For those of you who are less inclined to keep track of such things, I’m here to tell ya’ that Speed and the Mach 5 are back.  The new Speed Racer movie will fill a big screen near you on May 9.

The Speed Racer movie was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers of Matrix trilogy fame.  That alone should make it cool.  The movie appears to be a wild combination of colors, animation, and visual effects with real (non-animated) actors.  I’m sure it’s a trip given the people responsible for it.

Speed Racer was my Luke Skywalker long before Luke was a gleam in George Lucas’ eye.  He was my hero.  And the Mach 5.  What can I say . . . In elementary school, I covered every notebook I had with renderings of the car.

The Mach 5 could do everything and was not bound by the laws of physics.  At least not those of this planet.  All this power was placed in the driver’s hands through buttons on the steering wheel.  Year’s ago, I reproduced a diagram of the buttons for my kids.

My favorite feature was the rotary saws that extended through the front bumper.  They could mow down a forest at 100mph.  Oh yeah.  The best example is when Speed escaped impending danger in the famous Mammoth Car episode.

YouTube Video - Speed Racer & MAMMOTH CAR

I rarely attend movies on the opening day, but I think I’m going to make an exception for this one.  You can check out the trailers for the movie here.

Maybe the modern Speed will even make out with Trixie.

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When I was a teenager, I felt that I made my fair share of MacGyver-esque moves. I could do a complete carburetor replacement on the side of the street using duct tape (in-a-pinch gasket replacement) and pencils (for the vacuum lines, of course). I circumvented the security on my high-school’s teletype machine using a paperclip and a telephone cord and I made a canon that fired potatoes using a plastic tube, an old barbeque igniter and a can of aerosol antiperspirant.

My moves always paled in comparison to what my friend John could do, though. John had and has the ability to diagnose a problem and then take an almost instantaneous inventory of the tools he has at hand to deal with it. This was never more clear than when the two of us hopped into a rental car late one night in a San Francisco parking garage. When I turned the key to start the car, nothing happened. We could see that there was plenty of power - lights and accessories worked great - but there was not even a hum from the engine compartment. We popped open the hood and saw . . . nothing.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, John diagnosed that the solenoid that engages the starter motor wasn’t moving into place. He then went at how to fix it with the tools we had at hand which, in a rental car, don’t amount to much.  John then - don’t try this at home - pulled out the oil dipstick and used it to short the starter motor directly to the battery (you only need one connection because the starter motor, like most of the car’s electronics, is grounded through the chassis), routing the roughly 1 zillion amps of current through a skinny piece of metal that although wiped fairly clean, was still covered with a layer of flammable liquid.  The car started, we didn’t die in the process, John saved the day.

I thought of John when I was pointed to this YouTube video by a post on Toolmonger.  It demonstrates how you can create an emergency light source out of just a pencil and a couple of pieces of wire.  Very handy.

Did I ever mention how I once used my then girlfriend’s pantyhose as a fan belt replacement?  I’ll leave that for another post.

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Recently, very good friends invited us to a dinner at their home that was catered by Walter Scheib.  Scheib was the chef at the White House for both Clinton administrations and the first G.W. Bush administration.

The food was fabulous and unique, as you would expect.  Mr. Scheib’s stories about the First Families and serving upwards of 1,000 guests in America’s first home, were terrific.  Between courses, he talked about what it’s like to work with the families of the President in close quarters as well as the culinary likes and dislikes of each.  How Chelsea Clinton enjoyed “helping out” in the kitchen and how the Bush twins were, unsurprisingly, given to having last-minute parties which had to be catered by the White House staff.

His discussion about how Hilary Clinton drove the change in White House cuisine from the European-oriented style established by Jacqueline Kennedy to a modified American style (foods from around the US combined with styles from other US locales) was fascinating.  As was his discussion of how Hilary insisted on fresh food, leaner meals and natural ingredients, much to her husband’s chagrin and how George Bush’s culinary tastes mostly includes those meals prepared with cheese sauce.

He never discussed the politics of the Presidents nor did he offer his opinion about the families in any political way.  He repeatedly stated how both First Families he worked with were good people and how he enjoyed working with them.

