Daniel Fortunov's Blog

Awaiting inspiration

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:31:00 GMT

Cartoon by Dave Walker (We Blog Cartoons).

PS: I'm not really lacking in things to write about, just lacking in time to write about them!

O2 Broadband: Right on the mark

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:40:00 GMT

It took a week but we finally have broadband at the new flat. The O2 package seemed like the best value for money and their connection speeds look to be right on the mark:

The Standard Home package is rated at "Up to 8 meg" downstream and "Up to 1.3 meg" upstream, so I think this is the first time I've seen home broadband actually achieve the advertised speeds! (Though it's not exactly a time of peak-demand.)

Now I just have the dilemma of whether to upgrade to the Premium, or even Ultimate package, for 16 or 20 meg of downstream bandwidth... but that's probably overkill.

Disappearing Car Doors

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 06:36:00 GMT

Check this out for a spot of novel design:

It's quite interesting to see what radical changes one can make
to something as seemingly simple as a car door mechanism.

More information: www.disappearing-car-door.com

Got Backups?

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:35:00 GMT

Found on MakeUseOf.

Blink: The power of thinking without thinking

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:02:00 GMT

I recently finished reading Blink: The power of thinking without thinking, a wonderfully written book by Malcolm Gladwell which goes into the details of intuition, first impressions, subconscious judgements, involuntary prejudices; the snap-judgements we make within seconds of seeing something.

He illustrates his points with a myriad of fascinating examples and experiments which make this book a captivating read.

More to whet your appetite for this, and his other books, here

Lawyer Speak

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:28:00 GMT

I'm sure this must mean something, but I can't work out what:

"There are excepted from the effect of registration all estates, rights, interests, powers and remedies arising upon, or by reason of, any dealing made in breach of the prohibition or restriction against dealings therewith inter vivos contained in the lease."

Could one being whether a member of this planetary system or otherwise though generally referenced with the nomenclature including but not limited to "solicitor" or "lawyer" or "barrister" possibly conceive a selection of words and word order and general phrasing as to cause greater confusion to the lay reader or readers than the selection of words and word order and general phrasing as witnesseth in the paragraph herinabove? (Preferably with the containment and inclusion of words suchas: whereupon, hereinabove, hereinbelow, hereunto, witnesseth, whereof, and omgthereforebbqwtf)

I can understand that a watertight contract may inevitably be confusing, but I don't think that the Shakespearian tint and run-on sentences help the clarity.

Arthur C. Clarke on Magic and Technology

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:24:00 GMT

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

— Arthur C. Clare (1917–2008)

Framework Design Guidelines

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:42:00 GMT

Since an overwhelming majority of poll respondents indicated that they "get paid to do geeky things" I figure I it is safe to post on some more technical subjects, such as the book which I recently finished reading at work. (I've been struggling to find chunks of time to read this book, having started it over a year ago, so I'm glad to finally have finished it.)

Framework Design Guidelines, by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, encompasses a lot of the hard lessons that were learnt in bringing the .NET Framework to us. Building an intuitive and powerful programming API is a non-trivial activity, and a lot of people underestimate the importance of framework design and design testing.

This book explains a lot of concepts that are relevant to .NET developers (even if you're not explicitly building a framework) and boils each area down to a set of easy-to-understand "Do" and "Do not" rules (a lot of which are captured by the automatic analysis of FxCop and its successors).

If you want to learn from the mistakes at Microsoft, understand design principles, and build robust, easy-to-use APIs with .NET, then I'd recommend you read this book.

(There's even a Second Edition on the way, "to cover the new features in the .NET Framework 3.0, 3.5, and new advances in languages (e.g. LINQ) that are relevant to Framework design.")

"Labels" by Louis De Bernieres

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Labels, by Louis De Bernieres, is a short story about a man who gets caught up with an obsession of collecting the labels from tins of cat food. Entirely random though it may be, it gradually ruins his life.

With only one or two dozen (small) pages of writing this was a refreshing break from Branson's 600 page monolith.

Yves Rossy: The Flying Man

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:16:00 GMT

Gliding horizontally at 180km/h.
"It was absolutely fantastic; freedom in three dimensions…I felt like a bird."

Richard Branson: Losing My Virginity

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:44:00 GMT

Ambitious; Unbelievable; Insane; Illicit; Bad-ass. These are just some of the words I wrote down whilst reading Richard Branson's autobiography, Losing My Virginity.

