive to apply themselves or chaos due to infighting and political maneuvering.

What do you think?