It Is the Purple Season
California, the golden state, has weird seasons.
There is the green season, when all the mountains in the Bay Area turn green. The rain in the winter rejuvenated especially the open East Bay mountains.
There is the yellow season, when said mountains now are all a rusty yellow.
It happens almost overnight. One day you are driving home looking Eastward and admiring the grass in all shades of green. The next day, the mountains turned yellow and dry looking. The yellow season also means rattlesnakes and plenty of sunscreen. The yellow season lasts most of the year.
Towards September, we typically enter the orange and sometimes purple season. Orange for the apocalyptic skies, when the smoke of the forest fires across the state block the sunlight and bring doom to the Bay Area.
Purple for the hazardous air quality index score. This is the season when the AQI will hit above 100 by noon. This is the season when you live indoors, mostly cooking in our own sweat until we can cool of the house in the evening.
The last few days we entered the purple season, as winds shifted and sent the smoke from the Dixie and Caldor fires down South towards the Bay Area. Today, the AQI was 160 in San Jose. We’ve seen in much worse. Yet above 100 also means, no cycling, no running and no sitting outside on the patio.
Time to rake the forests.
August 28, 2021
He Is a Romcommunist
As disastrous as last week’s Ted Lasso episode, Christmas in August, was, as wonderful was this week. Ted Lasso is back!
I cheered, laughed and cried a little. That of course had all todo with the fact that this week’s episode, Rainbow, was ten romcom moments bundled in a warm blanket of Lasso folksiness.
Spoiler alert!
Roy Kent is no longer going door to door looking for dentist, or hosting a backelor-like viewing party. He is back at Richmond! He is in the locker room and on the pitch.
Ted is back as the motivator in chief, the Mr Miyagi of the soccer pitch.
Let’s hope this episode was no exception, and that we can expect more of the same amazing writing.
August 21, 2021
Drive to Survive
I am late to the Netflix reality drama about Formula 1. I powered through the three seasons like Max Verstappen in hot pursuit of Valtteri Bottas. I cheered about how good this show is with the same enthusiasm as Pierre Gasly winning his first and only race. And I was saddened when I watched the last episode, with the same pain when Cyril lost his star racer Daniel Ricciardo to rival McLaren.
This show has it all: drama, joy, death, rebirth, betrayal, the young and the soon to be retired, the famous and the rich. It is amazing to see what happens in the paddock or behind the scenes.
I wish we could learn a bit more about the technology of the cars and in the garage. How do they monitor the cars? What data are they looking into? What do all the buttons on the steering wheel do? What does it mean when they say “put engine in position 9”? Why do they want to build a new car each year, and not reuse and improve the previous year’s car? What happens at the offices and manufacturing floors of Renault and McLaren? I have some many geeky questions.
You can also do a drama filled spin-off about the pit crews. How do they train? How do they react when things go awry? Are these the same folks as the mechanics? How pissed are they when their star driver wrecks the car and they need to spend an all nighter rebuilding the car? Do they suffer the same chair shuffling as among the riders?
I used to watch every formula 1 race when I grew up. And as a very young boy, my brother and I would play with marbles on the carpet pretending to be race car drivers, while the race was on television. The blue marble was Jacques Laffite. The red marble was Alain Prost.
The Netflix show has rekindled my interest into formula 1. Both the individual racer and constructor championship is exciting again. The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps is the next race. I’ve been on the tracks both with my bicycle and as a passenger in my parent’s car. Let’s go Max!
August 21, 2021
South Bay Bounce Back
Tonight felt almost normal. The 49ers were playing at Levi’s stadium in Santa Clara a pre-season game to a local crowd. I don’t know how well they played. I did notice the game was on the television in every bar and restaurant we walked by tonight.
More importantly, San Jose was buzzing. The streets were full of people. This weekend, San Jose has been hosting the SJ Jazz Summer Fest. There is the large (paid) stage at Cezar Chavez Plaza. There are many other smaller stages throughout the city.
We enjoyed an evening of dancing on First street to the Latin tunes coming from the Latin Tropical Stage. Aside of plenty masked dancing couples, it felt as if we were pre-pandemic. What a change.
Tonight, I never felt unsafe. We were outdoors, dancing in the streets, with plenty of space between people. People were respectful of each other, and either masked up or kept their distance. Prior in the evening, we dined outside on the side walk to Portuguese tapas. California weather allows us this luxury of an outdoor celebration.
