You may have noticed that the photos I've posted lately have unusual aspect ratios and sizes. This is because I have been lazy.
Usually, I upload photos from my camera or phone to my laptop, process them with Adobe Lightroom, and crop them to a pleasing 2:3 aspect ratio. Lately, though, I've just shot them through Google Hangouts from my phone. I have little understanding of Google's choices but they seem to be around the byte count and not around the dimensions.
Here, for example, is a shot of O'Hare Terminal 3 from this morning:
Google did that one at 1236 x 695, at 249 kB. The original is much larger (4 MB), but the same aspect ratio.
I may re-edit the photos later, after landing.
Update: here's the same photo after going through Lightroom:
My vacation officially began at 12:20 this afternoon when I turned in my laptop and badge to West Monroe. I have exactly one day of vacation more than required to burn down PTO until the end of the year, plus I have some final Christmas shopping to do, so I have returned to my old remote office for a moment:
In reality, I'm not going to do nothing on my vacation. Someday I'll have two weeks off with pay and no responsibilities, but starting a job as CTO isn't like starting other jobs. I'm already working with my staff and CEO to start 2015 at full throttle. At least with the holidays, and going out to see the nephews, and a 2½-day week leading up to New Year's Eve, I can warm up behind the pace car before gunning it on the 5th.
I'm still formulating my 2015 resolutions. That said, the forecast out by the P's this week lets me state one goal out loud: 25,000 Fitbit steps Wednesday or Thursday. And a ton of food.
The trouble with holiday parties on Wednesday is that you have to function on Thursday. So, to spare my brain from having to do anything other than the work-related things its already got to do, here are things I will read later:
All for now.
Since the client on the Paris thing for some reason declined to spend $9,000 per person for us to fly business class, I decided to take American 90 to London and then take Eurostar under the Channel. The strategy worked; I got sleep on a real bed Sunday night, and was coherent and lucid Monday afternoon at the job site.
This time, I put a clock on the train. Here's what my phone GPS showed about 30 minutes outside London:
The screen shot above (click for full size) shows that about here the train was moving 281 km/h, which is how it gets from London to Paris with two stops in under two and a half hours. Flying from London City to Orly would take about that long, and I'd still have had to take the RER up to the job site. At one point I clocked it at 297 km/h, which is still not the fastest train in France. SNCF's TGV-320 goes—wait for it—320 km/h. (Then there's the Shanghai Maglev...)
This is why I love Europe.
They're interesting if you like, for example, airplanes:
That's it for now.
Because I stayed in the Airport Sheraton, had only carry-on bags, and got my boarding pass last night, I got on my flight home less than half an hour after leaving my hotel room this morning. Then, at O'Hare, because of the aforementioned lack of checked baggage, a New York-style walking speed, and Global Entry, I got from the airplane to my car in exactly half an hour. Parker was in the car half an hour after that.
Compare that to the trip out, when I left my house at 7, the plane finally left the gate at 10:30, and—oh, right, it only took me 55 minutes to get from the airplane to my hotel in London, including the ridiculously long walk from Terminal 3 to the Heathrow Express and flagging down a taxi at Paddington.
Anyway, dog and man are home, I've completed my deliverable for tomorrow, and I will now get a nap before Euchre Club meets at 7:30.
I had a pretty good blog entry to post a couple of hours ago, and I forgot it totally. This is because I was wrestling a virtual machine to the ground because it had gone somewhere HTTP requests could not follow. I'd have posted about that nonsense, too, except the VM hosts The Daily Parker, you see.
I am therefore reduced to a link round-up, though this time I will embed, rather than link to, two of the things that people have sent me in the past day and a half:
- I had an excellent dinner tonight.
- Science writer Michael Hanlon thinks innovation peaked in 1973. I disagree, but I haven't got a rebuttal yet.
- People in L.A. suspect that arsonists burned down one of the most anti-urban development projects ever thrust upon Americans.
- My flight Sunday got delayed in part because of de-icing. Patrick Smith explains why this happens.
- Chicago steak houses are suffering because the price of wholesale beef has shot up in recent days. I feel for them, I really do, but I also want to have a Morton's steak before year's end. Anyone want to join me?
- Talking Points Memo has a timeline of the New Republic's self-immolation. I still mourn.
- I got some personal news today that will make Daily Parker headlines when it's officially announced next week.
- I'm staying up until 3am CET (8pm Chicago time) because I don't want to fall asleep at Euchre tomorrow. Just remember: the left bower is trump, you idiot.
- A propos of nothing, I'm posting one of the best speeches by one of the worst characters in all Shakespeare:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
You have been patient, and have earned your reward. Here are your two videos, hat tip to reader MG:
And this, but you have to skip ahead to 37m 53s to get the point:
It's 7:35, and pitch black outside. When people talk about permanent daylight saving time, because they don't want to switch clocks twice a year, they should consider that France is an hour ahead of the "correct" time zone for its longitude and therefore has sunrises at 8:30 in the morning this time of year.
If there were daylight right now, I'd upload a photo of all the airplanes taxiing past my hotel window. It's kind of cool. Tomorrow, when I can sleep in.
Business travel sometimes presents contradictions. Here are mine today:
- Good news: I got assigned to do a technical diligence in Paris.
- Bad news: We'll be at the airport for two days, with only one opportunity to see the city.
- Good news: Hey, it's an all-expense-paid trip to Europe.
- Bad news: In coach, which is really grim on an overnight flight such as one from Chicago to Paris.
- Good news: There's a 9am flight to London and the Eurostar to get me to Paris the next morning.
- Bad news: I have to get up at 6:30am on a Sunday.
- Good news: There's no traffic on the Kennedy at this hour on Sunday morning, so I got from my house to the airport and through security in only 30 minutes.
- Bad news: It's still Sunday, and I'm missing two full days for travel.
On balance, it's worth the trip. But yes, I'm going to be grumpy about some aspects of it.
Updates as the situation warrants.
Well, little time today. Since I'll be on an airplane for 8 hours on Sunday, I will probably have time to catch up on these: