Book review: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

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The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben HorowitzWhen I’m adding books to my reading list, I do my best to keep track of where the initial recommendation came from. It helps me to prioritize my reading list. There are sources I rely on that will move a book up my reading list, and certain sources that will advance a book to the top of it. For my latest read, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, I didn’t have a recommendation source written down. It’s not that book wasn’t recommended. It’s that it was recommended by nearly every source that I use. They all gave it good reviews, especially if you were starting up or running your own business. Needless to say, I fit that description, so I decided I should prioritize the book for my 2016 reading list.

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A peek into the future of tech

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A couple of years back, I watched the History Channel series “The Men Who Built America“. I was blown away by the vision, foresight and determination of the people portrayed – Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, Edison, and Ford. Looking back, it was impressive to see how they saw a vision of the future and made it a reality.

Well, I believe there are two such people in our generation who people will look back upon in the same way – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. When you listen to them speak, their vision of the future is impressive. What’s more impressive is that they aren’t just talking about it. They are doing things that are enabling them to create and achieve their vision. I’m not talking about creating the next social network or iPhone app. They are working on items like space travel to enable colonization of other planets, artificial intelligence to improve human capability, sustainable energy to preserve our planet, and more mundane things like building better cars and improving media.

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Book Review: Q

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Q by Ben MezrichI’m not 100% sure exactly how I came across Q by Ben Mezrich. I’m pretty sure that I first saw it via the Amazon recommendation engine. The description was enough to get it on my reading list, and then a positive review by Brad Feld moved it up onto my 2016 reading list.

Within the first few pages of the book, it’s pretty obvious that the ‘Q’ in the book stands for Quarantine. The story takes place in the near future where an aggressive, highly contagious virus is wreaking havoc. In order to prevent the spread of the disease, “infecteds” and those suspected of being infected (“probables”) are rounded up and shipped off to a remote island. The story focuses on the mental struggles of a cop on the front lines who is responsible for capturing people identified by the government.

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Generation Golf

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Gregg, Dennis and Brad Borodaty - three generationsAs the last major golf tournament of 2016 wraps up, I’m reminded as to why golf is the greatest sport. Here’s why.

Earlier this month, I traveled back to the east coast and spent a few days golfing with my dad in Pittsburgh. From there, I headed to Detroit to visit my son Brad. He’s working at a golf course for the summer, so I figured I get in a couple more days golfing with him. When I told a good friend about my plans, he said “take advantage of generational opportunities.” I took his advice and invited my dad and my mom to join me on the trip to visit their grandson, and to play a little golf at the course where he works. It turned into an outing I’ll remember forever.

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Book Review: Short Stories by Hugh Howey

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Hugh Howey is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read three of his series – The Silo Saga (Wool, Shift and Dust), Sand, and Beacon 23. There are other series he has written, but I’ve been having a hard time getting around to reading them. As a substitute while I clear some other books from my reading list, I decided to insert a few of Howey’s short stories to hold me over until I get around to another one of his long-form series. Here’s my quick take on Glitch, Promises of London, The Box, and The Plagiarist.

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The Arduino Starter Kit

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Arduino Starter Kit BoardAfter judging the UCSB ECE Senior Capstone projects at the beginning of June, my fellow judges and Professor John Johnson had a spirited conversation about generating interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) subjects among younger students. One of the conclusions we came to is that students in late elementary thru high school aren’t exposed to enough hands-on electronics and computer classes. In order to get exposure, it requires parents to enroll their children in after school activities, which are dominated by athletics these days. We wondered if cost and complexity could be an issue, but Dr. Johnson brought up the Arduino Starter Kit he had been experimenting with. At under $75 on Amazon, he felt it was a great way to introduce electronics to young students. After our discussion, I decided to purchase an Arduino Starter Kit on Amazon.

Here’s a little more background on what the Arduino is, why I got one, my experience with it so far, and why it makes it a great learning vehicle.

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Book review – Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life

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Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life by Nora T. GedgaudasI’ve been doing quite a bit of “body hacking” over the past year or so with my diet. My first effort was simply reducing the amount of sugar to see the effects on various weight and blood metrics. After sharing and discussing my efforts with my good friend Steve Hudson, he recommended Wheat Belly and Grain Brain, which encouraged me to monitor  my carbohydrate consumption, particularly with regards to wheat. While I’m still in the midst of this diet experiment, I decided to read another book that Steve shared and recommended to me – Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life by Nora T. Gedgaudas. I wanted to read this book to see if there were any additional recommendations and ideas that I could add into either my diet or activity/exercise routines.

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UCSB ECE189 Capstone Senior Project Day – 2016

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UCSB ECE189 Capstone Senior Posters in the CourtyardThis past week, I once again had the opportunity to judge the UCSB ECE189 Capstone Senior Projects. It’s the fourth year that I’ve had the opportunity to judge the project presentations. It’s always a great experience, and each year I am amazed by the amount of work the students are able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.

The projects also seem to get better every year, and this year’s projects were especially impressive. My good friend, Dr. John Johnson did a great job working with his students and preparing them for the presentation day. Even though I’ve never personally been to a tech incubator or accelerator “demo day”, my instinct tells me that the atmosphere is roughly equivalent.

I’m extremely grateful the Dr. Johnson invited me again this year. Here’s a brief synopsis of the projects, my overall thoughts on the projects, and who we picked as best project.

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Improving on Grandma’s Apple Pie Recipe

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Apple PieOne of the things that I love about cooking is experimentation. Cooking is not an exact science, and small variations in ingredients, measurements, or techniques can lead to sometimes subtle and sometimes significant differences in outcome.

One of my favorite items to bake is apple pie, mainly because I love eating it (despite my recent decisions to reduce my sugar intake). When baking a pie, one of the things that I struggle with is making a light, flaky crust. I’ve tried different ingredients, made sure the water was extra cold, and tried various techniques to avoid over working the dough. Despite what I’ve tried. I just couldn’t get the dough as flaky as I would like it.

After doing a little research, I found a suggestion that I figured was worth a try – using vodka as a substitute for some of the water. The rationale is that vodka would provide the required moisture content for preparing the dough, but during the baking process, the alcohol would vaporize leaving a lighter, flakier crust. Given all that I had tried, I figured it was worth a shot.

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Cooked – a Netflix Documentary

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Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering with my diet. I cut out sugar in November 2014, and after reading Wheat Belly and Grain Brain, I decided to cut back on my carbohydrates. The result has been a loss of weight and reduction in my blood sugar, which I documented in my “Year Without Sugar” post.

The results I achieved encouraged me to share my experience with a good friend of mine. After he started seeing similar results, he told me that I needed to watch the Michael Pollan documentary, Cooked, on Netflix.

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