Not separated at birth?

One of (the many) great characters on Mad Men is Pete Campbell.  He is played in a perfectly smarmy way by Vincent Kartheiser; his blue suit and slicked-back hair are instantly recognizable:

But the recent cover story in Rolling Stone quoted Kartheiser thus:  "One of my few vanities is going to a party and people not realizing I'm the person they saw on Mad Men."  And why not?  He doesn't look like Pete Campbell in real life:

Go Giants

Ok, we've been through this before.  It's almost mid-September, and the Giants beat the Padres yesterday to move into a tie for first place in the Western Division.  18 games to go; are they going to pull it out this year?



As a reminder, the last great season was 2002, when the Giants controlled the West and then rolled through the National League to win the pennant and head into the World Series against the Angels. They lost that Series in seven games, on Oct. 27, 2002.  I remember the date pretty well because that is the day Karen and I got married.

The Giants play in such a beautiful ball park.  Here's a photo I took years ago, one of my favorites:

Let's hope this season they go all the way.  But first, let's get through September.  Because the last 3 games of the season, Oct. 1-3, will be played in San Francisco. And they will be against the Padres.

Seafood chowder

I was in a restaurant on the East coast recently and ordered a cup of seafood chowder, which included fish, crab, shrimp and lobster.  There were housemade croutons on top as well.  The chowder arrived in a beautiful little black cookpot:

Taking off the lid, the chowder had that perfectly presented look:

And the result was just perfect - creamy, hot and delicious.  I love presentations like this, especially when the food is particularly good;

Super cute

From Wired Science comes a great story about finding a baby seahorse:

File this under A for adorable. The Seahorse Trust, after years of surveying the fish in British waters, has finally found, measured and photographed a baby seahorse, which is also called a fry.

Despite finding many adults, plenty of pregnant males (female seahorses transfer their eggs to the male, who fertilizes them in his pouch) and juveniles, the trust had previously failed to find any babies.

Baby seahorses are left entirely on their own after being born, and rarely survive long enough to become an adult. Due to their premature independence and underwater predators, less than one in a thousand will survive into adulthood. Not good odds, even though about 100-200 eggs are hatched at a time.

But the trust finally found a fry in the waters at Studland in Dorest. Despite poor weather and only 3 feet of visibility, scientists spotted a tiny seahorse clinging on to a piece of seagrass. They managed to measure the 1.6 inch creature, and snap the photograph above, before the baby returned to the sea bed.

The picture is worth a thousand words:

Faster searching

Another Google item - this time the release of Google Instant.  The search algorithm is always trying to give you the best result for your query, but this takes it one step further.  As you type your search request, the google.com page returns updated, instant results, changing with each letter you type.  It's quite likely that the result you are seeking will be shown on the page well before you finish typing the search.

This is a step beyond Google Suggest, which would offer you different search query options as you typed. This time, you are actually seeing results.  And if it's too distracting, you can turn it off.

I like the way this works.  It shortens up search time and gets you what you want to know.  Quite helpful.

A welcome addition

Back in February I wrote about a fascinating talk I heard at work, given by two senior officials on Hilary Clinton's staff at the State Dept.  This week, my company hired one of them - Jared Cohen.  I only saw this in the news, that he has been hired to lead a "think/do tank" called Google Ideas.

I would say this bodes well for our company and new ideas it might bring forward.

Welcome, Jared.

One full year

I started posting to this blog a year ago today.  I went and looked back over some of the things I've written.  Not all that interesting by themselves, but I am a bit intrigued by the overall collection.  My goal was just to find a small outlet for writing, but I am surprised at how many photos I have posted over time.


Not yet sure how long this will go on, but we'll start year two and find out.