This book gives a unique insight into the life and times of one Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson. From ambitious schoolboy, to business start-up entrepreneur, criminal, adventurer, and philanthropist. It's interesting to see that there was nothing magical about the growth of Virgin to the monstrous brand it is today — some luck, perhaps, but a lot of insight, hard work, and perseverance through minor and major setbacks alike. (You'll never believe how many times Virgin has come so close to financial ruin!)

I highly recommend this inspirational read.

Hair Hats

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:44:00 GMT

Got Fashion? Get a Hair Hat!

It's art!

Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:39:00 GMT

Seam Carving is a technique for intelligent image resizing that allows images to be automagically re-sized to fit different spaces (for example, different devices, with different amounts of screen real-estate).

Seam Carved Image — Magic!

This is the magic of Seam Carving, as presented at the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir.

What's more, is that the algorithm can easily be run in reverse, to artificially widen an image.

Take a look at this short demonstration video:

All the geeky details are available in their academic paper, available from www.seamcarving.com.

I found out about this technique when I came across Mike Swanson's proof-of-concept implementation.

(Sample images for this blog post were taken from here.)

Thomas Jefferson on Sharing Ideas

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:11:00 GMT

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
— Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence

It sounds like Tom would prefer Creative Commons over Copyright if he were around today.

The Long Tail

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:15:00 GMT

The Long Tail is a recently identified phenomenon in consumer demographics.

Long Tail Boats

The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand is the book that Chris Anderson started with his 2004 article in Wired Magazine (mentioned above). Over the following couple of years he documented progress with the book on his blog, www.thelongtail.com, posting little snippets and thoughts and ideas every so often, before finally releasing the book.

Key Ideas

My summary breakdown of Chris' sophisticated ideas will not do the book justice, and I highly recommend you read it yourself, but I will attempt to summarise the essence of his main ideas here:

1. The New Producers are you and me, and our neighbours and friends. With low-cost consumer electronics, computers and the internet, amateurs are becoming the new professionals. With the ability to create new content and also re-create existing content through mashups and remixes, the long tail is getting fatter every time someone posts a video on YouTube.

2. The New Markets — Aggregators bring together content from head to tail. Amazon is making "out of print" a thing of the past with on-demand printing, and turning individual consumers into used book salesmen, even if for a single title!

3. The New Tastemakers — Filters are needed to cut all the crap out of the long tail and let us find what we are looking for. Google is a perfect filter for the web — every man and his dog put their crap on the Internet these days, and we need good filters to sift out the gold nuggets from the haystack. Filters include search engines, personal recommendations, blogs, and "people who bought this also bought..." recommendations.

In Summary

This is the essence of The Long Tail, as I understand it: The new producers are able to create a bunch of new content. Aggregators bring this to the new markets. Finally, filters drive demand down the tail, taking you from the world you know ("hits") into the world you don't ("niches"); linking supply and demand to lubricate the market.

"The ants have megaphones."

Tour de France 2008

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:49:00 GMT

Yesterday marked the beginning of le Tour de France 2008 — twenty-one days of racing for 180 riders to duel their way through thousands of kilometres of French mountains and valleys, followed all the while by dedicated (and somewhat insane) motorcycle cameramen.

A page from the book Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion
(featuring photography by Graham Watson).

I'm Married!

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:00:00 GMT

It's been over a month of silence, but I have a good excuse: I've been working on following-up the previous announcement, "I got engaged", by going and getting married... in the USA.

In reality Kelley did most of the hard work of organising the big day, for she was in the States months in advance, visiting with family and friends, and getting the wedding details finalised.

Everything came off perfectly and I think everyone had a wonderful time. (We sure did!) Thank you to everyone who helped with preparations and coordination on the day, and most of all thanks to my new wife. I love you Kelley.

More photos at http://weddingphotos.danielfortunov.com (slideshow).

Giles Ree Memorial Road Race

Mon, 26 May 2008 12:09:00 GMT

Following on from yesterday's post on memories of cycle racing...

Toiling up the hills of Warninglid in the summer heat.

The Giles Ree Road Race

The Giles Ree Memorial Road Race, in Warninglid, should have been on yesterday's list of accomplishments. It was a tough 118km road race on a hilly route (1100m of vertical ascent); open to all categories excluding Elite; it was June, and the weather was scorching — around 30ºC; I think I drank something like 3 or 4 litres of water during the course of the race.

