"You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice." [And other words of wisdom, thanks to Gary Smith and friends, some very twisty people ;-) ]

1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit… Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

10. In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, Notify:' I put 'DOCTOR'.

11. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

13. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure..

14. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

15. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

16. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

17. I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

Find files only in current directory modified today (or last 24 hours, anyway)

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime -1

Hey, I forget sometimes.  So sue me.  :-)

Cheers,

Connie

SystemC User's Group Meeting June 3 DAC Austin (NASCUG) &c: Accellera at the 50th Design Automation Conference

North American SystemC User's Group Meeting (NASCUG)

Monday, June 3
2:00-6:00 pm
Ballroom D

Register Here >>> 

Pre-registration is required for this free event. Seating is limited, so register today!

A central component of the half-day user's group meeting is a number of short user experience presentations discussing techniques of design, modeling and verification using SystemC.

Agenda available soon on nascug.org.

Join us at DAC events dedicated to technical standards!

 

Accellera Breakfast and Town Hall Meeting

Topic: "The Standard for Low Power Design and Verification is here! What's next?"

Monday, June 3
7:00-8:45 am
Ballroom D

Register Here >>>
Pre-registration is required for this free event. Seating is limited, so register today!

Moderated by: Ed Sperling, System-level Design

Panelists:

• John Biggs, Consultant Engineer, ARM
• Sushma Honnavara-Prasad, Sr. Staff Engineer, Broadcom
• Qi Wang, Solutions Group Director, Cadence
• Erich Marschner, Verification Architect, Mentor Graphics
• Jeffrey Lee, Staff Corporate Application Engineer, Synopsys

At our breakfast this year, we will host a town hall discussion about the emerging IEEE 1801-2013 standard. We'll have a panel of experts fresh from the IEEE 1801-2013 tutorial available to answer your questions about this pending standard. With so many of our projects needing power-aware structures, this is sure to be an exciting and informative discussion about the future of low-power design and verification.

---

North American SystemC User's Group Meeting (NASCUG)

Monday, June 3
2:00-6:00 pm
Ballroom D

Register Here >>> 
Pre-registration is required for this free event. Seating is limited, so register today!
A central component of the half-day user's group meeting is a number of short user experience presentations discussing techniques of design, modeling and verification using SystemC.

Agenda available soon on nascug.org.

---

IP XACT Tutorial: "A Practical Guide to Packaging IP and Assembling SoCs Using the IP-XACT- IEEE1685 Standard"

Monday, June 3
11:00-1:00pm; 2pm-4pm and 5pm-7pm
Location: 14
A practical guide to packaging IP and assembling SoCs using the IP-XACT- IEEE1685 Standard. This all-day DAC tutorial will appeal to those new to the IP-XACT- IEEE1685 standard as well providing additional insight into more advanced IP-XACT topics. The tutorial will be presented by IP-XACT experts and will begin with a brief introduction to IP-XACT, followed by a deeper dive of the core IP packaging and design/assembly metadata concepts of IP-XACT and concludes with an examination of the typical flows that can utilize this metadata. Read more on the DAC website >
Attendees will initially be through typical IP Packaging metadata e.g. components, bus definitions, bus interfaces and HW/SW interface representation. The focus will then move to integration-oriented topics and explore how hierarchical designs are represented and connected. Some advanced integration topics are introduced that explore how system-memory mapping are represented as well as how configurability is addressed. The final section then explores how this component and design metadata can be processed and presents several different example flows.
The presentation technique will focus more on visually presenting the IP-XACT concepts rather than walking through XML snippets.
Organizers:

• David Murray / Duolog Technologies Ltd., Galway, Ireland
• Kathy Werner / Southwest Reuse, Austin, TX

Speakers:

