Fractals of Change

Smart Reader Solves Mystery

Smart reader Chris quickly solved the mystery of the cloned blog which baffled me yesterday when I discovered a Japanese version of Fractals of Change. Daughter Kate verified the solution by following Chris’ prescription to make a Japanese version of her blog, On Jewels:

The solution has a zen-like essence to it. The clone doesn’t exist until you look for it! If you type the URL http://hot-news.coresv.com/doctor-xxx  and replace “xxx” with the name of almost any English-language (I didn’t test other languages) website, a Japanese clone of the website as it exists at the moment is created and returned to your browser. I don’t know how to figure out if the clone is retained somewhere after that or disappears until someone wants to look at it again (maybe this is also a philosophical question).

If a Google indexing bot crawls my link to the Japanese version of my blog or Kate’s, it is likely that a clone will be created for it to look at and index. If someone subsequently Googles in Japanese, these links to transient Japanese versions of the websites’ll be returned if the sites are relevant to their query. Even more magically, following these links will bring the cloned versions of the websites back into existence. Wow!

Interesting implication is that you can link to the Japanese version of your blog following Chris’ recipe above and the Japanese clone will exist for anyone who follows the link. Test before you do this, though; whatever this process is, it doesn’t seem to be able to deal with some complex websites: www.feld.com doesn’t translate at all and avc.blogs.com translates only partially. Both Brad Feld and Fred Wilson have complex blog layouts with lots of widgets, gidgets, and gadgets.

Apparently the business model for this service is appending ads of its own to the blog clones. The ads below showed up on the bottom of the On Jewels clone:

Mystery of the Cloned Blog

Clearly a bot did it. But whose bot? Who is hosting this mysterious (and unauthorized) Japanese clone of Fractals of Change? Why? You can help solve this mystery.

Because someone followed a link from this site to the real FOC, I accidentally found this at http://hot-news.coresv.com/doctor-blog.tomevslin.com. A Google popup displays the original English when I mouse over it so I’m guessing that a Google capability was used to automatically translate it. Some of the links and some of the ads work. Some links (comments, for example) don’t work. The ads I’ve authorized are here. There are also unauthorized ads apparently added by whomever owns this site.

I’ve done a little investigating but haven’t found much other than that there are other cloned blogs on the same domain and that CoreSv is the name for a technology used to manage streams of web content. I haven’t been able to find anything about the owners. A WhoIs search just reveals that the domain name was registered in 2006 and gives information about the registrar but not the owner.

Presumably the bot will faithfully clone this post. My hope is that someone who is reading it on the cloned site will tell me more about that site by writing to tevslin at gmail dot com or by going to http://blog.tomevslin.com and leaving a comment on this post (not the cloned post). Of course would be glad to hear from anyone who knows more about this than I do.

Outside Chair

Longtime friend Rob Shurtleff, now a VC among many other endeavors, has started blogging. I take some of the credit for that which is only fair since he gets all the credit for my having gone to Microsoft a million years ago. Rob has interesting things to say: he recently posted that a board of directors should evaluate the CEO and give her or him feedback after each board meeting.

“…who should deliver the review? In my experience this is best done by the Chairman/women of the board, aka the Chair. In my experience the Chair can provide a key mentoring and organizing role that makes a CEO’s job easier.”

Implicit in Rob’s recommendation is that there IS a Chair of the Board separate from the CEO. Thinking back on having been both CEO and Chairman of my own startups, I think I would have done better with a separate Chair once the companies took in outside money even though I probably would have fiercely resisted the suggestion that I not hold both roles at the time.

A separate Chair makes reviews possible; everyone needs to be reviewed.

By necessity, a CEO provides most of the content of a board meeting; that’s a good reason why he or she should NOT also be moderating the meeting. A good Chair can assure that there’s a good agenda for meetings; that materials are distributed beforehand; and that time is left for important discussions. Moderation of a meeting is best done by someone who is NOT doing most of the talking.

A separate Chair provides an instant (if not long term) successor or replacement for the CEO in case of emergency.

