A Tale of Two Bridges...

From Pieter Hintgens' blog:

Two old engineers were talking of their lives and boasting of their greatest projects. One of the engineers explained how he had designed the largest bridge ever made.

"We built it across a river gorge," he told his friend. "It was wide and deep. We spent two years studying the land, and choosing designs. Then we hired the best people and designed the bridge, which took another five years. We contracted the largest engineering firms to build the structures, the towers, the tollbooths, and the roads that would connect the bridge to the main highways. Under the road level we had trains, and a special path for cyclists. That bridge represented years of my life."

The second man reflected for a while, then spoke. "One evening me and a friend threw a rope across a gorge," he said. "Just a rope, tied to two trees. There were two villages, one at each side. At first, people pulled packages across that rope with a pulley and string. Then someone pulled across a second rope, and built a foot walk. It was dangerous, but the kids loved it. A group of men then rebuilt that, made it solid, and women started to cross, everyday, with their produce. A market grew up on one side of the bridge, and slowly that became a large town, since there was a lot of space for houses. The rope bridge got replaced with a wooden bridge, to allow horses and carts to cross. Then the town built a real stone bridge, with metal beams. Later, they replaced the stone part with steel, and today there's a suspension bridge standing in that same spot."

The first engineer was silent. "Funny thing," he said, "my bridge was demolished not long after it was built. Turns out it was built in the wrong place and no-one wanted to use it. Some bastard had thrown a rope across the gorge, a few miles further downstream, and that's where everyone went."

Before you build a product, make sure it's what your customers actually want. Good advice for any entrepreneur!

Quote of the Day...

From blogger Rachel Lucas, talking about her newly acquired dog Primo:

...a furry, cuddly little ball of Prozac...

And she's very thankful to have him.  Isn't that a great description of the effect our dogs have on us dog lovers?

Speaking of which...

I've been sleeping on our couch for the past couple of weeks, since Debbie injured her knee – I'm scared that I'll accidentally cause her some bad pain by moving that knee during the night.  I have a bed roll I lay out there, in the same room with our four dogs.  The dogs think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  They love to curl up between my legs, along side me, or plopped right on my chest.  Any way they can be close is just fine with them, no matter how uncomfortable it looks to us.

Last night around 1 am I woke up, startled by some unexpected movement along my side.  One of our dogs (Race, the border collie) had somehow figured out how to get under the covers, and had joyfully snuggled in alongside me.  The moment I cracked my eyes open he started licking my face – great, big, sloppy dog kisses – and whimpering with happiness.  “Happy Thanksgiving!”, he seemed to be saying.

I can't imagine being without our dogs...

Curiosity: 3D Views...

Curiosity is doing some driving right now.  Here are two different 3D views of the terrain in front of it yesterday.  The top view is a blue/red anaglyph; the bottom is a stereoscopic pair.

Now Here's Something...

...that you don't see every day: an island was “undiscovered”!

What's Coming in New Versions of JavaScript...

Addy Osmani has a post about changes we can expect in the next major release of ECMAScript (aka JavaScript)...

Happy Thanksgiving!

WWII troops watching the cook prepare their Thanksgiving turkeys.  I've talked with a couple of WWII combat veterans (one in Europe, the other in the Pacific) who told me that the Thanksgiving dinners they got in the field were one of their best memories of their wartime experiences.  In the case of the Pacific War veteran, he was a runner during the invation of Tarawa - and even in the midst of intense combat he got a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  He tells me that reminder of what he left back home - under threat from Japan - was a big motivator for him.

From Debbie and I, our wishes for a happy Thanksgiving day for all of our readers...