Yoav's Space and Twitter feed

YoavShapira: Going offline for a bit. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Yoav Shapira — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:55:56 -0800

YoavShapira: Going offline for a bit. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

YoavShapira: #yoavsspace More on Coders at work: concurrency bugs: If you're looking for my first / basic review of Coders at Wo... http://bit.ly/75OOMA

Yoav Shapira — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:39:00 -0800

YoavShapira: #yoavsspace More on Coders at work: concurrency bugs: If you're looking for my first / basic review of Coders at Wo... http://bit.ly/75OOMA

More on Coders at work: concurrency bugs

Yoav — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:32:00 -0800

If you're looking for my first / basic review of Coders at Work, it's here. Highly recommended.

In the book, Peter Seibel asks each programmer what's the worst bug they've had to deal with. Many of the answers are concurrency bugs. Issues related to multi-threaded applications running many things at once.

This makes complete sense. It's been my experience as well. Those concurrency bugs are really annoying.

At HubSpot, we have one guy, Drew, who is just awesome at ironing these out on the Java side of things. He not only knows the underlying libraries and their pitfalls really well, but he has a knack for thinking about concurrency issues. It's a really valuable talent.

Thankfully, we don't have to delve into low-level C code and gdb to debug a lot of our issues. The programmers in this book often had to do that. And that, by itself, is a good reason for giving thanks.

More on Coders at Work: reading code

Yoav — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:28:00 -0800

I just posted my basic review of Coders at Work. It's a great book, go read it.

This post has a few more observations and thoughts.

First, reading code. A number of the programmers in the book talked about how often and how much they read code. I realized, while reading the book, that although I do the same thing (and have done it for 15 years now), I don't ask others to do it. I don't talk about it, but I just take it for granted, and that's wrong.

Reading code has been extremely helpful for me professionally. Working on various open source projects, and having to take over / fix other people's code as a consultant (on tight deadlines usually), is awesome. I love it. It is almost always frustrating at first, as it's hard to understand, and no code is ever perfect.

But reading code often and a lot teaches you about programming. You see other styles, other approaches, other patterns. It's often more effective than reading books about programming theory or design patterns. At least it's been more effective for me. Afterwards, when I read those books (because I do that often too), they make much more sense. I have a working example in mind from past code reading.

This is an over-looked advantage of us using so much open-source software: we can read it! Not just when we have a bug and not just when the documentation is bad, but when we want to learn how it works. Really important lesson there, and one a lot of younger developers don't seem to do as much. Maybe I'm wrong on that last part?

Book review: Coders at Work

Yoav — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:09:00 -0800

A whole bunch of people have been talking about and reviewing Peter Seibel's Coders at Work since it came out several weeks ago. I love this kind of book anyways, but seeing the buzz around it moved it up my reading queue. I particularly enjoyed Jeff's review at Coding Horror, and Bryan's reviews on Journal of a Programmer.

I'll get to my conclusion first, since there are many details: this book is great fun to read. I really enjoyed it. It doesn't necessarily have the best writing, the most clarity, or the most riveting interviews I've ever seen. But it ranks highly on all counts, it's well-organized, consistent, and insightful on almost every page.

If you're a programmer or coder, and especially if you see that as a badge of honor, you should buy and read this book.

There are software developers out there who look down on the craft of programming. They prefer to think in abstract notions, designing "system architectures" or being architects, and they treat the implementation as trivial.

To me, that has always been incomplete at best, and more often just foolish or useless. The devil is often in the details, and the devil matters, as it turns out. Because those who ship (release products) win.

Most (maybe all) of the programmers in this book agree with the above. They share plenty of battle stories, each one getting asked about the worst bug they ever had to deal with. They share plenty of opinions, some of which I agree with, some I don't.

There is a lot of ego in this book as well. Some of the claims border on the ridiculous, even. But if you've ever been in the zone as an athlete, or achieved flow as a programmer, you know that given the right conditions and the right problem, you can be 100x as productive as usual for a short while.

So when I read a claim like Brad Fitzpatrick writing memcached overnight, I actually believe it. And it makes me smile in understanding. To me, that's far more impressive than any system architecture that never left the whiteboard or PowerPoint deck. The deliverables of consultants, in other words, which are mostly worthless by themselves.