A non-executive Chair can be more effective in getting other Board members to fulfill Board responsibilities and NOT try to manage the company than the CEO can. If the CEO is also Chair, she or he is effectively managing the Board which is oxymoronic although common.

The non-profit boards I’m on now and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority of which Mary is Chair have separate Chairs and CEOs. They function well this way, I think. The tension between CEO and Chairman is largely constructive. Here I think the private sector has something to learn from the public sector.

Obviously doesn’t make sense to have separate CEO and Chair when you’re a one person band and also the janitor, plumber, and receptionist. But the roles should split at the time you expect to have Board with real fiduciary responsibility which is presumably when there’s money in the venture besides your own. At that point you’ll have a better Board and a better company if you’re not the Chair (unless you want to be the Chair and have someone else be the CEO – that can work although founder/Chairs deserve a post of their own).

Rob’s post was in response to a post by Seth Levine on CEO reviews with lots of how-to in it.

Pam’s Poem

On our recent sailing trip, we swam with the sea lions off their rocks in the Sea of Cortez. Friend Marc got scratched or bitten by a playful cub; same cub bit my flipper, just as my puppy Bruiser would have, when I used it to block his rocketing attack from below.

But my sister Pam Zino – nurse/writer/Neried at heart – was swarmed by the sea lions. She disappeared in a crush of them for a frightening moment. She handled them wonderfully and wrote a poem about that and more which she has given me permission to post here.

Without Even Closing My Eyes

I feel the world rocking.

A bright blue rocking

into sandy bights of red spine

rising from the Sea of Cortez.

Wind propelled, cradled by swell

the cat’s hulls cleave

the leeward sea of the red range.

Windward of the cliffs, the waves

  pound rock jetties in their wake.

We forge a saltwater river in

a mangrove thicket to the far shore.

Beaks folded like bayonettes to their chest ,
Pelicans guard the way to a clear lagoon

braced by a warm wall of rock

from crashing sea.

Which, days on land, I still feel rocking me

  as it rocked when I spotted sea lions cupped in its peaks.

“There! At one o’clock,” I yelled. “rising ‘fore the bow.”

We searched the waters. Was that one? More there?

Undulating crests dazzled with water and light

mirroring phantasmagoria, or actual sight?

Then suddenly their bray bounced off a long shelf

of jagged pinnacled rock

They cavorted, snout to snout, trumpeting at play

slapping flippers, rolling about, posing on steep inclines

smooth young pups yelping , huge bewhiskered elders bellowing

The island a riot of sound and form.

I dove into the sea.

Surfacing, a pup breached before me

Another lion torpedoed beneath

I donned snorkel and mask

had them in place, and just as I did

All sight was erased

By a swift silent eddy of lions inspecting me

They circled about

Prodding, nuzzling, brushing, gumming

Their current whirled in

an exquisite softness of water and flesh

an inquisitive stream of motion and press

And a worry of possible biting

- Of welcome to fighting -

Do nothing to disturb them, I thought

Make no sudden move causing fear

Be one with their curiosity

This is what you dove to be near.

Will one breach beneath me, I wondered

Will I be carried on a back?

As if divining my thoughts

a lion did just that

But instead of coming from beneath,

mounted me. I was underneath.

I could feel its length, feel its breadth

yet it was weightless:

a muscle of gently suspended flesh

The gesture so exhalted me

it broke my reverie. I called out

and the circle dispersed to the depths.

 

Yet still I feel their water rocking me

See the sea-furnaced igneous range

with sandstone surface gargoyled by wind

its coves of shelled beach

its sere of cactii - silent witness to blaze and gale

And still I feel the water rocking me

though now I hail so far from its reach.

The Curse of the Tarahumara

The old man with the slim-hipped body of a boy did a rain dance for our entertainment. He was once a world champion in the 100 mile super-marathon. The Tarahumara Indians run rather than walk; they live in steep canyons – at 7000 feet in the summer and in the valleys much lower in the winter. He and his friends drove to Leadville, Colorado to compete in the 1993 when he was already in his fifties; he won then. He was second to an American when the race was run in his native Sierra Tarahumura. Now he dances traditional dances, sometimes. His feet and legs are still strong.

