Category: Personal Reflections

Along the waterfront at Brackett’s Landing in Edmonds, WA.
Via BlackBerry

The view from our afternoon at the beach. Another gorgeous summer’s day in the Seattle area. It would be nice, though, if the young men behind me learned that they can turn down the radio. I guess they expect attractive women to lunge vagina first towards the sounds of overdone bass.

Via BlackBerry

I’ve been toying with the notion of getting a custom domain for this site. Some ideas: electronicpilgrim.com, pilgrimelectronica.com, questionsall.com, carlsetzer.com. Of course, knucklehead.com is already taken.

I’ve been toying with the notion of getting a custom domain for this site. Some ideas: electronicpilgrim.com, pilgrimelectronica.com, questionsall.com, carlsetzer.com. Of course, knucklehead.com is already taken.

We love our 2005 Prius, so I naturally gravitated to this video. Makes the car look nice, though I think the lack of an iPod dock (beyond just an aux cable) is bad. Of course, they offer Bluetooth streaming, so you can play your iPhone tunes through the stereo, which is great. I still am waiting for a car to have a usb port that you can connect with mp3’s and skip the portable player altogether.

Oh, this is delightful.

Today was spent, for the most part, at the Pacific Science Center. Wandering around the halls that my cousin and I walked as kids was both nostalgic, and a bit disconcerting. Though I spent much time over the years there, it has been at least two decades since I’ve been inside the main exhibit space (though I’ve been to the Imax theatre several times). Very little remains of the space we explored. Ok, the walls are still in the same places, and the exterior is almost exactly the same. And the cafe is just as lame, and easy to ignore; and worthwhile, too. Still, there were things that triggered memories. Biking to light lights (the thing was rather rickety and felt like it was 30 years old). The Gemini capsule. A giant moon, though now hidden a bit inside an unrelated exhibit.

As a boy, youth, whatever you wish to call that age, I spent many hours wandering the facility. I first experienced Lazerium here. This was the first place I experienced large computer labs. So much of that is, rightly, gone; replaced by much more contemporary items (or at least by the less obsolete). One thing remains, though. The capturing of science and presenting it to young minds in exciting and dynamic ways. Thus it was, and remains, a treasure for Seattle. I, at least, am glad its here.

Clark Little is a surf photographer (not surfing, please note) with some phenomenal work. You can see more of his work here. Besides the great color effects, the texture and contours he captures are simply stunning. And, as you can see from his video, he earns each shot.

Infoworld has a nice article about the differences between Apple and Palm’s hacker communities. Palm was able to post a polite request to not hack tethering for the Pre…and they responded in the way Palm needed/wanted.

The writer opines that “Palm’s hands-off approach may be a reaction to the frenzy and enthusiasm surrounding attempts to hack the original iPhone”. Perhaps, though probably not. This writer is thinking, in typical style, much too short-term. Consider, instead, Palm’s long history with the development community. In the pre-Pre, Treo days, Palm was good about letting anyone develop. And they did a good job in encouraging those relationships. It makes sense to me that this work, all those years ago, is now paying off in good-will.

This is a lesson that the business community needs to latch on to. Work on developing good relations NOW with your primary stakeholders. Then, when you need help, are challenged in some way, you have a bank of trust. When you only show “love” to a group when you want or need something, cynicism is the result (duh).