I'll probably post a separate blog entry about some detailed bugs, answers, and other thoughts on the book. I wanted to get the basics out of the way first. I love this book.

YoavShapira: Via @dunster: very cool Lady Gaga music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACm9yECwSso&feature=player_embedded

Yoav Shapira — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:54:07 -0800

YoavShapira: Via @dunster: very cool Lady Gaga music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACm9yECwSso&feature=player_embedded

YoavShapira: #leanstartup talk by @ericries was awesome, inspiring. Contemplating after-party at Characters (Marriott) now.

Yoav Shapira — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:48:31 -0800

YoavShapira: #leanstartup talk by @ericries was awesome, inspiring. Contemplating after-party at Characters (Marriott) now.

YoavShapira: Huge set of features that take longer to prioritize than to implement #leanstartup

Yoav Shapira — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:14:52 -0800

YoavShapira: Huge set of features that take longer to prioritize than to implement #leanstartup

YoavShapira: At @ericries #leanstartup talk at mit

Yoav Shapira — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:30:27 -0800

YoavShapira: At @ericries #leanstartup talk at mit

YoavShapira: The days fly by.

Yoav Shapira — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:48:52 -0800

YoavShapira: The days fly by.

YoavShapira: Voting for @KarenRubin for marketing girl crush: http://www.squidoo.com/Top_Marketing_Women_Social_Media

Yoav Shapira — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:38:51 -0800

YoavShapira: Voting for @KarenRubin for marketing girl crush: http://www.squidoo.com/Top_Marketing_Women_Social_Media

YoavShapira: Just saw pictures of blueberries on Flickr and thought to myself: sucks for them, they have to harvest every 4 hours. Too much Farmville?

Yoav Shapira — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:57:43 -0800

YoavShapira: Just saw pictures of blueberries on Flickr and thought to myself: sucks for them, they have to harvest every 4 hours. Too much Farmville?

YoavShapira: Excited for @ericries talk @MIT this week: http://theleanstartuptalkmit.eventbrite.com/

Yoav Shapira — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:26:05 -0800

YoavShapira: Excited for @ericries talk @MIT this week: http://theleanstartuptalkmit.eventbrite.com/

YoavShapira: You can't use regex to parse HTML: http://bit.ly/regex-html

Yoav Shapira — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:55:38 -0800

YoavShapira: You can't use regex to parse HTML: http://bit.ly/regex-html

YoavShapira: Just had an awesome @HubSpot company meeting. Inspirational, even. Help millions of small businesses get more customers.

Yoav Shapira — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:49:41 -0800

YoavShapira: Just had an awesome @HubSpot company meeting. Inspirational, even. Help millions of small businesses get more customers.

YoavShapira: RT @mattyglesias: For the record, Belichik was right to go for it: http://bit.ly/AicwU

Yoav Shapira — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:12:51 -0800

YoavShapira: RT @mattyglesias: For the record, Belichik was right to go for it: http://bit.ly/AicwU

YoavShapira: Excuse the profanity, but those f'ing refs blew that pass interference call. Ridiculous. I love the Belichick 4th and 2 call. #pats #colts

Yoav Shapira — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:44:26 -0800

YoavShapira: Excuse the profanity, but those f'ing refs blew that pass interference call. Ridiculous. I love the Belichick 4th and 2 call. #pats #colts

YoavShapira: #yoavsspace Israel trip, September 2009: I know, it's been two months since September. I'm far behind in my bloggi... http://bit.ly/2PSYnP

Yoav Shapira — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:30:40 -0800

YoavShapira: #yoavsspace Israel trip, September 2009: I know, it's been two months since September. I'm far behind in my bloggi... http://bit.ly/2PSYnP

Israel trip, September 2009

Yoav — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:23:00 -0800

I know, it's been two months since September. I'm far behind in my blogging ;(

In September 2009, following our trip to China, I flew right to Israel. I could have come back to Boston for a few days, but I wanted to go straight to Israel for a couple of reasons, detailed below.

First, I've always wanted to fly around the world. Going from Boston to China (via Toronto) westward, and then needing to go to Israel, gave me a chance. And I'm glad to say, that mission is now accomplished, so I can check it off my "life to-do list." For the record, my complete itinerary was Boston (BOS) -> Toronto (YYZ) -> Shanghai (PVG) -> Xi'an (XIY) -> Beijing (PEK) -> Vienna (VIE) -> Tel-Aviv (TLV) -> Paris (CDG) -> Boston (BOS).