• David Murray / Duolog Technologies Ltd., Galway, Ireland
• John Eaton / Ouabache Designworks, Vancouver, WA
• Vasant Kumar Easwaran / Texas Instruments India Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru, India
• Mark Noll / Synopsys, Inc., Portland, OR
• Kamlesh Kumar Pathak / STMicroelectronics, Greater Noida, India
• Sylvain Duvilliard / Magillem Design Services, Cannes, France

---

DAC Birds-of-a-Feather Meeting:

Topic: "Creating a Standard for Interoperability of Multi-language Verification Environments and Components"
Tuesday, June 4
7:00-9:00pm
Room 11AB
Sign up here >>>
Roughly 18 months ago, the Accellera Board tasked representatives from six electronics companies to define a standard for multi-language verification. Warren Stapleton, chair of the Multi-Language Working Group (MLWG), will review the progress of the group in an open forum. Please join us to learn more about this exciting topic.
The audience for this session is IP stakeholders — the authors, users, and EDA tool vendors. The intent is to provide enough detail for a high-level overview suitable for members of the IEEE 1800 and P1076 working groups and balance that with enough introductory material to explain the concepts to anyone interested.
Accellera Systems Initiative is calling for member participation in the newly formed Multi-Language Working Group.

---

DAC Birds-of-a-Feather Meeting:

Topic: "Exploring the IEEE P1735-IP Protection Standard"
Tuesday, June 4
7:00-9:00pm
Room 12AB
Sign up here >>>
P1735 has developed recommendations for IP Protection that soon will become a standard. This contains both recommendations and extensions to the IEEE protection pragmas in the SystemVerilog and VHDL LRMs. Its overall goal is to enable IP authors to evaluate and use IP protection to more effectively deliver their IP for use in an interoperable tool flow for a wider IP user community. This session will explain the use models for this protection and how it can work effectively in an interoperable tool flow. It will explain the extensions to support or improve key management, licensing, rights management, and visibility.

 

Accellera Systems Initiative, 1370 Trancas Street, #163, Napa, CA 94558
Copyright Accellera Systems Initiative. All Rights Reserved. www.accellera.org

MotionX-GPS Track: Nice Day For Early Bike Ride Around Boulder

Hello,

Connie O'Dell uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone and is sharing with you the following track:

Name:		Nice Day For Early Bike Ride Around Boulder
Date:		May 25, 2013 9:22 am
Map: (valid until Nov 21, 2013)		View on Map
Distance:		15.3 miles
Elapsed Time:		1:44:25
Avg Speed:		8.8 mph
Max Speed:		25.5 mph
Avg Pace:		6' 50" per mile
Min Altitude:		5,190 ft
Max Altitude:		5,758 ft
Start Time:		2013-05-25T15:22:48Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	39º 59' 09" N
	Longitude:	105º 13' 05" W
End Location:
	Latitude:	39º 58' 16" N
	Longitude:	105º 15' 54" W

 

MotionX-GPS Commonly Asked Questions

1. What is MotionX-GPS?
   MotionX-GPS is the essential GPS application for outdoor enthusiasts. It puts an easy-to-use, state-of-the-art handheld GPS on your iPhone.


2. Can I use MotionX-GPS?
   Sure! MotionX-GPS can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store.


3. How can I display tracks in Google Earth?
   Follow the directions on the Google Earth web site to download and install the Google Earth program. Save the attached "Nice Day For Early Bike Ride Around Boulder.kmz" file to your computer. Launch Google Earth, select File, Open, and open the saved "Nice Day For Early Bike Ride Around Boulder.kmz" file.


4. This email was forwarded to me. Where are the attachments?
   Some e-mail programs do not include the original attachments by default when forwarding an e-mail. In this case, the sender must reattach the original files for them to be included.

 

Please contact MotionX customer support with any comments or questions.