He lives in his hut on land belonging to the local Tarahumura council. The hut, which has nether running water nor electricity, is surrounded by his corn field, his peach orchid, and the fenced in area where his bull grazes. The cows are free on the range. They don’t keep goats anymore because of the damage they do to the thin soil of the plateau. When he ran competitively, he wore sandals made from old tires. When he dances the rain dance, he wears rattles on his ankles made from dried butterfly cocoons filled with dry seeds.

Trouble is the rain dance worked during what should be the dry season. It was raining when we got up the next morning (yesterday). In the village before the village where the train station is, we found out that the trains were not running – no explanation, just no trains.

For a not-so-small fee the driver who was taking us to the station said he would take us to the next station (that’s as far as we planned to go on the train yesterday) and rendezvous with the driver who was already arranged to take us from that station to Uno Lodge, our next destination. We changed to a pickup for the ride over the rutted, wet, and occasional steep gravel road to San Rafael, suitcases in plastic garbage bags in the back. At San Rafael, we switched vehicles with an ashen-faced couple, clearly in shock, who had just come from Uno Lodge and were headed back the way we’d come. “Interesting ride,” the man said but didn’t unclench his teeth.

It’s only six miles from San Rafael to Uno Lodge; in good weather the drive takes an hour and there’s usually a four-wheel drive vehicle but that’s in Chihuahua being serviced. And it’s not good weather. The small-wheeled long van with rear wheel drive slips alarmingly on the wet limestone and occasional clay or mud. Some of the canyons at the edge of the road carved into the cliff are a five thousand foot sheer drop. Mary doesn’t look and I only pretend to be brave.

Finally the women revolt and with some relief I accompany them walking the last precipitous mile in a light drizzle. The lodge at 6600 feet overlooks a canyon at least as picturesque and on the same scale as the Grand Canyon. At a mere thirty million years  since its fiery genesis, this landscape is only a quarter the age of the Grand Canyon and correspondingly much more jagged. The views are beautiful when we get glimpses of them through the now driving rain and swirling fog. The guest book talks about the best hikes ever and we’re stuck inside playing dominos and hearts.

We have yesterday’s forecast but the promised afternoon clearing hasn’t happened. The lodge has a little solar-generated juice left in its battery and is recharging the radio telephone so we may get a later report. We’re the only guests and not quite sure if we’ll be able to leave as scheduled tomorrow since the road is no longer fit for the vans even by local standards and snow was in the old forecast.

There’s a horse I call Plan B. It could carry most of the bags. We can walk six miles if we have to if we can keep dry  (it’s cold) and we did save the garbage bags our suitcases were in to use as panchos. Not the hike we had in mind but people do come to Stowe to ski and sometimes find no snow. No use complaining.

Too late I read in the guide book that the Tarahumara like to be left alone. With hindsight that’s clear from their isolated huts spread through the canyons. My advice is don’t accept rain dances from strangers unless you want to get wet.

tSolar Use and Disuse

On the Island of San Francisco in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) there are salt pits, an ancient marvel of solar engineering. The pits are rectangles of about fifty feet by twenty five and dug two or three feet into sand which is slightly below sea level. Salt water percolates up into the pits (not a good place to drill a well which is why no one lives here). The water evaporates and leaves the salt behind. This keeps happening until the pit is crusted over with a foot or so of salt. The subsistence fisherman from nearby Coyote Island scoop up the salt and use it to preserve their catch. The pit is ready to make the next batch.

Ironically, electricity for La Paz, Mexico, which has over 300 days of sunshine/year and is only 24 degrees north of the equator comes from a sprawling 600 megawatt natural-gas fired generating plant proudly opened in 2002. The plant is on a shore surrounded by desert and bare hills, great place for solar collectors. Oil and gas prices were low when the plant was planned and built and Pemex may have been looking for markets for its natural gas. But I suspect that gas would now find a ready market to the north if solar power displaced it here during sunny days as an energy source. Fortunately, the world is full of such opportunities.

Remote communities off the electric grid here are beginning to use solar desalinization and also harvest commercial quantities of salt as a byproduct.

BTW, I realize that people who fly in jets to sail in plastic boats and motor for four out of seven days are scarcely in a position to lecture anyone on energy use. These are meant as observations and not as rants.

Small World at Sea

Resource conservation and tactical tradeoffs were a sub-theme of our sailing week on the Sea of Cortez. Unlike the Caribbean and other places we’ve rented boats, there are no restaurants or stores to stop at where we were cruising. Knowing this and thinking through the implications are two different things!

A day into our trip we noticed that we’d used a quarter of our fresh water. Whoops! And nobody had even showered yet. We hypothesized that profligate rinsing of dishes and pots was the culprit. We’re used to having dinner on shore and easy breakfasts and lunches aboard. Good luck is that friend Marc turns out to be a great chef. Bad luck is that, even though Marc used the grill for the main course every night, there were still pots, pans, and dishes to be washed.

There was also a zip lock bag problem. We hadn’t brought enough of them onboard somehow so they needed to be rinsed to be reused for leftovers. But rinsing takes water. Tough decision; don’t save what isn’t worth saving. Better yet, save the rinse water to use as presoak for the pots from the next meal.

I’ve read from different sources that both Chinese and British captains could tell when women had been smuggled aboard by the sudden alarming increase in fresh water usage. Apparently, although men’s hair can be washed in salt water, women’s hair can’t. Four of our crew of seven are women – less chauvinistically, four of our crew have significantly longer hair than the other three.

I tried to set a good example by using the slightly warm water spurting out the side after it cooled the engine to wash my hair while paddling around in the surprisingly cold water but couldn’t convince anyone, male or female, that this was a good idea. Finally, after explaining that this water didn’t actually touch any greasy engine parts, I got permission to use it for dishes presoak so long as I leaned over and gathered it in a pot. (warning: on some boats this water is really hot; be careful.)

The harbors were remarkably empty. In the one crowded harbor (by Sea of Cortez standards), we didn’t use sea water because we knew none of the boats were equipped with holding tanks; heads flush into the sea. Yuk!

Back to ocean-bathing, two hints: 1) jump in the water and get wet, then climb onto the swim platform and soap up, then jump back in to rinse; soaping up while swimming doesn’t work well; 2) dish soap (environmentally friendly, of course) suds much better than bar soap in salt water.

OK. Women do get to shower; boat shower which means you don’t leave the water running. But what about running the water so that the tap turns warm before using the water. Lots of waste; I had visions of running dry. Someone’s smart suggestion: save that pre-hot water for drinking or cooking or dishes. Problem solved.

The boat was supposed to be equipped with garbage bags. It was – one! That was good for about two days. Fortunately Mary has a habit of saving the little plastic bags groceries come in. We bought lots of groceries before we left so we had lots of little bags. Now, at the end of the cruise, I’m about to haul the tied but leaky and smelly things out of the spare anchor locker and throw them away. Good thing we never had to use the spare anchor in a hurry; we would’ve drowned in garbage.

You know what? It was all part of the fun.

Out of Touch

As faithful readers can tell from my lack of posts, there really are no Internet connections available north of La Paz in the southern Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) – or at least I haven’t found any yet. We haven’t been to any villages which might have Internet cafes; but, of the only two possible villages on our itinerary, one is famous for its single satellite phone for rent by the minute and has no electricity and the other is perched on a rock and is known in the cruising guide for its enterprising fishermen’s wives who supplement diminishing fishing income (blamed on Japanese and Korean factory ships) with sales of shell-based home-made jewelry. With twenty-two kids in school, the latter is the second largest settlement on an island in this Sea so maybe, maybe… Tomorrow we’ll find out unless the wind is blowing too hard and the seas are too high.

[update at posting time. No Internet access there; no kids or shopping either. Kids and women are on the mainland during the week. Three fishermen live there alone other wise and sold us some very fresh fish. They live on the rock because there are no mosquitoes there, they say.]

