Where Have I Been? Where Am I Going?

You may have noticed that I have been conspicuously absent since May 4.

There are several reasons for that. One is that I have been totally immersed in creating training videos for CADLearning for their AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, and Revit Architecture courseware.

The second is that I've been trying to find either a job or some consulting work.

And the third is that we suffered a huge tragedy. On May 20, my son's fiancee was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Lt. Roslyn Schulte was three months into a six-month deployment as an Air Force intelligence officer, working with the Afghani military, when the vehicle she was driving was hit by an IED. Genny and I flew to St. Louis for the funeral, which was held on Memorial Day. We stayed for several days afterwards to visit with the Schulte family and support my son, and then Bruce came back to the Pacific Northwest for a while.


I've been planning to write a tribute to Roz, and will do so once I get back from my next trip.

And as for that trip, I leave tomorrow morning to drive to Gerlach, NV. I'll be out in the Black Rock Desert all week with the team from North American Eagle as they do a series of tests of the vehicle they hope next year will break the Land Speed Record.


Stay tuned for more on this.

North American Eagle Article

As mentioned last week, I've written an article for Desktop Engineering magazine on Ed Shadle and the team at North American Eagle. This intrepid group hopes to break the land speed record, currently held by a British team.


I have posted a version of the article that was distributed at the COE conference recently held in Seattle. The actual article will appear in an upcoming issue of Desktop Engineering. This is one of the most interesting topics that I've ever had the pleasure of covering, and I plan to write more about the North American Eagle team as their land speed record attempt progresses.

The $780 Cake

This one is a bit of a departure from my usual postings, but I was so proud of my wife Genny that I had to write something about this.

Last night was the 25th Anniversary celebration for the Whatcom Land Trust, an organization that has done a fantastic job of preserving the nature of Whatcom County, Washington. As part of that event, they held an auction. And as part of that, they auctioned off desserts at the end of the dinner.


My wife's Almond Praline Cake with mascarpone frosting and chocolate bark sold for $780, the top dessert of the evening.

North American Eagle at COE

I just finished writing an article about Ed Shadle and the team at North American Eagle. NAE is building a vehicle that they hope will break the current land speed record held by the ThrustSSC. Rather than building a vehicle from the ground up, Ed's team has converted an F-104 Starfighter jet into a land-based vehicle that they hope will surpass the current record of 763mph set in 1997. If all goes according to plan, Shadle will attempt to reach 800mph on July 4, 2010.

The article will soon appear in Desktop Engineering magazine. But advance copies of the article were distributed on Wednesday in Seattle when three members of the NAE team—Ed Shadle, Keith Zanghi, and Steve Wallace—spoke at the COE conference.



After their presentation, I spent some time with them in the AMD/ATI booth at the conference where Lenovo's newly launched ThinkStation S20, D20 were showcased along with the ThinkPad W500 running CATIA and the Eagle models. Also on display was a scale model of the Eagle and the front wheel that was designed on Lenovo ThinkStation using CATIA. Here I am on the right along with the NAE team and Zee Effendi from Lenovo.



I'll let you know as soon as the article is available online. In the meantime, here's a photo of the North American Eagle vehicle taken last summer in the desert during one of the test runs.

A Monsterous Time in LA

This week I'm in Los Angeles attending a press event. I can't tell you the details of the event until Monday. What I can tell you at present is that I'm staying at the beautiful Beverly Wilshire Hotel.


The hotel is at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive and was featured in the movie "Pretty Woman."

On Thursday evening, I had the rare opportunity to visit DreamWorks Studios, where I got to meet with several of the people behind the studio's new animated feature "Monsters vs. Aliens."



"Monsters vs. Aliens" required more than 40 million computing hours to make - more than eight times as many as the original "Shrek" and nearly double what it took to create "Kung Fu Panda."



I got to see the film last night in 3D in a phenomenal theater on the DreamWorks lot. The film opened today on 7,000 screens in North America. But only 2,000 of those screens are equipped with the nearly $100,000 in equipment needed to show the film in 3D ($75,000 to convert to digital projection plus $25,000 more for the RealD system used by approximately 90% of the 3D-capable theaters in the U.S.).

Starting with this film, DreamWorks will make all of its movies natively in 3D. Technology from HP powered the tremendous computing power needed to render the movie. "Monsters vs. Aliens" required nearly 100 terabytes of disk storage and would have taken more than 1,000 years to render on a single workstation.



I thoroughly enjoyed the film, although in terms of movies, it was not in the same class as several of the Pixar features, such as "Wall-E", "Finding Nemo", or "The Incredibles". "Monsters vs. Aliens" came across more as a collection of scenes with some good jokes. Still very entertaining, but not one of those films destined to end up on a must-see list. Except for the 3D. If you're going to see this movie, definitely seek out one of those 2,000 theaters showing it in 3D.

World Speed Skating - Day 4

It's the fourth and final day of the ISU World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships at the new Richmond Olympic Oval just outside of Vancouver, BC. This will be the site of the long-track speed skating at next year's 2010 Winter Games.

Today featured the 500 meter sprint events for both the men and the women. This consisted of two heats each, first the women and then the men, with the winner having the lowest combined time for the two heats.



