May and I subscribe to a lot of magazines, but seldom find the time to read them all, until we (mainly I these days) hit the road for a business trip. A long flight is a good way to catch up, and my current round-the-world trip allowed me to go through some massive backlog. Here is the list of magazines that we subscribe to, or at least read on a regular basis:
Next on my list: Cahiers du Cinéma, Harvard Business Review, and Mojo or Q.
I am in Singapore for the evening, following a presentation made to customers and partners about Intalio’s roadmap for 2008. I must say that I am very impressed by this city-state of 4 million people. Immaculate streets, outstanding service, friendly locals. The perfect place to conduct business, and certainly the best spot for us to launch our Asian operations. Good luck to Arnaud who will manage this challenging project.
My brother Nassim and I spent most of our childhood playing LEGO together. Our favorite theme was space exploration, and we built all kinds of space crafts, spending an extraordinary amount of time fine tuning their lights, lasers, and cockpits. Over the past couple of years, May and I built a fair amount of sets from the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series, including the Death Star II and the Republic Star Destroyer, which have 3,417 and 3,104 pieces respectively. During the Christmas break, I hope we’ll get to build the Millennium Falcon, which tops the charts with 5,195 pieces. But the penultimate Star Wars LEGO set ever built is the Republic Star Destroyer, which was put together as a one-of-a-kind model by Lego Master Builder Erik Varszegi two years ago. This model is truly massive, counts over 35,000 pieces, and required a custom-built steel frame mounted on wheels so that it could be moved around. A high-resolution picture is available here, and many detailed pictures are served there. Over the past couple of weeks, I have studied these pictures extensively, and came to the conclusion that I might be able to put together a same-scale replica. I recently ordered the first 15,000 pieces from BrickLink, and built a custom application using Salesforce.com to manage my inventory. I give myself a year to complete this project, and will post pictures on this site tracking my progress. Wish me luck!
Over the years, I have subscribed to quite a few business magazines, including Business 2.0, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, Red Herring, and the soon to be reborn Industry Standard. After a while, they all tend to repeat themselves, and it’s time to move on. Recently, I came across Conde Nast’s Portfolio, and I have been very impressed so far. I think I’ll subscribe to this one now.
The ethos of the American West Coast difers from the one of the East Coast in many ways, and understanding what sets them apart is part of an ongoing project of mine. In such a context, I was pleased to discover a new magazine on my way back from New York, NY: The Atlantic. When I write new, I mean new to me, for the magazine is 150 years old, and the copy I bought at JFK was the sesquicentennial anniversary issue. Much like The New Yorker, the magazine covers both literary and political topics, but being published from Boston, MA, it harbors a slightly more universalist editorial line compared to its peer from Manhattan. The reader is also constantly reminded about the magazine’s formidable legacy, through the inclusion of quotes that are 100 to 150 years old, yet could easily be attributed to contemporary authors. Having added this magazine to my list of regular readings, I now have to find a West Coast counterpart, for it is clear that nor Dwell nor Wired will make the cut…
Today, I completed my first flight to Las Vegas. Sonia, Wayne, and I flew N246BJ from Palo Alto [KPAO] to North Las Vegas [KVGT] on Saturday afternoon, then came back to Palo Alto on Sunday afternoon. We flew over Yosemite, Mono Lake, and Death Valley. The outbound flight took 2 hours and a half, and went flawlessly. Many thanks to Eliot (my instructor) for suggesting North Las Vegas over McCarran International, it made for a much easier approach to landing. After we checked in for the night, we had a wonderful dinner at Fleur de Lys at Mandalay Bay, followed by a crash course on craps. I’m not much of a gambler, and I wanted to get as much rest as possible for the flight back home, so I headed back to the hotel around 11PM. We left North Las Vegas around 11AM on Sunday, with fuel to the tabs. This made for an interesting flight, during which I had to manage a set of conflicting constraints: reducing fuel consumption to the bare minimum by flying slow and lean of peak, flying high enough to clear the mountain pass over Yosemite, yet remaining low enough not to cross 14,500′ so that we would not have to use any supplemental oxygen. Everything worked fine until we got back to the Bay Area around 1PM, when the METAR at KPAO showed a 400′ broken ceiling, so we decided to divert to Tracy [KTCY] in order to refuel and wait for the weather to improve. Unfortunately, no fuel was available there, so we headed to Livermore [KLVK], then finally made it back to Palo Alto, concluding a three hours and a half flight during which I got plenty of time to learn many of the advanced features of the Avidyne FlightMax Entegra. This long cross country flight was definitely one of the most interesting I ever did as pilot in command, and I very much look forward to the next one. Also on my schedule: Los Angeles, CA, San Diego, CA, and Seattle, WA.
I will be in the following cities at the following dates:
Meet me there if you dare!
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