Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

Thunderbird for RSS and Podcasts

I’ve been using Sunrise and Plucker to read RSS feeds on my Palm TX.

On the other hand, I still use a Sony NetMD minidisc player to listen to podcasts (although I have a Sony HiMD minidisc recorder for capturing audio). In addition, my e-mail in-basket continues to overflow from push from Business Week. Continue readingThunderbird for RSS and Podcasts

Practice and theory

From the Globe and Mail Focus section1 this weekend …

… Stephane Dion, the Quebec intellectual who defined the nation perfectly. “Canada,” he said, “is a country that works in practice, but not in theory.”

This citation was from “The trick Lazurus taught the Liberals”, by Peter C. Newman.

1 Hmmm … the Globe & Mail is launching a reorganized web site, and the Focus seciton doesn’t seem to be showing up!

China Rises, on CBC

I finally watched the last of four episodes of China Rises, that I had recorded on videotape. I think that it will be worth buying the DVD.

Mary Wong had said that this broadcast was the 44-minute versions that were a result of the collaborations with other media companies. The unexpurgated “Canadian” versions are the ones on the DVD, that are 55 minutes long.

Mon. Dec. 5, 2005: Blogging off

David gets signals of overload, and decides to retreat from blogging.

Well, I guess I’ve found my limits.

The combination of a return from a two-week non-vacation, jumping back into a consulting engagement two weeks underway, two appointments for dental restoration, plus a request for a referral to an opthamologist — that has resulted in my doctor requesting a physical, and ordering blood work that may have had complications — put me into bed for most of the weekend.

It looks like I’ll have to take lifestyle change seriously, and this includes spending less time on the computer (and maybe more on exercising).

Thus, I’ve done enough blogging to understand a lot of the dynamics of technology, and have obtained a learning of how it works. I’ll be sticking to Wikis!

Sat. Nov. 20, 2005: Big breakfasts, little dinners

After spending the whole day in the hotel on the computer, David is hosted at Restaurant Töölönranta.

(by David): I’ve been continuing my pattern of waking up early (somewhere between 4:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.) — not because I want to get up early, but just because I wake up. It’s dark before 8:15 a.m. I’m usually on the computer for a few hours, then shower and go down for breakfast. I may or may not take a nap in the afternoon (willingly or unwillingly!)

I’m really eating breakfast like a king, and dinner like a peasant. I’ve been having almost the same thing every morning. Lingonberry juice. Smoked salmon, grilled tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, Swiss potato cakes (like hash brown cakes). If I’m not planning on lunch, I’ll have a 5-minute boiled egg on wonderful whole grain bread. Fruit salad (canned peaches, pineapple, lichees), with fresh red berries (lingonberries?). I don’t have much appetite left, after that.

I spent most of the day working on one slide, which is actually a good thing. I’ve been mapping out the research territory, so figuring out how things fit together has been interesting.

Karlos invited me out for dinner, with the professor visiting with him, Hans, and his Ph.D. student. (Annaleena got confused at the invitation, and came over a bit later). We had dinner at Restaurant Töölönranta, which has been reviewed Architectural Review. Very Scandinavian. Quite a large restaurant, although it’s divided into sections so it doesn’t seem large. I decided to order all appetizers, although I maybe should have taken into account that restaurants here serve European-sized portions, instead of American-sized portions. No matter, since my stomach is still running on breakfast time!

Everyone else seemed to order the dorada, which is a small Mediterranean fish served whole. We asked about the arctic char, which the waitress claimed was a red fish that’s a speciality of Finland. Funny, in Canada, arctic char is considered one of our unique foods, and it’s a white fish. Karlos said that by the Finnish translation, he thought it was a white fish, too.

Fri. Nov. 18, 2005: Lecturing at the Polytechnic

Instead of the usual “English class” lecture, David speaks on “social software”.

(by David): Minna had asked if I could talk with her friend, Taina, who had opted out of Nokia in favour of teaching at Stadia, which is the Helsinki Polytechnic. Taina finished her Ph.D. at HUT, probably a year or two ago. Minna told me that the Stadia building was actually the original home of HUT. It’s on the Bulevardi, beside the shipyards and waterfront in central Helsinki. The institution started as a Polytechnic, became a Technical University, and then grew out of those buildings for new labs to be built in Otaniemi, which must have been a forest west of the city back then. (They must have put those bridges in, because there are two choices to cross that expanse of water).

As it happens, one of the few times that our schedules lined up was during a class, so Minna and I went over to speak to the class. When I walked in the classroom, this seemed like an IBM meeting — every student had a laptop, and their screens were up. (There was a uniformity to the HP machines which makes me think there’s sponsorship going on). Taina introduced us, Minna talked about knowledge management, and I talked about my experiences with Instant Messaging, wikis and blogs.

When Minna introduced herself, she said that she was a mechanical engineer, but she actually gave quite a managerial talk. I remarked that my degrees are in business, but I was going to be giving the technical talk!

The director of IBM Almaden Services Research, Jim Spohrer, was here about 3 weeks ago, giving talks on how IBM thinks that universities should be reoriented to teach classes in “Services Science, Management and Engineering“. Minna actually was leading a research project at HUT before she went to the New Jersey, and had thought that her research was 20 years behind. In fact, it’s proven to be six years ahead, as her content is much the same as the IBM message now.

The Finns have a knack for industry and universities to be working together in a way that we find foreign in North America. Minna and Taina are cooking up plans to have a services course in early short order — by the spring — and are working a plot that I might get involved. There’s a possibility that we might get the Finnish managers to request that I be involved somehow related to my day job, rather than the vacation time I’m currently on. This would be welcomed….

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