With the athletes going all out, the day wasn't without mishap. A number of skaters fell, including Paulina Wallin of Sweden, who crashed just a few meters from the start of her second heat.



The ladies' event was won by Jenny Wolf of Germany, with a combined time of 75.750 seconds.



Second was Beixing Wang of China with a combined time of 75.870, followed by Sang-Hwa Lee of Korea at 76.390.



The Korean and Chinese men also dominated the men's sprints. Although Tucker Fredericks of the USA had the third fastest time in the second heat, Korean's Kang-Seok Lee and Kyou-Hyuk Lee skated head-to-head in the final pairing of the second heat, after finishing 1 and 2 in the first. They managed to hold on to first and second place, finishing with combined times of 69.730 and 69.920, respectively.



The bronze medal was won by Fengtong Yu of China. With the third fastest time in the first heat and second fastest of the second, he finished with a combined time of 69.970.



Attention then turned to the team pursuit competition. A recent addition to the World Cup schedule, the team pursuit pits two teams of three skaters in a race against the clock. The teams start on opposite sides of the ice, with both teams skating in the inner lane. The women skate six laps, the men eight, with the time recorded when the third skater on the team crosses the finish. It's a high-speed ballet, with the three skaters trying to be as aerodynamic as possible.



Once again, the Canadian women proved their dominence. Skating against Poland, the team of Christine Nesbitt, Kristina Groves, and Brittany Schussler finished the six lap race in 2 minutes 58.25 seconds. The Dutch team was second in 3:02.02 and Japan third in 3:04.06.



The men's race provided an exciting finale for the day. The USA team, which had never won a team pursuit medal at any Olympic or world championship event was paired in the second heat against the Dutch team (seen here). The Netherlands has won gold in every world single distances championship team pursuit ever staged. The strong Italian team was matched up against Canada in the final heat of the day.



In the end, the Dutch team prevailed, capturing the gold with a race-winning time of 3:41.26. Sweden took the silver medal at 3:45.73. But the USA team of Trevor Marsicano, Brian Hansen, and Ryan Bedford captured the bronze with a time of 3 minutes 46.07 seconds.

All told, the weekend proved to be a tremendous success, both as a try-out of the new Richmond Olympic Oval, and for the Canadian and USA teams. Canada and the Netherlands captured the most medals, at 8 each. The USA was second with six, including gold, silver, and two bronze medals won by Trevor Marsicano. For Canada, it was the women who dominated, with six medals while all six USA medals were won by the men.

Other medal winners included Germany and Korea with 3 each, Czech Repulic, Norway, and China each with 2, and Japan and Sweden each winning 1 medal. A total of 21 countries were represented.

And of course, I've got many more photos from today's exciting action. You can see them on my Flickr site.

World Speed Skating Championships - Day 3

It's Saturday, Day 3 of the ISU World Single Distance Speed Skating Championship at the new Richmond Olympic Oval.



The weekend brought a sellout crowd, including a huge Dutch contingent. Today marks the running of the long distance events, the men's 10,000 meter and the women's 5000 meter.



The Canadian women's continue to do incredibly well on their new home ice, with Christine Nesbitt capturing the gold with a time of 1:16.28 in the Women's 1000 meter.



Then, the action moved to the men's 10,000 meter, the longest event of the weekend. While it may be the national sport of the Netherlands, eight heats of more than 25 laps each did tax the crowd a bit. There's much more strategy to this race, with the coaches shouting instructions to their skaters as they change lanes midway through each lap.



The 10,000 meter is dominated by skaters from the Netherlands and Norway. Here, Sven Kramer of the Netherlands maintains a grueling pace midway through the race. He eventually won with a time of 12:55.32.



He was paired with Norwegian Havard Bokko, who eventually came in second with a time of 13:03.95. Bob de Jong (shown here) from the Netherlands was third in a time of 13:13.16 just edging out fellow Dutchman Carl Verheijen at 13:13.30.



Like I said, it wasn't at all surprising to find two Dutchmen, Sven Kramer (gold) and Bob de Jong (bronze) and Norwegian Havard Bokko on the podium.



The big Dutch crowd loved it, of course.



The final event of the long afternoon was the Women's 5000 meter, the longest women's event. Once again, the Canadia women did very well, with crowd favorite Clara Hughes, skating in heat 5, finishing with a time of 7:00.54, which proved good enough for a silver medal. Seeing a skater put up such a fast time in an early heat is always exciting, because the heats are set up with the faster skaters in the later heats.



Controversy once again reared its head during the women's races, but this time the controversy did not involve a Canadian skater. Masako Hozumi of Japan, circling the ice on the inner lane after completing her 5000 meter heat, drifted into lane one and collided with Czech skater Martina Sablikova who was lining up for the next heat.



Happily, Sablikova was not hurt and after a delay and repair of the ice, was able to skate her heat again anadian Kristina Groves. Groves finished in 7:02.91, which was good enough for the bronze.



But Sablikova, coming back from her mishap before the start, put up an incredible time of 6:57.84, winning the gold in the Women's 5000 meter.



So once again, a pair of Canadian women end up on the podium flanking a European skater.

Tomorrow is the final day of the ISU World Single Distance Speed Skating Championship. I'll be back to cover the men's and women's 500 meter and the men's and women's team pursuit.

And of course, you can find more photos from today's event on my Flickr site.