Jeremy de Souza

People we lost outside in 2009

As we look forward to 2010, it’s sad that we lost so many inspirational athletes in extreme skiing, rock climbing, base jumping/wingsuit flight and ice climbing:

• Ueli Gegenschatz - flight
• John Bachar – rock climbing
• Shane McConkey – ski/ski-base
• Guy Lacelle – ice climbing

This video has some incredibly inspirational footage of Ueli in flight.

 

The Alpinist feature on John Bachar. A stonemaster remembered.

A look back at Shane McConkey:

 

Guy Lacelle video tribute at the Alpinist.

Ray Allen on routines

In the Boston Globe:

"As the Celtics kick off their campaign for an NBA championship tonight in the opening round of the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, Allen will leave nothing to chance. He will line up for the tip exactly as he has for his other 73 games. His pregame ritual does not waver: a nap from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., a meal of chicken and white rice at 2:30, an arrival time at the gym at precisely 3:45 to stretch. Allen will shave his head, then walk out to the court at exactly 4:30. He will methodically take shots from both baselines, both elbows, and the top of the key."

Genetic Non-Disclosure bill clears congress

Now, maybe 23andme.com can take flight

From Wired:

"The legislation's passage could make consumers and patients more willing to have their DNA tested for disease-indicators, which could swing the door wide-open for so-called personalized medicine in which genetic and genomic data is used to tailor treatments. It could be a major win for genomic testing companies like 23AndMe and Navigenics, who are collecting and analyzing unprecedentedly large amounts of genetic information from their clients."

Tellme founder on life after being acquired by Microsoft

"A really great entrepreneur ultimately has to follow the best path forward for the employees, shareholders and the vision that you are pursuing," McCue said. "I am pretty confident those three things will be on Jerry's mind when he finally makes his decision."

Read the Wired article here.

Seattle vs Silicon Valley

Last week I attended Ignite Seattle, which is a local Seattle tech/startup/innovation community event. I ran into my friend Fil and we ended up talking about about how Silicon Valley is highly conducive for startups because failure and risk-tasking is so ingrained into the culture. People gravitate towards taking big entrepreneurial bets because everyone around them does the same.

When I was moving to Seattle, the valley was the only other place I considered going. Having made Seattle home and worked here a few years I don't regret the choice one bit. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing :)

Here are some thoughts floating around the media/blogs:

Seattle taps its inner Silicon Valley - NYTimes on teh Seattle startup scene

How green was my valley - Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on the merits of Seattle as a home to startups

An Outsider's Flawed View of Silicon Valley - Michael Arrington's smackdown of Kelman's post

Rambo, meet Silicon Valley... - Kelman's response

Microsoft employees like the Clintons

I'm not that surprised.

Hillary Clinton
Microsoft       $129,734
Google          $46,610
Yahoo           $15,600

Barack Obama
Google          $97,771
Microsoft       $68,005
Yahoo           $24,288

Read the Wired post here.

Google/Doubleclick

With Microsoft bid for Yahoo at $45b afoot, more than a few employees at MSFTare talking about the deal. I was chatting with a coworker about the deal and the Google Doubleclick merger eventually came up.

I remembered this New York Times blog entry a while back that's worth looking at:

Microsoft's argument against Google/Doubleclick marriage

The article links to a diagram modelling the effect of the merger on the online advertising space:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/technology/bitsonlinead.prf.pdf

Seattle Earthquake Map

"Some scientists say the new Seattle seismic hazard assessment may spur changes:

Engineers may need to rethink how to rebuild the 520 bridge.

Municipal officials may need to consider new building rules for areas in the higher danger areas.
New High Risk Areas: Northern Montlake, University Village Area, Interbay Area"

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/335189_seismic12.html#themap

The move into the city ...

I decided that I no longer wanted to both live *and* work in Redmond, so I decided to do something about it. I bought a condo in downtown Seattle. This is my view now:

The view aside, I really am enjoying urban life. It's so much easier to see many of my friends and just engage a whole new set of experiences. Seattle is an awesome city and I'm glad to right in the middle of it.

I really did enjoy life in the suburbs while I lived there with my girlfriend, but when faced with moving/buying, I decided to choose commuting from the city instead of commuting from an even more remote location in the suburbs.

Any of my friends would know that I really love driving, but I find it much more enjoyable and productive to commute to work by bus. Especially when they have WiFi. Even for fun in the city, I can pretty much walk everywhere. I'm definitely going to keep my car, but I sleep just a little sounder with a considerably lighter carbon footprint.

