Graham Glass, etc.

Voyager: Sounds and Images, Part 2

In my previous post about Voyager, I mentioned a golden record containing various sound samples. When discussing this with my friends at work, I mentioned to them that no Beatles music was included, which seemed like an odd omission.

Yesterday I found out that Carl Sagan did in fact want to include a Beatles song, but didn't in the end due to copyright complications. Guess what song he wanted to include? The answer is hilarious: "Here comes the Sun"!

Tour de France 2005

The Tour de France 2005 starts on July 2nd; here is the complete schedule. I'm not a morning person, but I set my alarm clock every day last year so I could watch the Tour in real time. And it goes without saying; it would be awesome if Lance Armstrong could win one more time!

Nightfox Theme: Oceans Twelve

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie "Ocean's Twelve", and even wrote a blog entry about the scene in which the NightFox dances through laser beams. I thought the music associated with that scene was great, and eagerly anticipated purchasing it on an Ocean's Twelve soundtrack DVD. Amazingly, that particular track is not on the DVD, but fortunately the artist has made it free. To download it, click here. This is an awesome piece of music to run/cycle to!

Back in the USA

I just got back from an awesome two week adventure abroad, visiting Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong. Each country was the location of a webMethods event in which I presented our views on service-oriented architectures, a product roadmap for our Fabric product suite, an overview of event-based and service-based architectures, and some guidelines for adopting a service-oriented architecture within an enterprise. The events were well received, and it was interesting to hear customer stories from that part of the world.

Here are some thoughts about each country:

Australia: I've actually been there about 6 times so far, so I know more about it than the other countries on the trip. First of all, Sydney is a beautiful city, and well known for its harbor, bridge, and opera house. It reminds me quite a bit of San Diego. The Australians are friendly, laid back, liberal, and good humored. The cost of living is a little high in Sydney, but not as bad as DC or California. There's a great buzz in the capital, especially during the lunch hour when the streets are filled with workers on their lunch break. It reminded me a little bit of New York in that respect. I've also been to Melbourne, Canberra, and Cairns; next on my list of Australian cities to visit are Perth and Brisbane.

Singapore: The weather was quite muggy there, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere that wasn't air-conditioned. The city itself is beautiful, upscale, and very well maintained. The adherence to law in Singapore reminds me of Switzerland; apparently, chewing gum used to be illegal in Singapore due to the mess that it can make, but now it's just illegal to dispose of it improperly. The people are impeccably dressed and well mannered, and the decor is generally traditional and upscale. Although the city itself seems conservative, I've been told that there are plenty of private parties where you can let it all hang out.

Indonesia: I only visited the capital city of Jakarta, which is industrial and has only a few tourist places to visit. I've been told that Bali is the place to go for beauty and the beaches. The Jakarta streets are very crowded, and Indonesian drivers pay about as much attention to traffic lanes as the Italians. The condition of most roads is pretty poor, especially in the residential areas. The weather is tropical and balmy, which is ideal for lounging around by a pool during the day but not so great if you want to walk anywhere. The Indonesian people are very friendly and unhurried. There is a constant threat of terrorism, and most places, including hotels, shopping malls, offices, and houses have security guards; this is probably the freakiest part of visiting Jakarta. My brother Blair lives there, and like most ex-pats, has a nice house, pool, cook, chauffeur and security guard. One of the big benefits of Jakarta is that it's very cheap. For example, Hotel Mulia, which is one of the best hotels in Asia, was around $100/night. A one hour massage is just $10, and so I ended up having one almost every day. And finally, a good dinner with wine is $10 per person. The night life is fantastic, with plenty of vibrant bars and discos to choose from. Overall, I had a great time in Jakarta and look forward to going back again soon.

Hong Kong: This was my second visit, but unfortunately I only stayed a couple of days. The most striking thing when you first arrive are the incredible buildings. Click here to get an idea of the awesome cityscape. People move at a fast pace in Hong Kong, and often seem stressed out. One indication of this is that the sign for the airport train says "Relax, the train will arrive in 3 minutes". How many other cities have signs telling people to relax?! I had a great dinner with some webMethods collegues at the International Finance Center, which is the tallest building in the city. Like many other restaurants, it was very upscale and professional. We had some fabulous conversations which will form the basis for some new blog entries over the coming weeks. The weather was rainy, which apparently is unusual for this time of year. Overall, Hong Kong feels a lot like an Asian version of New York; live fast, work hard, and play hard.

It's good to be back home in the USA again, but I must say that the more I travel, the more I enjoy it. Next on my list of places to visit are China, Russia, Ukraine and Thailand.

iDog

Check out the iDog, a Japanese electronic pet that can dance to music from your iPod. I love this kind of stuff; it's so fun and creative! And for the record, I'm the proud owner of an original Sony Aibo, which is probably a collectors item by now.

Molecubes

This remarkable movie shows a modular robot built out of identical cubes, linked by electromagnets, that can move and replicate. Robotics has been advancing by leaps and bounds over the last few years!

Voyager: Sounds and Images

My friend Rhett Guthrie of ByteCrafters sent me a link to the Voyager spacecraft site that includes information about the golden record that it carries aboard. This record contains a collection of sounds and images that are intended to teach whoever finds the spacecraft a little about our planet, our science, and our culture. The record also includes the following greeting from President Carter, which I find particularly inspiring:

"This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."

Before you visit the site, think about what kind of information you would provide and then see how your own ideas compare against what was actually chosen.

Aston Martin DB9

One of my many weaknesses is fast cars, and the Aston Martin DB9 is a superb example of British automotive engineering. I've seen a few of these cars recently and they are gorgeous. However, I'm a big fan of cars that can change from a hard top to a convertible at the touch of a button, which is why I currently prefer the Mercedes SL55. Strangely enough, neither Aston Martin, Ferrari, nor Lamborghini makes a hard top convertible. I hope this situation changes in the next few years.

ESB: Enterprise Service Bus

There has been plenty of discussion recently about the concept of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). For example, here are some comments by Radovan Janecek from Systinet.

There doesn't seem to be a broad consensus of what an ESB is. The word "bus" connotes a backbone that services can use for communicating with other services, with features such as reliable point-to-point and publish-subscribe messaging. Some definitions of ESB broaden the role beyond messaging to include shared infrastructure such as monitoring, billing, and security.

The equivalent of an ESB in animals is the nervous system combined with the circulatory system. When an organ needs to communicate with another specific organ, it uses the nervous system to send a point-to-point message. When an organ needs to broadcast a message to other organs that might be interested, it releases a hormone into the bloodstream to send a multicast message.

Because reliable point-to-point and publish-subscribe are naturally occurring message modes, most SOA systems need an ESB. There are many ways to implement such an ESB, and if you believe in SOA architectures, you would expect an ESB to be implemented as a collection of services. For example, one service could provide reliable messaging, while another service could provide publish-subscribe. For reliability, shared services would be replicated. This meshes nicely with Radovan's definition of an Enterprise Service Network (ESN). I don't see any conflict between an ESB and an ESN; an ESN is just one way to implement an ESB.

Geocaching: Florence in the Big City

My friend Pilar and I buried our first geocache in Maryland a few weeks ago and it has already been found several times. The most interesting part is that our travel bug Florence, a country cow whose udders have been aching to visit the big city, is now on her way. Not only has she seen an earthcache, but she is now on her way to Idaho to see some big cities on the west coast. Good luck Florence!