A group of strong riders broke away from the bunch early on, and on the next big hill I made a massive effort to breakaway from the pack with a group of hopeful chasers.

Massive Effort

When I say "massive effort" this probably does not communicate the full extent of what I'm trying to say. It is instead merely a place-holder for something that is probably too extreme to convey in only a few words. Let's just say it was probably the most intense physical exertion I have ever subjected myself to in my entire life. I can still remember the feeling to this day — it was out of this world.

In fact, I still have the historical data from my heart-rate monitor: We were half-way up a 3 mile ascent when the speed shot up from 25km/h to 35km/h; my heart rate peaked at 197bpm shortly after this, and averaged 190bpm for the next three minutes. (Overall average for the race was 167bpm, for three hours.) It was awesome (in a "I wish I were dead but can't stop now" kind of way).

Chasing

We rode together for the rest of the race in our group, but not quite hard enough to catch up the leaders. We were caught in no man's land, a couple of minutes ahead of the rest of the race, but a couple of minutes behind the leading group. A couple of riders from the leading group had managed to get their team-mates in to our chasing group, so they were generally disrupting the rhythm and impeding our chase.

Disaster

In the closing handful of kilometres I was still firmly on track to finish in our chasing group, which should have given me a placing somewhere around the top 15, but unfortunately I got a puncture. That was the only time I had a flat during a race. It was an instant game-over for me, only minutes from the finish line. It was still a great race though — between the punishing hills and the heat of the day, I think about half the riders dropped out at some point during the race. But that isn't all too uncommon in amateur racing.

So that's why the Giles Ree Memorial Rode Race was not featured in yesterday's list of notable race results – it was the only race I did not finish.

Cycle Racing Retirement

Sun, 25 May 2008 10:22:00 GMT

Here is an image I randomly came across recently: the prize presentation of the London Dynamo Beginners' Circuit Race — my second ever bicycle race. The podium was well attended by members of the London Dynamo "home team" but after riding in a breakaway for most of the race I was determined to put in my best shot. Of course, I also had luck on my side — a lot comes down to chance in the final seconds of any race.

5 March 2005: My first (and only) bicycle racing win.

Having not participated in any races since 2005, I think it's fair that I should now consider myself officially 'retired' from amateur bike racing. Not retired from cycling though, just the racing part — I still ride daily, to and from work, and even went out for a pleasant ~100km ride with the local cycling club last weekend. Racing is another story though: training takes up so much time that it was pretty much the only focus in my life when I was racing. Eat, sleep, work, ride; that was it.

After I won that race I moved up into a slightly higher category of racers (3rd Category), which made the competition tougher. I placed highly in some other races and three months later I moved up again (2nd Category). By this time, winning a race was out of sight — any given bicycle race is open only to racers in certain categories, say 4th Category and 3rd Category, or 3rd Category only (or 4th Category only, as was the beginners' race which I won). If you're in 3rd Category, riding in a race open to 4th and 3rd Category riders then you're in the best category of riders for the race — any riders in 2nd Category and above would not be permitted to enter the race.

The problem is that by the time you make it in to 2nd Category the road races you can enter are usually fairly long distance ones (typically over 100 miles) and open to groupings such as 2nd and 1st Category, or worse 2nd, 1st, and Elite Category (Elite being the highest classification in British amateur bicycle racing.) Placing in the top twenty of such a race is very highly regarded, never mind winning. Though I did come third-last in a short circuit race one time!

**Notable results from my brief journey into cycle racing**
Placing	Date	Event	Distance
3^rd	26 Feb 2005	London Dynamo Circuit Race, Chertsey	30km
1st	5 Mar 2005	London Dynamo Circuit Race, Hillingdon	15km
4^th	24 Apr 2005	Reading Cycling Club Road Race, Woodcote	74km
2^nd	31 May 2005	Crystal Palace Circuit Race	27km
6^th	8 Jun 2005	AgiskoViner Circuit Race, Eelmoor	50km
4^th	14 Jun 2005	Crystal Palace Circuit Race	27km
5^th	26 Jun 2005	Martin Newell Memorial Road Race, Woodcote	91km

The Light Is Better Here

Sat, 24 May 2008 12:20:00 GMT

Nasruddin was found by his neighbor looking in the street for something.
"What are you looking for," asked the neighbor.
"I'm looking for my key," said Nasrudin.
"Where did you lose it?"
"In my basement."
"Then why are you looking for it here?"
"The light is better here."