Second, I had not celebrated my birthday with my family in Israel for a few years. It was time, and it was fun ;) My birthday is September 5th, which was right after the end of our trip to China.

Third, I wanted to try working remotely for more than a day or two. Every now and then, I work from home (or a coffee shop) for a day or two, and I find it highly productive. But I wanted to get a better understanding / feeling for what it's like to work remotely for a week or more. I'm glad I tried it, because now I know it's very difficult. It requires a lot of patience, the ability to understand what people mean (not just what they say), and more. Not for me, if I can avoid it.

Of course, the main reason for this trip to Israel was not my birthday, nor my around-the-world trip. It was my little sister's wedding. Noa and Doron got married in September, and Alli and I would not miss that for the world.

The wedding was a blast. A beautiful place, great couple, a chance to see many family and friends, and a big party of course. There are a bunch of pictures on Flickr and Facebook. In fact, one of the reasons I waited with this blog post is to give my sister a chance to post her wedding pictures online.

My birthday was also fun. My family likes to celebrate occasions and give gifts, something I myself enjoy a lot as well. Can't complain there ;)

The third event that happened during this trip was the Jewish new year, or Rosh Hashana. This is one of the two times a year I go to temple (the other being Yom Kippur, the day of atonement). Being in Israel, I got to go with my dad, my grandpa, and my uncle, which was awesome.

There was two other bonuses to being in Israel for more than a few days. One is that I had a chance to re-connect with old childhood friends, and I capitalized on it. I met at least 2-3 people I had not seen in many years, and that was awesome. Everyone is doing well, married, with kids coming soon.

The other bonus was that Alli's parents and brother, Shaun, were with us much of the time. Although Shaun got a little sick the first couple of days, it was great to spend a lot of time with them, and I'm happy they joined this significant family event.

All-in-all, it was a great trip. Even learning that working remotely is not for me, while not fun to learn, is a valuable lesson.

Most of the pictures are on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoavshapira/sets/72157622295848115/.

YoavShapira: Today, please vote for my friend Jeremy Haber for American's Next Great Pundit: http://bit.ly/pundit2

Yoav Shapira — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:55:16 -0800

YoavShapira: Today, please vote for my friend Jeremy Haber for American's Next Great Pundit: http://bit.ly/pundit2

YoavShapira: Now, this is f'in awesome! MassDOT / MBTA sharing real-time data on bus and train locations: http://bit.ly/ESVpN @MassDOTdev

Yoav Shapira — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:44:57 -0800

YoavShapira: Now, this is f'in awesome! MassDOT / MBTA sharing real-time data on bus and train locations: http://bit.ly/ESVpN @MassDOTdev

YoavShapira: Have a good weekend, everyone ;)

Yoav Shapira — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:26:23 -0800

YoavShapira: Have a good weekend, everyone ;)

YoavShapira: Kapow Technologies idiocy: Unfortunately, we have a company policy that does not permit me to issue a trial license without a demo.

Yoav Shapira — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:30:25 -0800

YoavShapira: Kapow Technologies idiocy: Unfortunately, we have a company policy that does not permit me to issue a trial license without a demo.

YoavShapira: Going offline for a few days ;)

Yoav Shapira — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:20:31 -0800

YoavShapira: Going offline for a few days ;)

Boston Frisbee Halloween extravaganza!

Yoav — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:28:00 -0800

I've written about Boston Frisbee before. It's the awesome group that's open and welcoming to everyone, which plays frisbee three times a week. I play sometimes on Sundays, on the grounds of the Boston Common. Logistics and other details are available.

On Halloween weekend, they play a game in costumes. There are some funky special rules added for some points, contests, and more fun stuff. This past Sunday both Alli and I played in our costumes, and we had a blast.

There are a bunch of good pictures now available on SmugMug and Facebook. I'm the orange M&M, and Alli is the yellow belly dancer.

Book review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

Yoav — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:00:00 -0800

This is not my usual kind of book, but it was a gift from my great friend Jeremy H. And I really, really enjoyed it.

Every once in a while, I get comfortable thinking: "Hey, we're pretty creative here. We do cool stuff, we're open-minded, we experiment. We're still young, we're not afraid to try."