All the best,

The MotionX Team

US and Foreign Patents Granted and Pending. Fullpower® is a registered trademark of Fullpower Technologies, Inc. MotionX™ is a trademark of Fullpower Technologies, Inc. © Copyright 2003 - 2012 Fullpower Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

ver: ; ref-id:

How to Handle Tears at Work - Harvard Business Review

How to Handle Tears at Work

by Video  |  11:27 AM January 3, 2013

• Comments (15)
•        

Anne Kreamer, author of It's Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace, shares best practices for handling emotions at the office.

More blog posts by Video

More on: Communication, Managing people

How to Handle Tears at Work - Video - Harvard Business Review

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Linux :Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system

rm ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/lock ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/.parentlock

workd for me on RHEL5.  My symptoms were that there were in fact *no* firefox-related executables running on the server, via top, or ps -aef, or anything, so I suspected a lock file, I just had to find the darn thing!
Stupid, when I write an application that uses a lockfile, I build in a way to tell that the logfile is out of date (and likely left laying around after a server reboot).

I found the breadcrumbs (but not this exact info) here:

[SOLVED] Firefox is already running, but is not responding...

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MotionX-GPS Track: Fern Canyon hike

Hello,

Connie O'Dell uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone and is sharing with you the following track:

Name:		Fern Canyon hike
Date:		May 18, 2013 12:17 pm
Map: (valid until Nov 15, 2013)		View on Map
Distance:		4.94 miles
Elapsed Time:		2:00:14
Avg Speed:		2.5 mph
Max Speed:		7.5 mph
Avg Pace:		24' 21" per mile
Min Altitude:		5,688 ft
Max Altitude:		7,445 ft
Start Time:		2013-05-18T18:17:41Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	39º 58' 17" N
	Longitude:	105º 16' 02" W
End Location:
	Latitude:	39º 58' 17" N
	Longitude:	105º 15' 55" W

 

MotionX-GPS Commonly Asked Questions

1. What is MotionX-GPS?
   MotionX-GPS is the essential GPS application for outdoor enthusiasts. It puts an easy-to-use, state-of-the-art handheld GPS on your iPhone.


2. Can I use MotionX-GPS?
   Sure! MotionX-GPS can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store.


3. How can I display tracks in Google Earth?
   Follow the directions on the Google Earth web site to download and install the Google Earth program. Save the attached "Fern Canyon hike .kmz" file to your computer. Launch Google Earth, select File, Open, and open the saved "Fern Canyon hike .kmz" file.


4. This email was forwarded to me. Where are the attachments?
   Some e-mail programs do not include the original attachments by default when forwarding an e-mail. In this case, the sender must reattach the original files for them to be included.

 

Please contact MotionX customer support with any comments or questions.

All the best,

The MotionX Team

US and Foreign Patents Granted and Pending. Fullpower® is a registered trademark of Fullpower Technologies, Inc. MotionX™ is a trademark of Fullpower Technologies, Inc. © Copyright 2003 - 2012 Fullpower Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

ver: ; ref-id:

Free genetics course &c; 23andMe Blog for 05/17/2013

Updates from The 23andMe Blog Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Updates from The 23andMe Blog Dear Connie, you are getting this email because you've subscribed to 23andMe's blog.  Below are the latest posts from the last week. Coursera's Useful Genetics Wows By EmilyC on May 15, 2013 06:00 am  If you haven't yet heard, college is expensive. Darn expensive. Thankfully, there are now free online universities for those of us daunted by the hefty price tag attached to traditional university courses. These online universities, such as Coursera and Udacity, provide quality courses taught by experienced instructors.  You don't need to pay a cent or[...] Read more…   Talking About Breast Cancer Risk By admin on May 14, 2013 02:16 pm  Angelina Jolie's revelation in the New York Times today that she had a double mastectomy after learning about her genetic risk for breast cancer focused attention on the difficult dilemma faced by many women in similar circumstances. Jolie said she decided to write about her case to help other women. "I chose not to keep[...] Read more…   What Patients Say Works for Anxiety By admin on May 13, 2013 06:00 am  For the live-updated, fully-labelled, interactive version of this graphic, click here. By Alexandra Carmichael, Co-Founder of CureTogether Anxiety is the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 18 percent of the U.S. population. According to a new study by CureTogether, the most effective treatments for anxiety reported by patients themselves  include exercise, yoga and[...] Read more…   More to read: A Birthday Wish For A Supercentenarian Mother Europe  follow us on Twitter | join us on Facebook 23andMe, Inc 1390 Shorebird Way Mountain View, CA 94043 update your 23andMe email preferences | unsubscribe from all 23andMe news and updates emails