Vaccinations, masks, the outdoors, and some common sense, and we are back baby! Stop this anti-vaxing or inserting chip non-sense. Let’s do this. We need it. Azucar!
August 14, 2021
Flat Lasso
We are four episodes into season 2 of Ted Lasso. Something is terribly wrong in Richmond, and it ain’t the soccer team. It isn’t even the coaching staff, or the coach. The Christmas episode in August tipped it. It was bad, very bad.
Where are the life lessons wrapped in a blanket of folksiness? Where are the leadership nuggets delivered as straight as a dart going for the bullseye? Where is the hero’s journey build up? Where is the culture clash or the personal conflict?
The episodes thus far have been a serving of luke warm pudding at best. I like pudding, but this batch is nothing to be excited by.
Ted isn’t it. If they wrote it as Zidane in his final days at Real Madrid, they did a great job. Nice Jaimie is awful. You need a good villain, whom everybody hates. Without Rupert or Jaimie, there is nobody to hate. Roy Kent is as behaved and tame as a poodle. What’s up with that? You know his alter ego Roy Keane would have ripped the writers’ head off. Keely was at least a femme fatal in season 1. Now, it is not clear where they will take this. The same is true about the romantic adventures of Rebecca. A little shining light is perhaps Higgins, who is no longer the abused lapdog.
Let’s hope our Fridays will become a bit happier and Ted Lasso will provide us something marvelous to look forward to from now on.
August 14, 2021
Gladwell, Stop the Fake Infomercials
On my run, I listened to the latest Revisionist History episode, Laundry Done Right. The topic was interesting, and I learned a few things. Wash cold with non-eco laundry pods. There is no need to rinse your dishes before you put them into the dishwashers, nor do you need to fill them up to be eco smart.
However, just like the Waemo episode, something is off. I got increasingly more irate as I heard you go all gushy about the virtues of the Proctor & Gamble products. I was thinking: he must have been paid for this. A mile further into my run: Did I miss the “this is a paid advertisement, Pushin Industries does not endorse the content of this program.”
Luckily, I didn’t want to interrupt my run to fetch my phone and change podcasts or I would have missed the important disclosure at the final end that you were not paid by P&G. Please lead with that and repeat it often throughout this obvious love affair of Tide and Cascade.
What happened? You used to bring us and interesting topic, provide us different viewpoints, leading us to the conclusion that things aren’t as you thought they were. Revisionist History! Swish.
Telling us that you washed clothes warm and that the marketing pitch from P&G to wash cold when you use their newly formulated Tide for cold washes, is true, is hardly revisionist.
The take away from your Waemo love affair podcast should have been: don’t go on autopilot, even when you are a podcast god.
August 13, 2021
Don’t Be a Destructor
Kara Swisher is sans her favorite professor this month. Therefore she is inviting guest co-hosts.
This week she was joined by George Conway. George Conway is an interesting fellow. During the Trump reelection, I could find myself in a number of the viewpoints of his Lincoln Project. Yet, I realize George Conway is very much a conservative.
In this Pivot episode, George Conway summarizes Trump perfectly:
“I think he can ruin somebody.” … “His power is the power of destruction. He doesn’t create anything, he destroys. That’s the nature of how he exerts power in the Republican power, is the threat of destruction.”
That summarizes what a leader should and should not be. It is all too easy to destroy. Leading, whether in the office or in public service, requires you to take a risk to build something. Not everything will work. Not everything will be successful. But all the things are about building a better product, better society, better community. If you define your job as destructor-in-chief, you are not a leader.
Michael Lewis captured it best in his book “The Fifth Risk”. Early into the Trump administration, NPR’s headline A Portrait Of A Government Led By The Uninterested got it wrong. This wasn’t an uninterested bunch. This was a bunch which showed up with sledge hammers, ready to destroy willy nilly.
Take for example, the story about NOAA. NOAA and the National Weather Service are serious folks, 11,000 in all, supported by a fleet of satellites and buoys. The agency focuses on gathering lots of scientific climate data. The agency operates in obscurity — in fact, it’s forbidden by law from promoting itself or the accuracy of its forecasts.
Because it provided data demonstrating that climate change was real, it had to be destroyed. Climate data had to be removed from government websites.
Trump appointed AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers. AccuWeather takes the free government data and resells it to companies. To the uninterested and uneducated, the AccuWeather CEO seems like a good choice. Why do we need to employ 11,000 when we have a private company who can provide the weather data. Yet, without the serious scientists of NOAA, AccuWeather would not exist.
