- Running: Race Season
It has started. It is race season already! Well if I was in California it would be race season all year long but for us poor Canadian folks trail racing season starts in Spring. My first 2010 race was the Chilly Half Marathon in Burlington which really was a road race – rather than a trail race – but I still enjoyed it. I am actually very fond of road races. I know I know: why run on roads when you can run on trails… During the race on Sunday, mother nature cooperated, there was sunshine and a cool breeze, optimal conditions for great running.
My friend Mark is kicking ass in his running with a fully loaded race schedule for 2010 including the insane Tahoe Rim Trail Endurance Run. And his is not planning on doing the 50K or 50M, he is going for the 100 mile. Way to go Mark! Check out his awesome race schedule.
Here are my next two races:
- Seaton Trail: 26 KM
- Sulphur Springs: 50 KM
- Tokyo
Tokyo Subway
I am in Tokyo for a week. Yes, I know who takes a one week vacation to go to Tokyo? Am I insane? Yes, a bit. I figured since Tokyo does not sleep neither would I and I would get to see all of it and head home at the end of the week.
One thing is for sure: I will be returning to Japan. Tokyo is but a little piece of Japan – albeit a pretty big piece – and the little bit I have seen is fascinating. Photos to come very shortly. I am now in perpetual jetlag: I wake up at 4 AM, head out to explore the city by 6 AM and walk all day to come back to the hotel to simply collapse. After 100s of kilometers in walking I now know that Tokyo is not a walking city: it is immense. Thankfully their subway system is amazing. I would send the entire Toronto TTC management team to Tokyo for a week for a crash course on how to develop and run a transit system that works. You can plan your trips to the second and get where you need to go without ever missing a beat. It is a thing of beauty!
- #startups
[...] the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.
- Top 5 tech companies by market capitalization for the decade
Always great to have a visual – Silicon Alley Insider
- hohoto
When I have a bit of time later this week, I will blog about our little hohoto project – our $40,000 fundraiser for the Toronto Food Bank. In the meantime I wanted to capture this because it certainly was a great way to start the morning!
- NYT interviews Jeff Bezos
NYT: The Kindle, an electronic reader brought out by Amazon two years ago, has become your company’s best-selling product and a great success story. But several rival e-readers are coming out in time for Christmas. What do you think of the Nook, for instance, from Barnes & Noble?
Jeff Bezos: We have a long tradition of not talking about other companies, which I’ll stick to.Oh so do I!
And
NYT: What do you say to Kindle users who like to read in the bathtub?
Jeff Bezos: I’ll tell you what I do. I take a one-gallon Ziploc bag, and I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully. It’s much better than a physical book, because obviously if you put your physical book in a Ziploc bag you can’t turn the pages. But with Kindle, you can just push the buttons.NYT: What if you dropped your Kindle in the bathtub?
Jeff Bezos: If it’s sealed in a one-gallon Ziploc bag? Why don’t you try that experiment and let me know.I am rolling on the floor laughing.
- Snow finally!
Snow finally arrived in Toronto. About time. But this is not South Georgia!
The Torontoist timelapse is just awesome!
Toronto Pre-Winter Storm Timelapse, at Annette and Runnymede Streets from Torontoist on Vimeo.
- Go head and piss people off!
I know I do. All the time. Apparently I am very skilled at that. But that’s only because I am doing the right things – and I care! You see: “doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off”. Just loved Tim Ferris’ Benefits of Pissing People Off blog post.
[...] if you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative. Keep your head on straight, don’t get emotional, take the heat, and just make sure your clients are smiling.
- Howdy startup!
“how easy it is to look at a marketplace and see nothing more than a list of must-have features. If you’ve got user profiles, you need a messaging system. If you’ve got a site, you need an FAQ, support section, and a blog. If you’ve got activity, you need activity streams, RSS, and all that jazz. If you’re selling stuff online, you need a reviews section, after all, all of the big players have them, right? You’re not a big player. You’re just getting started.”
- HackLab TO, Startups, Pricing, Bosses
Welcome to HackLab TO in the National Post!
The only kind of hacking that HackLab.TO and many of the more than 170 similar spaces active around the world are engaged in is the repurposing kind. Described as the “fourth R” — following reduce, reuse, recycle — repurposing involves “taking existing technology and using it in sort of new or perverted ways,” explains 25-year-old Honeywell. “The focus is on do-it-yourself technology.” Virtual spaces, as popular as they are, simply do not cut it when it comes to reincarnating laser engravers and creating controllable LED signs.
Stewart Butterfield Flickr co-founder “We had it all wrong in the beginning”
“No battle plan survices contact with the enemy“. And that includes your software pricing. Run over and get “Don’t just roll the dice: a usefully short guide to software pricing.”
21 Things that Great Bosses Believe and Do: My favourites:
- (8) Reward success and (intelligent) failure, but punish inaction.
- (11) Eliminate hiring and reward practices that reinforce cultures where “the best you can be is a perfect imitation of those who came before you.”
- (12) Hire people who make your squirm.
- (18) Kill a lot of ideas, including a lot of good ideas.
- (21) Innovation requires selling your ideas. The greatest innovators, from Edison to Jobs, are gifted at generating excitement and sales. If you can’t or won’t sell, team-up with someone who can.
I work for the most amazing image search company in the world: