Mixing Technology and Music - Oh Yeah! - Part II

In part II (Part I) of my on-going mission to share both music and technology with my Technology Plumbing audience, I have to share Rodrigo y Gabriela. I first heard this Mexican guitar duo on Chicago's WXRT and have been hooked ever since. They just came out with their latest album 11:11, which features 11 songs and 11 musical influences in their lives. Their influences range from Jimi Hendrix to Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin to Metallica. These two guitarists get so much music out of their acoustic guitars you have to see it to believe it, which I hope you will do.

Technology Across The Pond - Part I

I spent last week in the UK working with some of my corporate clients. While I travel a lot in North America, this was my first trip overseas since I started this blog so I wanted to share some thoughts and observations about technology getting to / from and within the UK.

• Traveling in coach is not a great way to get much work done or get any sleep in. The airlines have cut so many flights that the remaining flights are fully packed leaving no room to do anything but work on one thing at a time. Forget about having documents out while working on your PC. Also forget about sleeping as the seats in coach barely recline.
  

• My flight (and most flights) do not provide power in the coach section, so the time you can spend working is limited to the battery life of your PC, which we all know is not up to a 7+ hour flight.
  

• On top of the battery issue, lighting on an overnight flight is poor at best. While I admit to being particularly light-sensitive (I need lots of light to work well), working with only the light from PC screen and a poorly aimed overhead light was causing me to make more typos than normal, even as a good touch typist.

• Given these challenges my goal of completing some technical drawings on the flight over were not fully met, but I got enough of a start on them to feel comfortable that I could complete the work from my UK hotel room.

• One good side effect of not being able to work as much on the plane is that I did see two very good movies, The Hurt Locker (about Army Bomb Squad members trying to survive in Iraq) and The Brothers Bloom (2 brothers grow up as con men and try to pull off one last con).

I will continue this series on technology across the pond in my next posting, so stay with me as I talk about hotels, the tele, cars, roads and more.