I simply don't believe that low-density suburban sprawl is sustainable. I would recommend people watch this talk: The tradegy of suburbia given by James Howard Kunstler 

CSO Summit in NYC

I was in NYC the week after labor day for the Microsoft Chief Security Officer summit in Manhattan. It was a good trip. I got a chance to learn what issues are on the minds of the CSO's of our major customers. Great data for the next release of Exchange.

I also got a chance to do a bit of sightseeing and take a few pictures. I hung out in Times Square, checked out Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library.

Flickr set is posted here.

So everyone knows that air travel is terrible these days but it's still disasspointing to repeatedly sit on the tarmac for 2+ hours at JFK. This was the nature of my return trip home. 

Rattlesnake Ledge

We planned to hike to Camp Muir on Sunay but alas the weather did not appear conducive at 7AM. Instead, Jeff and I went for a shorter local hike to Rattlesnake Ledge. We did actually see a snake on the trail but of course it wasn't a rattlesnake.

I've read some trail reviews that this hike is really really crowded. My recommendation is pick a day when the weather could be less than ideal and start early - we found the hike relatively peacefull. The traffic was really picking up when we headed down in the afternoon.

The entire Flickr set is posted here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremydesouza/sets/72157601411282299/

HP PC gets personal campaign

I thought this HP ad featuring Jay-Z was pretty cool when it first surfaced.

Then my brother sent me this great ad featuring Bill Gates for Windows Home Server product which is on the market this fall:

Video: Microsoft Home Server HP Comercial

Mt Pilchuck

I climbed Mt. Pilchuck in North Cascades with Jeff a couple of weeks. He also wrote about it here, albeit more promptly than me! I hadn't been hiking since last summer so I found it pretty challenging at some points. There is a great lookout at the top which affords some great views.

The entire Flickr photoset is posted here.

Facebook iPhone Poll

Interesting:

Harvesting coal from mountaintops

These pictures posted on Flickr are of mountaintop coal removal in the Appalachian mountains. I saw this on Digg. Quite upsetting if you love mountains.

Photo credit: iLoveMountains.org
http://www.ilovemountains.org/

Forget BMW & Mercedes

At lunch today, a couple of friends were trashing BMW and raving about Mercedes AMG. Later today I came across this article about AMG in the Nytimes which talks about all the different AMG models. Regardless I think Audi will be the next performance and design leader for the next couple of years. Have you seen the R8? I totally agree with Diego Rodriguez's assessment that Audi is on fire. Read his post about the RS4 and the California Mile.

Leopard chasing Vista

I just saw this article written by Mary Jo Foley that questions the originality of features in Leopard. "What struck me at the June 11 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) event wasn’t the glitzy demos, the rockstar-like worship of Apple CEO Steve Jobs or the “I’m Steve Jobs” parody video by the “I’m a PC” guy. Instead, it was the excitement by the 5,000 WWDC attendees about many technologies in the forthcoming Mac OS X “Leopard” release that already exist in Windows Vista." Don't forget to look at the comments under this article to see how some pro Apple readers reacted.

Opting out of the loyalty program

The argument has been often made that customer analytics benefit both business and consumer. The consumer can get a lower insurance quote or view targeted advertisements while the business can improve their bottom line by choosing which customers are worth pursuing and focus their product line/service offering.

Interesting paper from Carnegie Mellon concludes that consumers are willing to pay a little more for privacy online. It makes me wonder if people would be willing to pay a little more in grocery stores? All the data gathered via loyalty programs ends up in a database which may get sold to other offline or online merchants.

Read the paper here. via News.com

Palm will pay $9/share after Elevation Partners buyin

This is much more exciting than the Palm Foleo.

Flickr Collections

I spent some time this weekend trying to get caught up on uploading old photos to Flickr - I haven't given into uploading all my photos to Facebook yet.

Flickr has this new collections feature which you can use to aggregate all the sets in your account. I always felt that the lack of this feature forced me to create fewer sets and rely more on tagging. It's cool that they have provided another level of hierarchical management.

I'm still not caught up on my europe photos, but here are my collections so far: http://flickr.com/photos/jeremydesouza/collections/

Planet Earth

I'm on the second DVD of the BBC's Planet Earth and I'm still in awe. This is probably the most innovative and beautiful nature/geographical documentary ever filmed in HD. Even if you made it to all the exotic destinations filmed in the series, it's doubtful you would ever experience it like this. 

Woodland Park Zoo

Cherie and I went a couple of weeks ago. Pictures are posted on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/jeremydesouza/sets/72157600185754584/

Legend of Villeneuve

If you've ever followed motorsports, then you've heard of Gilles Villeneuve, father of Jacques Villeneuve. The BBC is running a story on Villeneuve who died today 25 years ago on May 8th, 1982. Recommended reading for any racing fan.