And then I read a book like Orbiting the Giant Hairball, and I realize I'm far from exercising my creative potential, as are most other people.

The full title is Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace.

The author is Gordon MacKenzie, who was the Chief Creative Officer (and other, better-titled, roles) at Hallmark.

The book is about how to stay creative in a corporate bureaucracy. I think a lot of the advice is hard to implement, maybe even impractical. Some of it is downright ridiculous and would get you fired. But it's surely entertaining to read about, at least, and there are some great nuggets here.

The author likens big companies to giant hairballs, and the creative people as orbiting those hairballs. As opposed to being inside them, which is the default, or inertia-driven, approach. If you're in orbit, you're intimately related to the hairball, but outside of it, and not part of its most annoying parts. It's an interesting metaphor.

More specifically, the author defines the hairball as "the corporate tendency to rely on past policies, decisions, and processes as a formula for future success." That really strikes a chord with me. It's too easy to fall back on these defaults, especially if they give you some initial success.

And that's just the start of a great book. It's worth reading for humor value along.

But the other unusual thing about this book is its designed. I got this as a gift shortly after raving about my Kindle. I still love the Kindle. But this was the first book I read in a long time that reminded me of the beautiful options available with book design.

I'm not talking about Tufte-style visualizations. Rather, I'm talking about the creative use of doodling, illustrations, variance in fonts and font sizes, unusual layouts, and more typographic approaches. This book, which is self-published, by the way, does it really well.

All in all, an usual book in my library. No spies, no assassins, no Mossad, no sci-fi, no bankers, but really fun to read, and maybe even inspirational at times.

By the way, there was an interesting Fast Company article interviewing the author a couple of years ago, for the curious: How Is Your Company Like A Giant Hairball?

Wine review: 2007 Crochet Sancerre

Yoav — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:57:00 -0800

Usually I write wine reviews about wines I like, or wines I love. I want to remember them, for future purchases, investments, and recommendations to friends.

This one is an exception. This 2007 Dominique et Jeanine Crochet Sancerre was not good. We did not enjoy it, and I don't recommend it.

It's bland, boring. Not really refreshing, not really powerful, doesn't quite nail any fruit. Just meh.

I'm writing this because I had higher expectations for this wine, based on reviews and reading. Oh well, live and learn ;)

Book review: The Assassin

Yoav — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:08:00 -0800

Stephen Coontz's The Assassin was pretty disappointing to me. Even if you only read the blog posts from today, you know I love assassin novels. Of all kinds, in all areas. I read a lot of them. It's almost pathological. But it also means my level of tolerance for assassin stories is high, and I am relatively easy to please within this genre.

But this book did not please me. It was too trite, too unoriginal, too implausible. I read it on a plane, and it helped pass the time, for sure. But I wouldn't recommend it.

The author doesn't even seem to try developing the characters or adding any depth to them. The settings and scenarios of most of the book are routine and boring. I know Coontz can write better, because I've read (and liked) some of his other books. This book mostly feels like a lazy cop-out.

Book review: House of Cards

Yoav — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:53:00 -0800

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohan, is the story of how Bear Stearns collapsed last year. It's kind of similar to A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, which I reviewed last month, and which tells about the collapse of Lehman Brothers around the same time.

The author is a Fortune magazine editor, among other things, and I think that shows in the writing. There is a lot of quoting of people, verbatim, which is actually great. He speeds past some of the financial topics, and I had to look a couple of them up, but that's OK. Overall the writing is more like a novel than a documentary, which I consider a compliment / good thing. I wasn't looking for a dry description of banking transactions, but someone to tell the inside story, and this was pretty cool.

I don't know if the author is objective or not. I don't know if the story is complete or not. The reviews on Amazon seem very split. But I don't really care. This was an entertaining book to read with a lot of primary source evidence, and that's what I was looking for.

It's pretty shocking how quickly the bank collapsed. The first part of the book covers just the last 10 days, with all the frantic deal-making and discussions. Seems like people worked day and night, some to save the bank as-is, and others to creatively find another solution. But it didn't work.

The dealings with the government, and the egos involved, were very interesting. It was a tough time, with some people looking for scapegoats, and others looking for one organization to fail as an example to others.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's not exactly light beach reading, but as far as these pseudo-documentary books go, it's pretty good.

