Monday, January 29, 2007

Jim Gray Missing!

Noted Microsoft Researcher Jim Gray is missing - he was solo sailing his 40-ft boat Tenacious from San Francisco to the Farallon Islands. The Farallons are a small set of islands about 30 miles due west of San Francisco which have a lot of sea lions and seals and (consequently) a large Great White Shark feeding area. At this point it looks like he just hasn't been able to check in so hopefully he just has a broken radio. The coast guard is currently looking for his boat and I'm optimistic he will be found ok.

Amongst his numerous other accomplishments, Jim (literally) wrote the book on transactional processing. [Via Werner Vogels]

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Alonso Helmet Cam

I found this video on YouTube - a lap of Barcelona from the perspective of a helmet cam on Fernando Alonso. It's kind of amazing how little you can see - the nose of the car and the front wheels seem to obscure a lot. It's possible that the helmet cam is lower (or higher!) than Alono's eyes are but it is kind of surprising.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Ferrari Store

The Ferrari Store I visited in Venice is well worth a visit (how many stores have an actual Ferrari F1 car in them?) but the merchandise is also available from the Ferrari Store Online.

Ferrari FXX Onboard Video

My recently trip to Italy and Kimi Räikkönen moving to the Ferrari F1 team have rekindled my love for the red cars from Maranello. I found this video on YouTube of a Ferrari FXX (the race version of the Ferrari Enzo) being driven around what appears to be the Rijeka track in Croatia. I'm pretty sure all those cars that the FXX effortlessly passes are 911s...

UPDATE: I submitted this video as a tip to Jalopnik and it was published on the front page.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Christmas In Italy

My wife and I spent Christmas in Italy and France for about 2 weeks. We've put a selection of some of the 2500 photos we took here. Where did we go?

  • Milan
  • Moneglia
  • Santa Margherita Ligure
  • Portofino
  • Riomaggiore
  • Vernazza
  • Monterosso al Mare
  • Florence
  • Siena
  • Venice
  • Milan
  • Paris
It goes without saying that the food was great and we really enjoyed Cinque Terre and spending Christmas in Venice. Apparently New York VC blogger Fred Wilson and his family were on a similar trip at the same time - I think we missed him in Siena by 2 days. Unlike Fred (a true blogger) we left the laptop at home!