--
Cheers,
Connie O'Dell

How to convert symbolic links in svn to real files, thanks to Introduction to Version Control with Subversion

"
I find symbolic links very useful. Subversion recognizes and can administrate symbolic links, however if you had a file which you want to change for a symbolic link, you need to set the svn:special property of the file (otherwise you get the error svn: Entry 'yourfile' has unexpectedly changed special status):
svn propset svn:special on filename

In the contrary case, if you change symbolic links to files delete the svn:special property:
svn propdel svn:special filename

"

(This little propset/propdel detail is easy to forget - Connie)

Introduction to Version Control with Subversion

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Productive life, from How To Become An Idea Machine, thanks to Altucher Confidential

I especially like this advice I've quoted, it seems quite applicable to those near and dear to me:

"...Make sure the other parts of your life are in balance: you have no bad emotional situations/relationships happening or you are doing  your best to stay disengaged from them. You are keeping physically health, no drinking, eating well, sleeping well. And spiritually (a word I hate because of 200 years of meaningless connotations that have been applied to it but I can’t think of a better word), you realize that you can’t control everything in your life, cultivating a sense of surrender to the present moment as opposed to time traveling to your regrets of the past and your fears of the future."

And now, to the rest of James' article...

How To Become An Idea Machine

• Posted by James Altucher

Kelly Francis ‏@KellyFrancisLaw: How do you know when you’re thinking too big or aiming too high (if that’s even possible)?

Answer:

In the mid-90s I had an idea that lasted about the amount of time it takes to drink two beers. I say this because I had the idea at a bar and it was quickly squashed by the two friends I was with.

I wanted to create a reality cable channel. All reality TV all the time. Reality TV was just beginning. “MTV’s The Real World” and HBO’s “Taxicab Confessions” were the only real two successful examples at that point. The day before, I had gone to a seminar at the Museum of Television and Radio about “The Real World”. All of the guests of my favorite season (but not Puck or Pedro, who was dead) were there answering questions. I felt reality TV was a cheap way to produce TV and people would get obsessed by it, particularly if sex was involved.

(The SF Cast of “The Real World”)

“What a dumb idea,” a friend  said. “There’s only so much reality.” Which strikes me as funny now.

The other guy said, “you’re not a big TV company. How will you get the cable companies to go for the idea?”

So I never thought about it again. I put up a fence around the idea and decided I would not be able to leap over that fence to execute on the idea. Now EVERY television channel is basically all reality all the time, or at least 50% of the time.

My real problem was: I didn’t have confidence. And I didn’t know what the next step was. In retrospect, I should’ve written down my idea, written down ten ideas for possible shows to launch with,  and started pitching TV companies to get someone to partner with me on it. That would’ve been simple and not taken too much time before there was some payoff.

Note: what might be too big for you (thinking of the next step) might not be too big for someone else (they might easily know, and not be afriad of, what the next step is).

Two examples:

I was first asked a similar question a few months ago and I replied that an idea would be too big if you can’t think of the next step. I then added that  if I wanted to start an airline with more comfortable seats and internet access and better food and cheaper prices I might have a hard time because even if it were a good idea I wouldn’t know what to do next.

Then I read about Richard Branson.