Book review: Rain Storm

Yoav — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:42:00 -0800

Rain storm is a fiction novel by Barry Eisler, featuring an Asian assassin character I like, John Rain.

Like the other books in this series, this book has pretty simple premise. The main character is trying to retire to a faraway country (Brazil), but his old employers lure him back for one last mission. Pretty tired / unoriginal there.

But what makes the book good, like the others in this series, are the nitty-gritty details of each assassination. The planning, the execution, and way things can go wrong. And unlike some other novelists, Eisler gives the villains some character development as well, which makes things more interesting.

As readers of this blog know, I'm also a fan of books involving Israeli intelligence, especially the Mossad. So when a Mossad agent comes into play and mucks with Rain's plans in this book, I was excited ;)

The writing is good: clear, concise, taut. The story is interesting, after the uninspired beginning. The locales are excellent, and they make the book for me. Overall, a fun read.

By the way, the author has a pretty good web site, as these things go. He's also active in social media and seems generally clueful, which is cool.

Book review: Lance: The Making of the World's Greatest Champion

Yoav — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:40:00 -0700

Lance: The Making of the World's Greatest Champion is an awesome book. I enjoyed reading it so much that I even read it twice, the second time being 3 weeks later.

To get the biggest complaint out of the way: I'm not sure the book is completely objective. I think the author makes an effort to represent the doping suspicions fairly, but I also think the same author is a big Lance fan. Just like I am. So if you expect a fully objective investigative report, this is not it.

Everything else about the book is absolutely awesome. The writing is clear, crisp, and well-organized, well-researched. There are many, many original interviews and first-hand / primary source telling of stories. The book's author, John Wilcockson, is a familiar figure. If you follow the Tour, even just on TV (as I do), you will know his voice and presence. His knowledge of the industry is very high, and his connections enabled a lot of the first-hand interviews that make up this book.

The book covers Lance's youth, including his formative teenage years. His initial racing success, his battle with cancer, his return. His training regimen with a lot of details, and his big race success, especially in the Tour. It's all there. In glorious detail, if you're a tech geek like me.

Note: I'm not actually a bicycle rider. I can ride, obviously, but I don't enjoy it much. I get bored. I have a lot of respect for people who are real riders, like my friends and colleague Jeremy . But I am not a rider myself and I know next to nothing about what it takes to be one.

Lance's return from cancer is obviously inspiring to a lot of people. But reading how close he was to death, and how hard he's been working to get back in shape and stay there, makes it all the more inspiring.

Books review: The Defector

Yoav — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:34:00 -0700

The Defector is another book by Daniel Silva, and the immediate follow-up to the book I just reviewed, Moscow Rules.

Warning: spoiler alert. If you're going to read Moscow Rules, skip the rest of this review until you're done.

In a fairly predictable pattern, since Gabriel Allon (the hero in these two books and a few others) did not kill the ultimate villain of Moscow Rules, the same villain is up to new trouble. So this time, Allon has to finish the job. Nothing particularly creative here.

However, the kind of trouble, and the details of how this villain is to be hunted, are what makes this book. It's a really intricate, detailed story, full of double-crossing and elaborate hoaxes. I love those things, which is why I enjoyed this book.

It still qualifies as a very good plane or beach reading, not classical literature. But then again, there's nothing wrong with that. And I had plenty of plane time on my way to China, which is when I read both of these books.

Book review: Moscow Rules

Yoav — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:24:00 -0700

Moscow Rules is another Gabriel Allon fiction novel by Daniel Silva. I like Silva as an author, and I like Allon as a character, so it's not surprising I like this book as a whole ;)

I have an affinity for Israeli secret agent books, as readers of this blog probably know. (By the way, talking about readers: it looks like FriendFeed passed GoogleReader as my top RSS subscriber source this month. Interesting.)

Anyways, this book is taken directly from the relatively recent poisoning, in London, of a former KGB agent, using a chemical substance (thallium). You can substitute the name of the substance, the name of the agent who died, the name of the journalist who died earlier, and you'd get pretty close to this book.

