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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Sun 11 Jul 2004

Crash

Category : Commentary/crash.txt

The server was down for about ten hours yesterday. The building we're on switched over to a new air-conditioning system yesterday and we had to switch off everything for the recommended ten-hour stretch - if we didn't want anything to be damaged in the event of a power surge.

It would have been easy to switch the server over to the spare iMac I had running at home (I've done that before and switched servers, on the fly, within 30 minutes, in the ultimate test of disaster recovery) but somehow, this time, I just let things crash.

It's been difficult to get going the last few days - so many things to do, along so many axes. So it's good to crash and start all over again.

Sorry, if you were trying to get hold of something here. Normal services are resuming and the process of recovery starts now.

Posted at 12:36PM UTC | permalink

Wind

Category : Commentary/wind.txt

I have the answer to my own question. It takes longer to fly back to Singapore than to fly to San Francisco because there is a constant headwind that reduces the speed of the aircraft by about 15-20%. (When flying to San Francisco, the plane was aided by a slight tailwind.) That's why it takes about 20% longer to fly back, increasing the journey by more than 2 hours.

So the next question is: why is there a headwind? And I believe it's like that the whole year round because it always takes longer to fly back. Why does the wind always blow from west to east, at least at high altitudes? What makes this puzzling is because I know, from sailing dinghies off Changi, that the wind usually blow in-shore from the east?

That's why the Peranakans of Singapore - the Straits-born Chinese - made their home along the east coast. Having got to this region longer than the later Chinese immigrants, they know where to get the nice sea breeze, over there at Katong and Changi. But I digress.

A quick search through Google turns up these two articles : What makes the wind? and Weather Systems from West to East.

So the earth's rotation is indeed the cause. But it's counter-intuitive. We should expect to reach Singapore faster when coming back from San Francisco because the earth's rotation swings Singapore back towards us.

But the earth's rotation also causes the hot air that rises from the equator, on its way towards the poles, to move east. This is because, due to something called the Coriolis effect, they maintain the speed of rotation at the equator.

"So, as these winds travel away from the equator, they move eastward relative to the ground beneath them - since the winds have a greater rotational speed than the ground. This explains why high altitude winds blow from west to east. And it is these high altitude winds that, to a large extent, control the weather."

So, mystery solved. But the point I'm getting at is that we can learn almost anything we want from the world-wide web, without going through formal school. Here's to Tim Berners-Lee.

Posted at 12:23PM UTC | permalink

Mon 05 Jul 2004

Last Day in San Francisco

Category : Commentary/GoodbyeSanFrancisco.txt

It's amazing how many places you can get onto the Internet from (for free) via the Airport connection in San Francisco. I've sent mail from a bench in Union Square, a bus stop near Nordstrom and, now, from a Chinese fast food place (Asia Express, I think it's called) near the Villa Florence Hotel. (And, of course, the Apple Store).

It's been a good WWDC. I didn't think sitting inside a convention hall listening to geek-talk could compete with the sights of San Francisco, but I've sat through all the sessions I wanted to attend and found them all interesting.

I hadn't written anything because there's just so much to absorb and there's already so much written elsewhere on the web. Also, I couldn't quite shake off the jet lag. Mostly, at around 4.00 pm San Francisco time (when it's 7.00 am in Singapore), all my systems just want to shut down. It's all I could do to plough through the last two sessions, and then it's time to crash out.

Maybe a summary when I get back. But, first, there's a long 18-hour flight to endure tomorrow. Time to say goodbye to San Francisco.

(PS : Why does it take longer to fly back than to get here? One would have thought that we would be aided by the earth's rotation; you know, Singapore should be rushing towards us just as we're rushing towards it.)

Posted at 1:02AM UTC | permalink

Mon 28 Jun 2004

The Summer of Love

Category : Commentary/haightashbury.txt

On my first visit to San Francisco, I tried to see if I can find Haight-Ashbury without a map. I knew in which general direction it lay, and on my second day, after having meandered through JapanTown, Alamo Square, Fillmore, and Castro, I finally found it. (I had much stronger legs then. These days, the SF 7-day Unlimited City Pass is my best friend. Passing through familiar streets on the buses, I'm amazed at how much ground I had covered on foot, then.)

I'm a child of the sixties, though too far away to be touched by its excesses. Listening to Janis Joplin and, later, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Carol King, I knew quite a bit about Flower Power and the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. (It's funny but I've just finished reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, and those who have read it will know the connections. But I digress.)

