Real Time View

Anniversaries have been on my mind of late – last week I wrote the 125th posting to this blog. A total I didn’t think I would ever reach, and each time I go to the blog and see it displayed, I am surprised. And the readership has continued to climb with every posting. In a few weeks time we will be participating in HPTF&E and I am sure I will run into many of you – I am planning to drive up to Las Vegas from Simi Valley and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Lately, I have been drawing material from the car magazine Motor Trend as often as I have done in the past from Road and Track, as I find the editorial content addressing issues other than just cars. And with what is happening in the car industry, the heads of these car companies are certainly doing their best to generate material for them. But in this latest issue of Motor Trend, writer Arthur St. Antoine talks about the loss Formula One (F1) suffered with the passing of Graham Hill, on November 30th, ‘75. And it...

It’s not as though cars dominate my private life, just as it’s not computers and information technology that dominate my public life. My colleagues, however, may argue that this is indeed the case, and that many conversations quickly turn to these subjects, but there’s been times when I was happy talking about sailing, or fine wines, or music. Readers will have seen the lines from songs, and even movies, routinely appear in these postings. However, the association between cars and computers provides me with a wealth of content with which to work. None more so than when I read about cars in a computer publication this week shortly after I had finished reading a commentary on computers in a car magazine. The picture above was taken of Margo, under the tutelage of instructor Tom Paule, on a cool-down lap at Buttonwillow race track. It was captured by an entrepreneur who makes a living from photographing the stream of cars and motorcycles that attend track days. And perhaps we need to enjo...

Getting back into the daily routine in Simi Valley, with a cup of coffee on a warm but overcast afternoon, it’s hard to believe that only the day before I had been in Prague, the Czech Republic. The occasion had been the annual European BASE24 User Group (EBUG) meeting, and the picture is of me in the old town square. Prague is a city I always enjoy visiting and it has been featured a number of times in this blog. In the November 9th ’07 posting, “ Want to be my partner? ” I wrote of how I had participated in a “Tandem Partner-to-Partner conference put on just for ISV partners,” and in the March 12th ’08 posting, “ It's still the same, just different! ” I wrote of how I had come “to Prague to catch up with HP BCS folks,” before adding “Prague is a very pretty city … (its) medieval architecture has been wonderfully preserved.” EBUG has developed quite a tradition for holding its events among the more interesting cities of Europe – from Istanbul two years ago, to Vienna last year, an...