When I was in the valley I talked to a couple of people to understand the state of the venture capital world we’re living in today. It seems not many hardware related start-ups are being funded any more currently. Most of the money goes to Web 2.0 related start-ups or environ-tech companies. This is a little disturbing to me, as I was hoping for a plentiful job market for hardware design engineers after the crash in 2009. But it appears that the cost for putting a business together around hardware is just to steep.
These days you need somewhere in the vicinity of $50Mio to just get anything hardware related going. EDA software licenses, mask making and debug equipment is just so prohibitively expensive, that testing out ideas has become almost impractical. This is left to the big players, the Intels, IBMs and Samsungs of the world. Unfortunately these behemoths of corporations have a very different
risk attitude towards new ventures and are usually much more interested in iterating existing and proven products over and over again. Innovation in the US seems to have slowed significantly with many developments being done now abroad by hungry young companies in Asia, or the Middle East.
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Volvo XC90
One of our friends is driving a Volvo XC90 with the turbo charged V6. I’ve never considered this car in the past, because I was convinced that a seven-seater of this size would require a V8 engine. But from our Mazda CX-7 I’ve learned that the turbo is actually a good choice in hot climates, where the air is much less dense and where you always run the A/C. There, the turbo or super charged engines shine, as they provide power on demand. Obviously they don’t excel in the fuel conservation department, but the driving fun factor easily compensates for that. So after this week-end I’ve come to like the spacious interior of the XC90 while providing a peppy, almost nimble ride. This car definitely makes the short list when considering our next big family car.
Labor Day week-end to Bay Area, CA
Over Labor Day week-end (Sept. 5-7th) we flew out to CA to visit old friends over Labour Day week-end. It was a nice break from the TX summer heat, that has been bogging us down this year with record temperatures. CA welcomed us with pleasant temperatures in the 80ies and blue skies. We stayed at a friend’s place and met lots of people from our former life in CA. The four day trip was very pleasant and Rohan enjoyed exploring his surrounding.
During the flights he was mostly manageable and slept for large stretches. This helped with keeping our sanity.
We both enjoyed coming back to our old home and were reminded of many fond memories we have of the time we lived there. We’ll be back to visit – no doubt.
Alaska airline has picked up the non-stop route between San Jose and Austin after American Airlines has discontinued its service. This is a pleasant surprise, as flying non-stop with a baby is so much more preferable over a connecting flight.
Traveling with car seat, baby diapers and all the equipment that you need for a baby is definitely different from hopping on a plane while I was single…
The person at the other end of the line
in my job I work a lot with cross site teams together on big projects. In this setting it happens at times that you collaborate with some people at the East or West coast that you’ve never met in person. Over the weeks, months, and sometimes years, a mental image of that person emerges in your head from all the interactions that you’re having on a daily basis: Emails, phone conferences, presentations contribute to the mental image you’re building. Then eventually you get to know that person face to face and so far every single time I’ve gotten a big surprise, because the mental image you’ve build never matches the looks of the actual person. Only if you force yourself to not look at that person, the voice is familiar. In some strange way the person that you had in your head gets replaced with its real person. The first couple of days it still conflicts with the mental image you had before, until it slowly fades away. This is a very strange experience every time it happens.
Engine Failure
a couple of weeks ago I got reminded why you’re not supposed to rely on the engine in a powered glider. I was flying cross country, but wasn’t feeling well. After 150km I got low and needed the engine. Close to the chosen airfield I fired up the engine on base and climbed away. Since it was the middle of the afternoon, I soon found another strong thermal and climbed back to cloud base. The flight back home was no problem and I started my final glide from way below glide path, hoping to gain some 2000ft on the way (we had streeting). 60km later I was on glide path for McCready 0 and I decided to press on, leaving behind a 5kts thermal (2.5m/s). Sure enough I hit lots of sink thereafter and found myself 1000ft below glide path soon after. With enough fuel on board I wasn’t worried and I was ready to put it to use should the need arise. The terrain on the last 8 miles to the glider port is almost unlandable, so you always want to carry enough energy into the final glide. Since it appeared that wasn’t going to happen that day I decided to motor home from the last private landing strip. I lifted the engine, turned on the ignition and hit the starter: nothing. Check-list, engine full out, ignition on, throttle closed, choke, starter. Again silence. Now only 600ft AGL my heart started pumping. Gear down, airfield is to the left, stay in glide range. Voltage check: 11.2V. Wow, this should read at least 12.6V, 11.2 is awfully low. But there’s enough power to run the ignition and fuel pump, just not the starter. I decide to dive and try to windmill the propeller to a start and use this maneuver to make my base leg. When I push the nose over to gain airspeed my altitude drops to 250ft AGL – not very comfortable. Phubb, phubb, phubbbububbbb, and the engine fires! I pull up, control my airspeed carefully to not stall and at the same time to not overspeed the engine under full power. When everything is stable I turn left on final and fly along the runway under power to climb away. Another voltage check reveals that the alternator is not working. I now run fully on battery power. I decide to motor the last 8 miles to my home field, as I cannot be sure to have enough battery power left to retract the engine after shut down. In that case my glide ratio deteriorates to 16:1. After a couple of tense minutes I reach the field uneventfully and am still able to stow away the motor. Upon closer inspection I later find out that one of the copper cables from the alternator had disconnected from corrosion and therefore the alternator didn’t produce any current. That was easy to fix and now everything is back to normal. Nevertheless this incident served as a reminder to never completely rely on that metal thermal in the back. One day it might just not be there for you to bail you out…
Tidbit of life
Murphy is watching: just as we get ready to fly out to California over Labour Day week-end this year, things get a bit crazy. Both my cars have been acting up and I had to fix the Explorer last night to be able to drop the dogs off this morning. Checky-mark.