The impact of destroying NOAA is much bigger than an iPhone app predicting the weather. The US and the world aviation industry depends on NOAA. The shipping industry depends on NOAA. Farmers depend on NOAA.
Don’t be a destructor. Be like Bob the Builder!
August 7, 2021
Writing Apps
I read this week’s Medium post by MG Siegler on Writing Apps. I share his continuous search and exploration of good writing applications. However there are a few things we disagree on.
When I make my list of must and nice to haves of a good writing application, it boils down to:
Must Have
- A simple and open text format, with minimal formating. I settled on Markdown (or some of its flavors). The inline URLs don’t bother me. On a rare occasion I wish I had more formatting control. However, I value the focus on the content over the formatting distraction.
- I own my files. No fancy database absorbing and organizing my files. Allow me to use the right editor for the job. And therefore, don’t hide the files. Sometimes I write using iAWriter, sometimes I want to experiment with a different editor, like Obsidian. Therefore, all I want to do is point the editor to the files. I keep my files in Dropbox. If I wanted strict revision control, I could use git or GitHub to host the files.
- Exportability. Make it easy to convert the Markdown files to Google Docs, or to a Medium post. IAWriter does this well for a Medium post, and it has some nice built-in formats to export to PDF. The conversion to other formats is a little more tricky. Pandoc can help but is not easy to use, and not available on my iPad.
Nice to Have
- Integration with writing tools like HemmingWay and Grammarly.
Currently, I do almost all my writing in iAWriter and Day One. My files are stored on Dropbox. That’s pretty simple and straightforward.
Recently Experiments
I’ve looked at Ulysses, but was turned away at the door when they served me a 2 week try out and then pay. I am not giving you my credit card without kicking the tires first.
Obsidian looked complicated with all their plug-ins. All I want to do is write. On iOS or iPadOS, you are hit in the face with a number of obstacles: how to set up iCloud, lack of Dropbox support, and most importantly, I don’t have access to the files from outside of Obsidian.
Bear is popular. Yet, you don’t have access to the files, and given by the number of hits I get on my Medium post about posting to Medium, it is still an issue.
I’ve tried a few Markdown apps as well, although none as simple and clean as iAWriter.
August 6, 2021
He Forgot the Flux Capacitor
Tonight I watched the three part Netflix documentary on John Delorean’s life. Little did I know about the troubled rise and fall of Delorean. To me, Delorean means Back to the Future, and Back to the Future is the flux capacitor and the Delorean.
Watching the documentary, I recognize the fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude of the scrappy entrepeneur.
I am talking to several investors.
We are getting the money.
We got 30,000 firm order already.
It must have all looked familiar to Elon Musk. Tesla came oh so close to shutting down the production line in the midst of the model 3 development,
I also recognized the scammy embezzling entrepreneur, a la Elisabeth Holmes.
Somewhere through the last episode I was expecting the ultimate Back to the Future reference: “By now, John surely wished he could have set the Delorean to go back to 1955.”
August 3, 2021
When It Comes to the Olympics, I Am a Traditionalist
I am not a fanatic when it comes to the Olympic Games. There is always a smell of corruption and global politics surrounding the games. The selection process for the next hosting city isn’t your typical wining and dining. There is so much at stake that it becomes a lobbyist wet dream. That’s only the beginning. Construction projects of this scale and timeline come with lots of sticky fingers and sadly plenty of Greek tragedy.
Olympic Games also provide a stage for a good geo-political tussle. I can still remember when the Russian team boycotted the LA games in response to the American team sitting out the Moscow games.
And then there is state-organized doping, from the East German women team with mustaches to the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi, as depicted in the surprising documentary Icarus.
The Olympic Games are hardly about the sport.
And yet, I do watch some of it: from the opening ceremony, the 100m sprint, to the sob stories overcoming adversity to get there on NBC. There is something about watching the best of the best compete.
Let’s stick the traditional Olympic sports: track and field, swimming, wrestling, sailing, and even archery. Can we all agree to stop the experiments with skateboarding. They are not an Olympic sport. I even question equestrian as being a true Olympic sport, unless we start randomly assigning horses to riders. Stick to the basics and the sports who don’t normally get the attention they deserve. Skip basketball, soccer and even cycling. The Greeks didn’t have bicycles, did they?
July 24, 2021