Or, as NBC would put it for Law & Order, it's "ripped from the headlines!" ;)

The writing is good, as always. Easy to read, easy to follow, but with surprising twists. The master villain is suitably villainous, the hero (Allon) quirky enough to make it fun. There is an added story line where Allon's bosses back in Tel Aviv want him to come take the top job in the service, but of course he refuses, as it's an office job and he doesn't want to be behind a desk.

Overall, this was a very good beach or plane read. If you liked the other Allon books, or the other Daniel Silva books, you'd like this one as well. The ending is absolutely excellent, and sets up the following book, which I'll review in a few minutes.

Product review: Fig & Olive collection Meyer lemon-infused olive oil

Yoav — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:30:00 -0700

"Huh?" I hear you say ;) What's this thing about?

I've never written an olive oil review before. This is the first one. And I don't have any others queued up.

Like most foodies, I like experimenting with olive oil. It's just such a wonderful substance, so useful in many ways.

Fig & Olive is a place in New York City that is both a restaurant and a food supply store. They make a variety of things, but olive oil is the emphasis. It's not expensive, not fancy, just good. And guess what? They have an online store where you can buy this and other cool stuff. I wish the Maison du Maille had that too.

Here's the direct link to the online store for this Meyer Lemon oil: http://www.bestoliveoilstore.com/detail_oil.php?group=Infused+Oils+and+Vinegar&cid=25&id=1245

The Meyer lemon-infused olive oil is one of their specialty products that is available for purchase by anyone.

And it's really, really good.

Somehow they managed to infuse the oil with lemon without compromising either the oil or the lemon. Usually with these fancy infused combinations, I get annoyed, because it doesn't taste like anything. But in this case, that's not true.

So if you're looking for a fun, unusual olive oil, and you're tired of the "I'm more virgin than the other oil" labels in the grocery store, this is a decent one to buy.

Restaurant review: Green T. House

Yoav — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:12:00 -0700

Green T. House is a restaurant in Beijing. We went there near the end of our trip to China, but I have not gotten around to blogging about it. Until now, that is.

This restaurant is spectacular. It is probably the most beautiful restaurant I've ever been to. We have a few pictures on Flickr, but they don't do it justice, because of the lighting for the most part.

The restaurant is like a post-modern version of Alice in Wonderland. It was a visual and auditory heaven. I wish I could have the same decor here at home.

The theme, as you might have guessed, is tea. Many of the dishes involve tea, in various shapes and forms. Parts of the menu are given out as white-out on big tea leaves, which is cool. The food is delicious and service superb, as one might expect. The prices are very high: this is an expensive place, even by European standards.

However, it's well worth it. We were there on a quiet night, with only a couple of other couples around. There was Asian-style belly-dancing entertainment in the middle of the meal, out of nowhere.

This was by far my favorite restaurant of the trip, and by definition, my favorite restaurant in Asia, to date ;) If you're ever in Beijing, you should go there.

Jeff Dean presentation on building large-scale systems at Google

Yoav — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:54:00 -0700

A bunch of good numbers, heuristics, data, and lessons, from Jeff Dean of Google.

Found simultaneously via Gregor and Paul (on FriendFeed). Thanks, guys ;)

Direct PDF link: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/talks/dean-keynote-ladis2009.pdf.

Sample / key slide:

Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning

Yoav — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:45:00 -0700

The Complexity of Air Travel Planning is a wonderful free online presentation by Carl de Marcken, co-founder and former CTO of ITA Software. It was forwarded to me by my colleague Steve L, who used to work at ITA as well. Thanks, Steve!

Direct PDF link for those who prefer PDF: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf.

Reminder: RingCentral goes right to my trash

Yoav — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:26:00 -0700

As previously covered and explained on this blog.

In the 24 hours since HubSpot's Series C announcement, I've been getting a ton of RingCentral calls. I just happened to note some of them in my spam folder by accident, hence this blog post.

If you need to reach me, please don't use RingCentral. Thank you.

Midnight Madness: college basketball is back!

Yoav — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:22:00 -0700

My favorite college sport in the US got started this weekend, with the traditional Midnight Madness celebrations. ESPN has a good intro video, and YouTube has plenty more.

I also like college football, but the broken playoff system is so annoying, I don't watch much. College basketball, on the other hand, absolutely has it nailed with the March Madness tournament. My dad and I go to the Final Four each year, and it's always one of the best weekends of the whole year.