When Virgin Records was making him a tidy profit of about $15 million a year he decided there should be a more comfortable cross-atlantic airline. What the hell did he know about making an airline? Nothing. Not only that, airlines are a difficult business.  Three of the best investors in history: Howard Hughes, Carl Icahn, and Warren Buffett have crashed and burned buying airlines. Warren Buffett once said something like “that the best way to end up with a billion is to start with two and buy an airline. ”

And yet Branson came up with the idea and that very day he called up Boeing to find out what it would cost to lease an airplane. He made a great deal with them that if it didn’t work out he could return the airplane. Else if it did work  out, he’d be a great customer for them. I’m assuming he made a similar call to Airbus and took the best deal. He then probably found out what it cost to lease space in the various airports he would need to use. They were probably happy with more business. And then, I’m guessing, he hired some pilots, some ground crew, and put an ad in the paper advertising his new air routes and he was in business.

Virgin Air is successful (I just flew it from NY to LA a few weeks ago) and has since spun off Virgin Galactic. So this scruffy kid who started a record label is now sending rocketships into space.

Note the important thing: the day he came up with the idea  he also called Boeing and got a plane from them. So he took the next step. For me, I would’ve convinced myself that the “next step” in starting an  airline was too big for me. And then it would’ve been too big for me. This is not quite the same as “the secret” – the idea that our thoughts can create our reality but…they do. If you think you can do something, if you have confidence, if you have creativity (developed by building up your idea muscle discussed in many other posts here), the big ideas become smaller and smaller. Until there is no idea too big. Nothing you can’t at least attempt.

On a much smaller scale I can state a few examples of my own but I’ll stick with one. I had an idea to create a financial news site that didn’t have any news but was just a site made up of various methods to come up with investment ideas. In particular, by piggybacking the investment ideas of the greatest investors. I spec-ed out the site the morning I had the idea, I put the spec on elance.com, several developers contacted me with prices, and I hired one of them. Within a few weeks, version 1.0 of the site was released, stockpickr.com. 7 months later and millions of unique users later, I sold the profitable company to thestreet.com.

So the question is not necessarily, “when is an idea too big” it’s: “how do I make all ideas smaller and achievable”. You do this by developing the idea muscle:

A) Every day, read/skim, chapters from books on at least four different topics. For myself this morning I read from a biography of Mick Jagger, I read a chapter from “Regenesis”, a book on advances in genetic engineering, a topic I know nothing about. I read a chapter in “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed. Her recent book, “Wild” is an Oprah pick and was also excellent.  I read a chapter from “Myths to Live By” by Joseph Campbell, and  I, to waste time, I played a game of chess online.

(the young Jagger. Stay tuned for upcoming post).

B) Write down ten ideas. About anything. It doesn’t matter if they are business ideas, book ideas, ideas for surprising your spouse in bed, ideas for what you should do if you are arrested for shoplifting, ideas for how to make a better tennis racquet, anything you want. The key is that it has to be ten or more.

You want your brain to sweat.

To hurt to come up with more and more ideas. One possibility right now is to list ten ideas that are “too big for me” and what the next steps might be. For instance, one idea might be “launch solar panels into outerspace to more efficiently generate solar power”. Another idea might be, “genetically engineer a microbe that sucks the salt out of water”. I have no idea if that’s even possible. Another idea might be, “within one year I am going to write a book and give away a million copies for free”.

The first step would be to write the book. Then maybe I can crowd fund on kickstarter to give the book away for free. OR, I can maybe print  up nano-sized copies of the book so that you can only read it with a microscope but it would only cost me a couple of sheets of paper to print up a million copies. And so on. With the solar panels, I can call up SpaceX and see how much it would cost to rent space. For the microbe that desalinates…I have no idea. Can you help me?

You don’t ever have to look at these ideas again. The purpose is not to come up with a good idea. The purpose is to have 1000s of ideas over time. To develop the idea muscle and turn it into a machine.