At the end of the meal, there was an open question and answer period.  As you would expect, the guests tried to bait the chef into revealing unseemly stories about the families.  He did not.  While there were many interesting questions and answers, I thought the most interesting came about when someone asked how large the White House kitchen is.  Apparently, it’s only about 900 square feet.  The follow-up was obvious - how do you cook so much food (for a state dinner, for example) in such a little kitchen?  Chef Scheib didn’t miss a beat when he said, “it’s nice to have the Army at your beck and call.”  It seems that with very short notice, the chef had 18-wheelers filled with refrigerators and stoves backed up to the White House.  Wouldn’t you like to have those at your disposal at your next barbeque?

If you ever get the chance to taste some of the fantastic food Chef Scheib creates or even just get a chance to hear him speak, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 . . .

Popularity: 16% [?]

I may be the last person on the planet to learn this stuff, but just in case, I thought I would tell everyone here about two Google search features that I just ran across: view:timeline and view:map.  As is true for almost everything that comes out of Google, I believe that this search functionality is in “beta.”

Say you were interested in the history of Napoleon.  You could go to one of a variety of reference documents on the web and read a load of stuff to get the details of what you’re looking for, or you could type “napoleon view:timeline” into any Google form and you’d get something like this:

Or, say you’re a more graphical person and you’d like a picture of Napoleon’s conquests.  You can enter “napoleon view:map” into the Google search form and get something like this:

OK, it’s not perfect.  The push-pins in the US don’t really work, but most of the references were dead-on.

Very cool stuff.  Definitely worth checking out (if you haven’t already) and trying to remember for when you actually need a tool like this.

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It seems that I’ve stumbled upon one of the greatest agricultural breakthroughs of our time - grass that never needs mowing.  I have a yard full of the stuff.  Low maintenance, time-saving and great for the environment.

There appears to be only two problems with it.  It only comes in one color - brown, and big clouds of dirt, reminiscent of the dust bowl during the depression, get kicked up when you walk through it.  Oh yeah, and it seems to catch fire really easily.

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My father was born in 1928 and will turn 80 next January.  Like many of his generation, he’s struggled a bit to adopt all the new technology that’s been thrown at him over the years, but he’s made a pretty good attempt.  Email and cell phones have mostly made it into the mix, but IM, text messaging and Facebook will probably never be part his life.

I often wonder what it’s like to have lived for most of the 20th century.  Not so much for the sheer number of changes that took place during the century, but for their magnitude.  My feeling is that the rate of change is higher now, but most changes are of a much lower magnitude than in the last 100 years.  For the most part, modern changes tend to be more incremental. 

Sometimes, this becomes evident in things my father reflects on or inadvertently says.  A few days ago, I gave him a call (on his cell phone, which I’m still surprised he even owns) and he said:

Can I call you right back?  I’m on a long distance call.”

A long distance call . . . I can even remember back in the 60s, when I was a kid, thinking that long distance calls were for times when bad news had to be conveyed, because it was the only time we could justify the cost hurdle.  The whole idea that a long distance call is any different from a local call is almost a forgotten concept now that a call is virtually transparent and is measured and billed in time units, not distance.

He said it so naturally, it took me a minute to understand what was so weird about the statement when considered in modern terms.  If I were a better listener, I bet more of these gems would become obvious to me.

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When I was a kid, there were two toys I played with constantly, Barbie and Ken Legos and Spirograph.  I think I bought a Spirograph for my kids when they were younger.  I don’t know what happened to it, but I’m pretty sure that the plastic gears were used as Frisbees and lost.

For those who have never used one, the toy was made up of plastic geometric shapes with gear teeth along their edges.  One of these pieces was pinned (yeah, real pins - like they’d ship those in a kids’ toy today . . .) to a piece of cardboard and another, with holes inside it at various points in its interior where the artist placed the tip of a pen, was moved along the edge of the fixed shape so that the gears meshed as it moved.  This caused the moving shape to rotate with the pen leaving behind interesting mathematical curves (known as  hypotrochoids and epitrochoids).  I wish I could say that, as a kid, I struggled with the toy’s mathematical foundation, but I just thought the curves looked cool.

I could sit for hours playing with a Spirograph.  Today, my friend John, pointed out this cool site that had the following script running on the page.  The script/widget is there to be copied and displayed on other web sites, so here it is for all of you who have never used a Spirograph, long for the days when you played with one or, like most of us, now have the attention span of a gnat and need instant gratification without the risk of fatally impaling yourself with one of those pins.

