Real Time View

Travel has been an integral part of my life. Always on a journey from the time began working in IT. This has been a topic I have regularly returned to in posts here and elsewhere. Exploring the world developed into a lifelong passion for me. What hasn’t changed has been my pursuit too of my other passion, technology. These passions have become intertwined through the years to where separation may I never happen. However, what this journey has allowed me to do is to look towards where it may take me.    In the preview of where this post might go that I posted back on August 11, 2025, as One more preview of my upcoming Three Wishes for Nonstop – do you recall reading it? – my three wishes looked as though they would center on Nonstop technology, Nonstop vendors, and Nonstop business. Since that time, these thoughts haven’t changed. Nothing deters me today from exploring these three topics and to muse on where the Nonstop journey is headed. Looking too far ahead to Nonstop’s...

So much has been written about how difficult it is to predict the future. The topic is simply self-explanatory – the future is unpredictable and for many, attempting such a feat is tantamount to a total waste of time and effort. And yet, for as many years as I have been posting to this blog, going all the way back to 2008 and the post My Wish for NS Blades, simply contemplating what might be has me turning to my magical lamp to check in with the genie. Perhaps not, but every three years which in IT years I view as being close to an eternity, I “have at it” and put pen to paper. Well, my fingers to a keyboard at least. If you look back through the labels created for this blog and check the regularity of the posts about my three wishes for NonStop, separation of three years seems reasonable. Having said that, when contemplating the future for NonStop today you will see that four years have elapsed between this post and the previous post. I put this down to the COVID year as opportunities...

Three years have come around rather quickly this time but it’s still worth thinking further ahead when it comes to our wishes for NonStop in 2023! Celebrating each New Year comes with a lot of obligations. It’s not just a case of staying up late to enjoy the fireworks, although, I have to say, I haven’t managed to do that very often – my trip to Sydney to see its firework display being the most memorable exception. Then there is the mandatory popping of champagne corks and celebratory hugs, and more, and it was only a few years ago when Margo and I took to the streets of Key West to witness its approach to welcoming the New Year, where we were quickly educated about crowd control. However, perhaps entering each New Year is even more memorable because of the tradition of making a wish. Whether it’s embracing a new diet, spending more time at the gym or simply deciding to spend more time outdoors, each of us makes a wish / resolution of one kind or another. Having written thi...

Since 2008, every third year I have posted "my three wishes for NonStop." It’s now 2017 – what can we expect to read in this latest post and why is it important for the NonStop community?  When an opportunity presented itself to add yet another vanity plate, it seemed like a good time to add PYALLA3 to the list and to mount it on the Mini. Although, being 3, there was some thought given to mounting it on the BMW, given its engine had only three cylinders, but after further consideration Margo and I decided that this may be a little too cryptic. On the other hand, Mini notwithstanding, three has become a significant number when it comes to the posts to this NonStop community blog – every three years I have written about the three wishes I have for NonStop and here we are, three more years have passed by since my last update. To read all of the predictions I have made in the past, check out the label to the right of this post, Wishes , for more of what I had to say through t...

At any major event, there is no more anticipated presentation than the vendor’s roadmap presentations … but wait, there’s always more! Looking ahead and framing as my wishes is just one approach that I take to speculate, which I can do without suffering the consequences vendors would face should they speculate! It’s been six years since I first blogged about my wishes for NonStop – in the posts of February 12, 2008, and February 13, 2011. Now that it is February 14, 2014, it seems only appropriate for me to look at how far the NonStop platform has come, in terms of modernization as well as commoditization, and to express opinions on a likely future of the NonStop servers. Whether it’s coincidence or not, the previous posts have featured photographs of cars that no longer can be found in the garage. Does it truly reflect my ability to predict the future or not, they didn’t make the cut! The cars pictured above tell a story of their own and I am keeping my fingers crossed that t...

Car racers perform well when they pull from experience and after 35 years, experience suggests there's a lot more coming for the HP NonStop server. Imagine it – a NonStop in every Hybrid platform! For several days I resisted the temptation of working cars into the storyline of this week’s blog, as for the past couple of weeks there’s been more than a liberal sprinkling of car photos and this will be the third time in as many weeks. But somehow the number three is relevant to this post’s storyline so I have gone ahead and used one more car picture. The photo above is of me close by the pit exit at Willow Springs International Raceway (WSIR), that up until recently wore the title of the fastest track in the west. The one take-away I have from the time spent out on road courses is that focus is paramount and improvement only comes with practice. Experience developed over the years is what sets racers apart. And practice, practice, practice – there’s absolutely no substitute ...

This weekend I drove out to the Southern Californian coastline, and it was a real change from earlier weekends spent in Colorado. Sure it’s winter across the US but out along the coast, it was balmy days in the mid 70s. I was driving the roadster, with the top pulled back, and the picture here is of me beside the Pacific Coast Highway –or PCH as it is known locally - just north of Malibu. The drive reminded me of those articles you find in the airline’s magazines – three perfect days in “wherever” - and I had days about as perfect as you could experience anytime in LA. During the previous week, I was emailing folks in the UK as I was preparing to catch up with them next month. As these emails had been flying around, I made a minor mistake in the subject line – rather than proposing to meet for “drinks”, I was suggesting we meet for “rinks”! Of course this led to Sean Bicknell of XYPRO, and a BITUG committee member, to respond “I’ll bring my ice skates then shall I!?!?” Driving the PC...