The Pacific Ocean is but one huge basin into which both east and west pour its ideas, some of which gets washed up on the other shore, to be re-used in new ways.

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs, and Steel", writes about how it's no accident that civilisation, as we know it, originated and then spread out from around the Mediterranean Sea. Geography played an important role in the diffusion of knowledge. Technology, too, because nowadays, it takes me less time to reach the opposite shore in California than it took the Greeks to sail to Egypt. The Pacific becomes the new Mediterranean Sea.

So, the Californians absorbed Eastern Mysticism and fused into a most attractive form of music and philosophy which, in turn, was consumed by us, the children of the east. I've gone through long hair and bell bottoms.

And made my pilgrimage to Haight-Ashbury.

If you're intrigued, like me, by the ideas Dan Brown stirred up in Da Vinci Code, this is another book to read: "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess - The Conflict Between Word and Image" by Leonard Shlain. Certainly, it has helped me enjoy the proceedings at this morning's SF Gay Pride Day Parade with a certain historical perspective.

Posted at 1:41AM UTC | permalink

Sun 27 Jun 2004

Moscone West

Category : Commentary/moscone.txt

Registration starts for WWDC at Moscone West.

And I've got a nice WWDC bag.

Posted at 2:34AM UTC | permalink

Celebrate your gay life

Category : Commentary/sanfrancisco.txt

It's Gay Pride Day at San Francisco, held on the last Sunday in June. I missed this the last time I was here, so I made sure to look out for it. Keep a look out for their logo. If you didn't know, you would have thought Apple (or at least the old Apple) is the main sponsor for the event. (More pictures from the previous year's event.)

This is a great time to visit San Francisco. And jazz singer Jacqui Naylor has found a new fan.

(Look at that guy on stage on the right. He's translating the vocals for the people with hearing disabilities. Wonderful isn't it?)

Posted at 2:34AM UTC | permalink

Sat 26 Jun 2004

The Most Useful Machine in the World

Category : Technology/theUsefulBook.txt

I've just had a conversation with my wife, using iChat and the wireless network at the San Francisco Apple Store. When the background noise got too loud and I can't hear her, we reverted to using just text. Got to talk to the kid, too.

"It's a free call, how cool can you get?", goes the Apple Panther commercial (I'm sitting at the theatre), as I'm typing this.

And last night, tired out from the long trip over the Pacific, and the long trudge up Powell Street, the silence that awaited me at the hotel room got to be a bit too oppressive. I hadn't had time to think about the trip and, before I knew it, I was there, wishing I was home (the great view that I had of the lights of San Francisco from the hotel room, notwithstanding). So what to do? I decided to turn on iTunes. Music to unpack with, and get your soul back. Lift the gloom. Maybe this is not going to be so bad, after all.

You know, this iBook is probably the most useful Mac that I've ever had. I'm always working on it. If you exclude sleeping hours, I probably spend a lot more time on it, or with it, than without it. Once my camera is recharged, I'll be able to organise the pictures I've taken today. I've trekked up and down the hills today and didn't feel its weight.

I was hoping to find a place I could jack in and get all my mail. The Apple Store is it, as I had hoped. Tomorrow evening, when registration starts for WWDC, I will have another place to connect home.

Nothing, not even having a PC with free Internet access to use at the hotel, beats using your own machine. Everything I need is on my iBook. Wherever I can find an Airport network, that's my office.

A little note to myself. Singtel mobile phone users with Roaming facilities activated can call home by dialing *121*65phone_number#

Posted at 3:40AM UTC | permalink

Fri 25 Jun 2004

Apple Store SF

Category : Commentary/appleStoreSF.txt

I'm at the San Francisco Apple Store. I can get on to the Airport network. And all my mail's coming in. Cool.

Posted at 11:16PM UTC | permalink

Wed 23 Jun 2004

From Chinatown to Chinatown

Category : Singapore/chinatown.txt

I've been so busy working on the traveler's hostel project that I hadn't had time to think about going to WWDC. But the time is almost near and the bag's been packed.

I've been doing a lot of reading about Singapore's Chinatown. It seems odd that Singapore, with its largely Chinese population, should have a Chinatown, or that it would amount to anything beyond token significance. But due to Stamford Raffles' delineating of the city along racial lines, when he established a free port here in 1819, that's the place where most of our forefathers landed, whether they be rich or poor, and that's where our story began.