Last night we had to pack, but friends from CA flew into town and we wanted to meet and greet them, since we hadn’t seen them in a while. That pushed out our other activities that night and we only got to bed by 1am. 5hours of sleep should suffice for one night.
It was my night to watch over RoRo (we take turns) – usually not a big deal. Normally he sleeps through the night and wakes up around 6am, which is when I wanted to get up anyway. But the baby had different plans this time. He woke up at 3:30a and refused to go back to sleep until 4:50a. I tried every trick in the bag and nothing worked. That has never happened before. I went back to sleep and delayed my alarm to 6:40a, but getting up in the morning was torture nevertheless. With the leftovers of cold that I’ve been battling over the last three weeks I was in everything but good spirits this morning. But the dogs had to be dropped off and I had to go to work.
When I showed up at our friends place who’ll watch the dogs I rang the door bell of their neighbors – they weren’t too happy. On the way to work my check engine light on the Explorer came on again, but I made it to work – clunker, clunker!
And it’s only Friday morning. Let’s see what the rest of the week-end will bring. Go with the flow …
netbook
This post is written on a netbook computer – an Asus EeePC 900A. I got this machine this week from Woot! for the incredible amount of $179 + tax and shipping. It comes with a 4 GB SSD hard drive and is completely quiet. But the best part (and the main reason why I’ve bought it) is that I’ve actually designed the floating point adder for the Intel Atom CPU in this machine. It makes me smile to know, that every time I open a menu, my little adder has to go to work.
Wonders of nature – a growing baby
Watching our baby grow is a truly amazing experience. Everyday you feed him lots of food and a small amount of the provided molecules are going to be used to grow his bones, brain and and other body parts. It makes you wonder how these molecules actually know their way to insert themselves into the right place. And it happens over and over again, baby after baby. And while science has very detailed understanding of many parts of our body, nobody really understands how this amazing process of growing a human being really works. We can only sit and watch in awe this wonder unfolding in front of our eyes every day. Have you ever wondered how this wound you got from falling on your knee actually knows how to heal?
This reminds me of some work I’ve done in the past when I worked on fractal compression algorithms. There, a picture is decompressed by using similar puzzle parts from a domain pool over and over again to build the final image by iterating on a recursive function. This function is defined to converge towards the original image. So the longer you iterate, the closer you reconstruct the original image. Could it be that our DNA encodes such a converging recursive function of the human being, that if we feed these puzzle parts to it (the molecules we consume), it ends up building the same organism again and again – not identically, but approximately the same?
It’s an intriguing thought.
Fuel grades
In the US we have usually three different gasoline octane grades to choose from. In the south that’s 87, 89 and 91 octane (this is different from the European number). Modern fuel injected cars can usually consume any of the fuels without experiencing the knocking phenomenon in combustion engines. This is due to the engine computers, that advance or retard ignition timing based on many inputs from the engine. The price per gallon differs about 25-29cents between the lowest and grade and highest grade fuel. So common recommendations say to use any fuel grade you want, unless you put high stress on the engine, like towing a trailer, or driving lots of uphills. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it might be actually cheaper overall to use the more expensive high grade fuel over the lower grade. How’s that? That’s because the mileage of the car deteriorates with the lower grade fuel. It’s enough to make up for the difference in price – at least on a turbo charged vehicle like the Mazda CX-7. Instead of achieving 23 mpg in highway driving we only saw 19 mpg on 87 fuel.
Another interesting observation is that with rising fuel prices (as we’ve experienced them in 2008 when we paid up to 4.25 per gallon) the cost of driving a car that requires 91 octane fuel becomes relatively cheaper than one that consumes 87. That’s because the price delta between 91 and 87 stays usually constant in absolute terms (25c), so percentage wise the gap shrinks with rising gas prices. This led to the interesting scenario, where it was cheaper to drive my more fuel efficient BMW which consumes 91 preferably (21mpg), over the Ford Explorer sipping on 87 (16mpg).
The monetary value of human life
Interesting headline, isn’t it? Why would anyone volunteer to write about this (your newspaper doesn’t)? When we were children we all learned that you can’t put a price tag on a single human life. It’s unethical and also violates the dignity of humans. Sure, that’s one way to look at it. When studying the fine print of my health insurance I’ve learned that other people have since stepped up to the task and actually put a price tag on my life. Mine is currently 2 million dollars. That’s the accumulated life benefit limit on my insurance. So after that you’re pretty much on your own – (get ready to die, no-body’s paying for you here any more). So after the initial shock, that some company has defined how much my life is worth, I thought who else might be inclined to put a value on human life. Turns out companies do it all the time (don’t they have a conscience?) – i.e. car companies that need to determine if they need to have a recall (number of cars with this problem * probability of failure * cost for lost life >=? cost for recall). Insurance companies do it (you carry life insurance, don’t you?). So in business it’s quite common to put a $$$ amount on a human life. Which leads me to the following thought: yesterday there was a suicidal man with a gun at the intersection of two of Austin’s most traveled highways, threatening to kill himself. After a two-hour stand-off with the Austin police the person was taken into custody unharmed. Meanwhile traffic came to a grinding standstill for those two hours. So can I now calculate the loss in GDP contribution from the created traffic jam and compare that with the value of the person’s life? Should the police use this to decide when to intervene or walk away? Police over megaphone: “You’ve 12min left to drop the gun. After that it’s cheaper to kill yourself!” … You obviously don’t want the police to pull the trigger. (Although it would be with the consent of the victim (but you would want to get that in writing) and it would make economic sense.) What a mess.
P.S.: Then imagine the next day – “we’re sorry to admit that we miscalculated the loss of GDP by assuming that all 3 highway lanes were open, when in fact one was closed. The victim would have had another 23 minutes. Our regrets go to the family.”