Either You Succeed or Explain

Another training in India

I'm traveling to India again, to give a training in Pune. If any of my colleagues or former students is reading this, I'll be happy to meet. I'll be there for about 2 weeks this time. It's a great time to visit India: it's not too hot and it's not raining (unlike in Israel, at the moment). Last time I was there, I almost drowned in the streets of Mumbai.

Of course, I'll be updating my Pune Tips page while I'm there.

On the technical side, I'm using my MacBook Pro to do the presentations. The original presentations are in PowerPoint format. Converting them to Keynote worked very well. I had just minor issues which I fixed while going over the slides, which I had to do anyway. I also have Windows running as a backup, just in case.

Last time I was using the Logitech Cordless Presenter. It's a great device. You can tell that the people who designed it are giving many presentations. It's hasn't changed in years, just to prove how close to perfection this device is. I don't have it anymore, so I'll be using my Apple Remote instead. On the plus side, it is smaller. However, it works by infrared, so you have to point it at the machine and have a clear line of sight. There's also a useful piece of free software called iRed Lite which allows you to customize the remote for your needs. I'll write about my experience with the Apple Remote when I'm done.

Traveling again, this time to Champaign, Illinois

I'll be traveling to Champaign, Illinois, next week, to give another training. It's the second time I'm giving a training for Amdocs since I left. It's a good deal for me, it's good to have some income (allows me to extend my startup "runway") and it's also an opportunity to maintain my training skills. It's also a good break, although, last time, it was a bit long and it took me some time to get back.

I haven't been to Champaign, but people say there's not much to do there. For me it is exciting, since it is an opportunity to visit the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) For those of you not familiar with the terms, NCSA was the home of an interesting application back in the mid 90's called NCSA Mosaic. Mosaic was the first popular graphical web browser. I remember downloading the early Alpha from the NCSA site. I was a student in the Technion back then. It was a world of e-mail, FTP, Usenet and Gopher before HTTP came along. Mosaic was amazing from the very first moment, although there was only one site you could browse. It's a piece of computing history now.

BTW, while on the subject, one of the creators of Mosaic was Marc Andreessen. He has done very well with some very successful ventures, the latest is Ning. He also writes a great blog which I recommend.

See you in Champaign, Illinois.

My tips to Pune, India

I promise, this is the last post about my trip to India. I've set up a page with tips, especially for people like me who travel to Pune on business. This will give you some general info on Pune, how to get around, intro to Indian food with some great restaurant tips, shopping tips, what to do on a spare weekend, what to bring back home and more.

The page is here - http://zvikico.typepad.com/problog/pune_tips.html
(it also appears in my sidebar)

If people send me comments with more recommendations and tips, I'll update it.