Eric Ries is giving a talk at MIT, and his latest blog post is awesome

Yoav — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:47:00 -0700

I've quoted Eric Ries before. To the point where I might sound like a broken record. But I don't really care: he's that good. I know my friend and colleague @danmil agrees, too.

Eric's latest blog post is awesome, as usual. It's called Innovation Inside the Box, and here are the key nuggets, chopped up and re-spliced by yours truly:

I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company... Almost the entire meeting was taken up with interpreting data. The problem was that nobody could quite agree what the data meant... Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too...

Listening in, I assumed this would be the end of the meeting. With no agreed-upon facts to help make the decision, I assumed nobody would have any basis for making the case for any particular action. Boy was I wrong. The meeting was just getting started. Each team simply took whatever interpretation of the data supported their position best, and started advocating. Other teams would chime in with alternate interpretation that supported their position, and so on.

In the end, decisions were made – but not based on any actual data. Instead, the executive running the meeting was forced to make decisions based on the best arguments.

Here was my prescription for this situation. I asked the team to consider creating what I call a sandbox for experimentation. The sandbox is an area of the product where the following rules are strictly enforced:

Any team can create a true split-test experiment that affects only the sandboxed parts of the product, however:
One team must see the whole experiment through end-to-end.
No experiment can run longer than a specified amount of time (usually a few weeks).
No experiment can affect more than a specified number of customers (usually expressed as a % of total).
Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics.
Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens...

I'll stop here, because I would easily quote the whole blog post.

Eric tends to find a really good balance between the ideal and the practical. Everyone wants to be more data-driven. But most management teams and managers are afraid to do it, because the data might disprove their hypotheses.

At HubSpot, one of our strengths (I think -- chime up if you disagree) is that all of us are relatively data-driven (although not to Eric's level, but we can improve), and none of us has such a huge ego that we let it get in the way of our data. We also have enough of a collaborative, open, transparent culture that if anyone thought a decision was ego-based, they would speak up.

These are two of my favorite things. But I'd still like to be better at A/B-testing the Eric Ries way.

By the way, Eric Ries is coming to give a free talk at MIT next month, and we're co-sponsoring it. I hope you can join us.

Video interview with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder)

Yoav — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:20:00 -0700

My friend and colleague Dan A pointed this out to me: The Business Insider interviews Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, on innovation and related topics.

Wine aerator shoot-out

Yoav — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:38:00 -0700

Via my colleague, @ckeller: The Aerator Shootout on Wine Accessories.com. I'm thinking of buying one of these Soiree things. Have you tried it?

Moutarde Maille au Pain d’épices et Miel de châtaignier

Yoav — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:35:00 -0700

I think I only have about three readers who understand the title of this post and appreciate it. Isa, Ondine, Bea, this one is for you ;)

The rough translation of the post title is "Maille Mustard with gingerbread and honey chestnut". (Thanks, Google Translate ;)).

Maille is an old boutique food supply store in Paris. They specialize in mustards. When we visited Paris in June, we bought a few at the store. By now we've tried most of them, and this one is the best to date.

Here's the Maille US site, for the curious. It has their classic, long-standing products. But it doesn't have any of the special collection, seasonal ones. Like this one. If you see it, buy it. Buy a handful of them.

For a cool recipe that uses this mustard with some poached salmon, check out PaperBlog.fr.

Clarification: the picture above is of their generic mustard, not the one I'm talking about. It's good. But if you're there, make sure you buy the one with the same name as the title of this post.

Wine review: 2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

Yoav — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:43:00 -0700

2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: two Napa cabs in a row ;) It's been a good couple of weeks.

This is a classic cab, all black currant, strong up front, smooth finish. The nice aging effect some Napa vineyards have, with almost no acidity at all.

It's a little more expensive than the Cannonball I just reviewed, and tastes a little better. But not much. The Cannonball is a better bargain.

For a more detailed review, check out 2 Days per Bottle.

Wine review: 2006 Cannonball Cabernet Sauvignon

Yoav — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:36:00 -0700

2006 Cannonball Cabernet Sauvignon: This was a really fun little wine. It's pretty cheap, retaining at $12 - $16 in our local stores as well as online, e.g. on Snooth.

It's spicy, with a big punch of flavor right up front, and a smooth finish. In other words, a crowd-pleaser. Goes really well with red sauce pasta.