C) Be a transmitter. Two farmers live side by side and drink their water from wells they’ve each built on their property. One farmer’s well runs out of water and he needs rain to come quickly or he will  die of thirst. The other farmer did the work and dug his well so an underground stream ran right into it. So his well was always filled with water and he never had to worry.

How do you create this underground stream?

By making sure the other parts of your life are in balance: you have no bad emotional situations/relationships happening or you are doing  your best to stay disengaged from them. You are keeping physically health, no drinking, eating well, sleeping well. And spiritually (a word I hate because of 200 years of meaningless connotations that have been applied to it but I can’t think of a better word), you realize that you can’t control everything in your life, cultivating a sense of surrender to the present moment as opposed to time traveling to your regrets of the past and your fears of the future.

D) Activate another part of your brain. I write every day. So sometimes I am  drawing too much water from the well, from that underground stream. Just like I wrote you need to diversify all aspects of your life, you also need to diversify your brain. The other day Claudia and I took a watercolor class. I haven’t watercolored in my life. We got there and the next thing I knew it was three hours later. My brain didn’t even notice the time passing. What did I have to show for it? The worst excuse for a sunset, some mountains, some clouds, ever watercolored. But my brain felt good.

E) Collisions. I have another blog post coming on this topic. Stay tuned.

F) No pressure. This is  similar to the “burnout” question that came up in my last post. Sometimes you plant seeds and not every seed works out and grows into a beautiful plant. In fact, very few do. If you pressure yourself that every seed will be the most amazingly beautiful plant in the world then you are going to set yourself up for burnout and disappointment. Sometimes I have to work on something and it’s enough to just jot down some ideas, or look at what I’ve done so far, and then set it down again. Get my subconscious working on it. (see below)

G) An exercise to get you get your subconscious working on an idea: I have a very strict routine every day. I wake up, read, write, exercise, eat, meetings (phone or live), then reverse the process: eat, write, read, sleep.

But sometimes when I need to rejuvenate a little bit I have to shake things up. Do something different.

Maybe take a walk at 5 in the morning instead of read. Maybe sleep in four hour shifts one day instead of eight hours straight. Maybe spend a day writing handwritten letters instead of going on the computer. Shaking things up makes the brain  say, “what the hell just happened?” And while the conscious brain is confused the subconscious slips in and drops off what it’s been working on while your conscious brain has been too busy. Write down your routine. Make it as detailed a possible. What can you change today?

H) List your childhood passions. When I was six years old I was passionately interested in both comic books and Greek mythology. In high school and college I took five years of French and spent some time in France (even had an office there with my first business). Right now I can’t remember a single word of French except for maybe “oui”. But I remember vividly almost every comic and book I read about Greek myths from when I was six. From the very first comic (the “legion of superheroes” had to come back in time and stay with Clark’s parents in Smallville) to every comic afterwards.

We only ever remember the things we are passionate about. Ultimately, these become the fields where  ideas  bloom and are harvested. Everything else dries up inside and dies.

Try to think back and think of all the things you ever were passionate about from the age of five on. You’ll be surprised how many things there were. And  how many ways these passions can now be cross-fertilized and mate with each other to provide your next set of passions and ideas.

I) Surf the Internet. I just saw an “infographic” (Infographics are quickly becoming the new blog posts) on how to be creative. It said “turn off the computer”. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes not. With the entire world of knowledge at our fingertips it sometimes is fun to get sucked down the rabbit hole like Alice and drift around in Wonderland. Some good places to start are braindroppings, thebrowser.com, and (not safe for work), extragoodshit.phlap.net. I might not get any ideas from what I see but seeds might be planted. I find that I get a similar feeling to when I go into the book store at a museum, pick out a bunch of books and sit down and skim through them. It tickles the brain and lights things up that may have been dormant.

J) Ugh, I can’t come up with the tenth idea on “how to exercise the idea muscle”. My brain is hurting too much. If you have more ideas for this, please put them in the comments.

How To Become An Idea Machine Altucher Confidential

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