Which brings me to the weather and communications. Wise sailors in this region get their weather forecasts daily at 8am on VHF channel 22 where a local net links liveaboards together. But the forecast is broadcast from La Paz and we’re now forty miles north under the horizon even for our masthead mounted antenna. Didn’t get the forecast yesterday either because we were in a cove with high blocking walls. But the weather’s not supposed to be very interesting this time of year anyway; one of the reasons we booked now. The wind blows from the north or northeast between ten and twenty five knots, can get a little blustery and uncomfortable when a dry cold front trails through hanging from a low in southern California.

That’s why we were surprised at the 10 knot wind from the southwest this bright and clear afternoon. Also a little disconcerted to see the anchorage we’d shared with four other boats last night deserted when we came back to it late this afternoon. It’s known to have great protection against northerly winds and swells; not recommended in the summer because it’s open to the southwest.

We anchored in the spot we’d coveted yesterday but come to late to claim, nestled up against a cliff to the north and with a salt flat protecting us from waves if not wind from the east. Just as it was getting dark, the gentle rollers from the southwest steepened and sometimes even broke under us where the water shelved rapidly to fifteen feet. The wind accelerated to 20 knots with higher gusts. Uncomfortable.

Brother Billy used the dingy to discover that the southern part of the bay was smoother but just as gusty.  Should we pull anchor and move in the near dark? Risk is we don’t get it set well or make some other mistake. Now the lack of weather information makes a good decision tough. Why’s there a southwest wind anyway?

We try calling other boats on both channels 16 and 22 to see if anyone else has the weather forecast. Not a peep back. Have I mentioned that we don’t have Internet access?

Sister Pam calls her super Internet literate son on our satellite phone (see picture in last week’s post). As we knew he would be, he’s back with us in five minutes with the morning forecasts for both northern and southern Sea of Cortez. We’re south middle but an interpolation makes sense.

Two lows moving through the north will cause very strong northerlies there starting tomorrow and moderate northerlies in the south. Today mild south to southwest winds were forecast for the south. The barometer (analog) has been dropping. With interpolation it all makes sense.

A cold front is approaching. It’s strong enough to induce southerlies ahead of it even against the prevailing northerly flow. We’re north of the moderate southerlies so we have mildly immoderate southwesterlies. Answer: don’t move the boat!

Why? Because the anchor is holding (we did let out some more chain). It’s almost a certainty that the northerlies which trail the front will be stronger than the southerlies that proceed it – especially since they’ll be reinforced by the seasonal flow rather than diminished by it. If that happens, our anchor has to hold against much more force if we go to the currently calm the southern bay and leave the protection of the cliff to the north of us. Didn’t want to move anyway and now it’s truly dark although there’s a half moon illuminating some mares tails high in the sky.

Both the depth gauge and GPS say the anchor is holding. Almost on cue, the wind starts to drop: 20 knots, 16, 14, 15, 12, 14, 12, 10, 13, 8… until the wind direction indicator is spinning directionless around its dial. The barometer is now steady.

Now can we go to sleep?

Some of us can but we’ve got to take turns standing anchor watch. The northerlies are certainly coming. We should have good shelter but  we’ll be pulling the anchor in the opposite direction from the way which it was initially set. If we pull hard enough it’ll flip over and no longer be dug in. It SHOULD reset in the sand but there’s some slippery grass below us as well.

At 0200 the wind out of the northwest, even in our sheltered location, is over 10 knots. No big deal but it does hold us sideways to the persistent swell so our rocking becomes a more unpleasant rolling (we’re in a catamaran). My watch, obviously, or I’d be sleeping instead of writing.

Tomorrow morning we WILL get the new forecast even if we have to call the place we rented the boat from on sat phone.

Out of Touch

If you see this post (and there's a good chance that you will), it means that I really couldn't find a good Internet connection in the Sea of Cortez north of La Paz and resisted the temptation to sail to connectivity.

In fact, posts have been on autopilot all week.

Watching the Meter Run Backwards - Priceless

If you don't see a YouTube graphic above, click here for the video.

Holding a camera in video mode sideways - really dumb.

But you can see the black dot on the wheel go from right to left (top to bottom) indicating that on a hazy midafternoon in January in Vermont, I'm generating enough electricity from my photovoltaic array to drive the meter backward (not much load at this time either).