You can't tell by looking at the tall buildings in the Central Business District, along the fringes of Chinatown, that a lot of places where I walk over today used to be sea. Like where our office stands. Just like Boston's Back Bay, the water had been filled, but in our case with earth from the hills, since flattened, around Chinatown.

There's a lot of history, and tragedy, and not a little heroism, to get from then to now. A lot of writing about Singapore is about its plasticity and lifeless-ness, e.g., about the fake Disneyland-ish facade in today's restored Chinatown. But that's what you get when you leave out the story about the people.

If you care to hear the perspective of one for whom this is home, you may hear a different, more vibrant tune. After all this is what it means to travel, to learn how other people live and see their own world. That's the theme that I'm trying to build for the hostel website. I'm starting to understand things a lot better now, myself, about Singapore, and if anything, whether we succeed or fail with the hostel, this will be its own reward.

So. I'm going to be moving mentally and physically, in the next few days, from one Chinatown to another, in San Francisco. And then back. The experience should be interesting.

And also, finally, to watch Steve Jobs live. This I can't wait.

Posted at 4:00PM UTC | permalink

Thu 10 Jun 2004

Do, Learn, Adapt

Category : Singapore/DoLearnAdapt.txt

I've just finished reading a compilation of the speeches and writings of Mr Tan Kim Lian, CEO of NTUC Income, Singapore's largest provider of general and health insurance, and third largest provider of life insurance.

Having started in 1970 with a share capital of only S$1 million, its asset base now total S$11 billion.

It was a surprisingly enjoyable read because it's clear within the first few pages that, here, we have a brilliant mind - a rare entreprenurial spirit in a government-linked company.

He was constantly exhorting people to "do, learn, adapt" and this reminded me of the diagram that Burke and Morrison drew in the "Business @ the Speed of Stupid" book that I reproduce below :

I like this because it pulls the users and systems developers into a cycle that allows each to do, learn, and adapt from working with the other. It's the yin and the yang of systems development.

Posted at 12:24PM UTC | permalink

The Tenderloin

Category : Commentary/tenderloin.txt

The first time I visited San Francisco many years ago, I stayed in a hotel around the area known as The Tenderloin. Of course, I didn't know a thing about it then. I didn't even know it had a name. My friend who booked the hotel just looked up the cheapest place he could find. Well, we were young then and didn't have much money. (Not that I have very much more now.)

But each evening, as I made my way back from the cable cars, I found myself instinctively edging uphill towards Post or Sutter, in a U-shaped loop, before hurtling back down Leavenworth towards Hotel Verona. I realise now I was tracing the outlines of the Tenderloin.

But I found the Hotel Verona to be pretty decent, even charming, with its flags from many countries outside. There were many backpackers around. And the denizens of the area leave you pretty much alone, save for some loose change. So it was a great, colourful experience.

But the next time I went, it was with my girlfriend (now my wife) and I felt myself more watchful, more alert to the possibilities. Even around Union Square, where we stayed. Where before I enjoyed the colour, now I could feel its edge. Same place, different feeling, different experience. So interesting.

So the kid wants to come and I may have to disappoint him. Grosvenor Suites, looks like it could accomodate the family. But I'll never be able to concentrate on the proceedings at WWDC because I'd rather be with them. Maybe next time, when it's a true holiday, though my wife doesn't believe I'll ever take another break. Wonder how it will feel this time.

Posted at 5:30AM UTC | permalink

Wed 09 Jun 2004

WWDC and Expedia.com

Category : Commentary/expedia.txt

I'm going to WWDC after all.

"Dear Expedia.com Customer,

Reservation has been confirmed by Grosvenor Suites. Your credit card has been charged in full..."

I'm still waiting for the air-tickets to be confirmed by my local travel agency. Expedia.com shows just why traditional intermediaries like travel agencies may go the way of the dinosaurs. I couldn't book the air tickets through Expedia, though, otherwise everything would have been all set by now. And at far lower prices.

"Please allow at least 48 hours for us to send your reservation to the hotel since they would still have to manually input your information into their system."

Well, that solves another riddle. I was wondering how the hotel's reservation system would interface with the portal's system - it's done manually. Isn't there a better way? I'll have a chance to find out, soon.

Posted at 12:12PM UTC | permalink