As John points out, it’s interesting to look at the integer and non-integer ratios of the fixed and moving shapes.  It’s also just fun to look at the cool results.

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Boeing took the wraps off their first fully-built 787 Dreamliner plane on July 7.  The company hasn’t released a new plane since 1995 and is now the number 2 plane producer in the world behind Airbus Industries.  The plane looks great and has terrific specs - both for airlines and for passengers (note how wide and tall the cabin is in the picture below).  Faster, lighter (much of it made of carbon fiber), more fuel-efficient and sharing a modern cockpit design with the 777.  Apparently, Airbus planes all share a similar cockpit design so there is much less training required for a pilot to move from one class of plane to another.  This has been a huge competitive advantage for Airbus.

To me, the most interesting thing about the introduction of this plane is that  it represents a big conceptual departure from what Airbus is doing with their latest plane design, the A380.  The A380 is a gi-normous plane with multiple decks running the full length of the plane.  Whole cities can be transported on this thing in a single flight.  If it had existed after WWII, the Berlin Airlift would have been a week-long affair.  The A380 is so large that many airports will need to make structural changes to support it.  In contrast, Boeing is going for a plane that is larger than the 767, but smaller than the 777.  The plane can easily land at existing facilities and fits into the current structure of things with no major logistical changes.  Philosophically, Boeing is going for moving fewer people more frequently as opposed to Airbus’ goal of moving more people en masse.  We’ll see how it plays out.

So far, the 787 is Boeing’s most successful plane in its history with almost 700 orders (the total production run through 2015) before it’s logged a single hour in the air.  The first customer delivery of the plane is scheduled for May, 2008.  You can find Boeings 787 Fact Sheet here.  Below are some extracted facts about the plane:

• Speed at which it will fly

  • Mach 0.85 (about the same as a 777 and 747)

• 787 vs. 777 on composites and aluminum (by weight)

  • 787
    - 50 percent composites
    - 20 percent aluminum
  • 777
    - 12 percent composites
    - 50 percent aluminum

• How much lighter is 787 from A330-200

• 30,000 - 40,000 lbs.

• More fuel efficient

• 20 percent more fuel efficient than similarly sized airplanes

• Produces fewer emissions

• 20 percent fewer than similarly sized airplanes

• Better cash seat mile costs than peer airplanes

• 10 percent

• Amount of copper wiring eliminated

• 60 miles

• Anticipated maintenance savings

• 30 percent

• US and non-US content on the 787

• Roughly 75 percent US
  Roughly 25 percent non-US

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The July edition of Popular Science (it doesn’t look like there’s an on-line version available) has a great article titled, The Worst Jobs in Science.  The article outlines the 10 worst jobs available for scientists around the world - most with fairly vivid descriptions of what makes each of the jobs stink (some literally).  He’s my summary . . .

10. Whale-feces researcher - search the seas for floating whale crap to be able to determine the state of whales in an area.  Apparently, whale poop contains loads of info about the whale that left the package behind and it’s loads easier than getting similar data from a whale in motion.

9. Forensic entomologist - determining the time of death of a murder victim by studying how maggot infested he/she is.  Yum.

8. Olympic drug tester - standing by while thousands of athletes pee into cups, then testing each urine sample for a variety of performance enhancing drugs. 

7. Gravity research subject - spend 21 straight days in a bed, at a 6-degree, head-down angle to help determine the problems caused by lack of gravity including, atrophied muscles, bone degeneration and heart problems.  Where do I sign up?

6. Microsoft security grunt - work 24/7 to address the security holes in Microsoft’s products.  As the article states:

. . . to most hackers, crippling Microsoft is the geek equivalent to taking down the Death Star, so the assault is relentless.”

5. Coursework carcass preparer - be one of the people that prepare the myriad of frogs, bugs, pigeons, sharks and pigs for dissection by ninth graders.  Apparently, the job includes the happy euthanization task required before putting the specimens in a bottle full of formaldehyde. 

4. Garbologist - like an archeologist except you work through trash.  Recent trash like the stuff you just took to the curb last night.

3. Elephant vasectomist - as if snipping the reproductive parts of a many-ton mammal weren’t difficult enough - a single testicle is one-foot across, it turns out that in an elephant the parts that require snipping are on the inside, meaning that you have to cut through some seriously tough skin to get to them.

2. Oceanographer - this one seems pretty normal, right?  I guess in the science world this is a bad news/bad news kinda job.  Basically, everything an oceanographer studies these days exposes more troubling information about how global warming is real, the planet is dying and that we won’t be eating sushi in the next 30 years.

1. Hazmat diver - These guys dive into sewers, toxic waste dumps, used medical material and inside nuclear reactors.  Then they clean ‘em up.  One story told in the article is about a diver that had to dive into a waste lagoon of factory pig farm that not only contained pig urine and liquid pig feces, but also included all the needles that had been used to inject the pigs with hormones and antibiotics.  OK, I’ve got the picture.  You guys definitely win.

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I mentioned that I worked for DEC to someone recently and they had no idea what I was talking about.  Granted, the person was young, but he was an adult.  Funny how the second largest computer company in the world in its time, and the inventor of the mini-computer could be so quickly forgotten. When I joined DEC in 1981, revenues were well below the peak of the roughly $14B they would hit in 1989.  In fact, I think they may have been about $3B.  Digital was still basking in the glory of the VAX, which was released in the late 70s, and was totally disrupting the old mainframe business dominated by IBM.

DEC’s headquarters was in an old woolen mill in Maynard, Massachusetts, not some shiny steel and glass structure in Silicon Valley.  That is part of what made it cool to work there.  In its own way, the place was sort of the Googleplex of the time and the company was innovative, fast-moving and a blast to work for.

Like any company, DEC did a lot of stupid things.  Let’s face it, the company doesn’t exist any more which probably means it made at least a few key mistakes.  One thing it did profoundly well, though, was recruit new talent.  The company was full of smart people that attracted other smart people.  The company also made a committed effort at making its computers available on college campuses around the world.  In a time where university computing meant punch cards and big black boxes, DEC hooked young engineers and scientists with interactive computing.  For those of you who can’t imagine life without a GUI, you probably have trouble understanding the magnitude of this change.  It was huge and made loads of young people (like me) want to work for the company driving this sea change.

This marketing fed the company’s almost insatiable need to hire and grow in the 80s.  In fact, the company grew almost uncontrollably (there’s one of those key mistakes).  As such, there never seemed to be many good managers around (I was fortunate to work for a good one - thanks, Alain).  For renegade employees willing to work hard, the environment was unreal - all the resources you could want at your disposal.  For those who wanted to slack off, though, there was always a place to hide.  We called it, “retirement for the young.”

The group that I worked in was an especially good one.  It was in DEC’s semiconductor engineering facility in Hudson, MA.  In those days, DEC was pouring money into semiconductor physics, manufacturing and software tools for the development of processors.  I was fortunate enough to be in a small team of really smart people that always kept the bar high.  The group created some incredible stuff back then, in fact, some of the underlying technology we created is still in use today in one form or another.

When I was hired, I was a software guy who had just been through two failed startups - one because of someone else’s mistakes, one because of my own - I’m a slow learner.  Within a year or so at DEC, though, I was running the internal chip design course and designing my own microprocessor (the rectangle on the badge above is one of the chips).  That was the kind of huge opportunity that was available in the company if you wanted it.  It was easier back then to make such a domain leap, of course - wire widths weren’t measured in wavelengths of light, but with a tape measure.  You could practically draw the physical layout with a crayon.  The important thing was that someone like me had the chance to make that kind of move.  It just doesn’t happen often today.

I left DEC in 1984 to start Viewlogic Systems with four other guys that I worked with.  Viewlogic was a big success and a great experience, but it was really difficult leaving DEC.  Many of the things I learned there influenced what I did when building new companies - mostly positive things, I think.  I’m sure it’s just my fond memories of the place, but I think that DEC had a huge impact on how we look at and run technical businesses today.  It’s too bad that it isn’t remembered more (or at all) for the hugely positive affect it has had on many of today’s leading technology companies.  It was even one of the first venture-backed companies in the US having taken $70,000 to start up in 1957.

I can only hope that some day people who worked at one of the companies that I have been responsible for will have similar positive memories of their experiences while employed there.  If so, much of it will have been influenced by my own great experience at the once great company, DEC.

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