Personal
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After a relaxing long Easter weekend, on Wednesday I was back on the train to Zurich airport. This trip is primarily for events we're holding in Boston and San Francisco, but we decided to insert a stop in Los Angeles between the two, to catch up with a number of people there and and to visit venues for the LA28 Olympic Games. But first, I had to get to the E gates at Zurich airport. Not that this was particularly arduous, I just happened to snap a photo on the train that goes there. I've recently been granted frequent flyer…
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It's been a sobering few weeks at the 'desk, as it seems everyone on the planet now knows. Seeing close friends being laid off - some of whom I've known for more than 20 years - is painful. I've so far avoided posting anything publicly - beyond the odd comment on others' posts - because I'm one of the lucky ones to have kept my job and even posting messages of support has a LinkedIn-esque performative feel to it. That doesn't mean I'm not here for anyone who needs help, of course, I just feel that posting about it when…
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Since missing out on all the great snow over Christmas and New Year, I've been doing my best to catch up. This weekend left me feeling quite a bit better. The skies were clear, and while it hadn't snowed much before the weekend... ... it did snow overnight on Saturday. I was on the first lift up on Sunday and so got to make the most of the fresh snow accumulated on the pistes. Sheer joy.My flight on Sunday evening was at 6pm from Zurich, so I had to leave the slopes around noon to leave me enough time to…
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In the last post I shared some experiences from the first half of our two-week trip to the United States. Now we'll look at the second half. After leaving Bethany Beach we headed northwards along the coast, stopping at a few outlets along the way. Shopping in Delaware is presumably a thing because of the lack of sales tax. I will say that from this trip - and my son's stay in US generally - it's obvious that prices have gone up a huge amount over the last few years. Switzerland used to feel really expensive when compared with the…
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We're back from a wonderful two week break in the United States. In this post and the next I'll share some pictures and talk a little about the experiences we had. Since much earlier in the year we'd planned on spending the holidays in the US with our son who's studying for an exchange year in Baltimore. This was well before it became clear that the Alps would be getting the most snow over the holiday period than we've seen in the last decade or so. A bit of a shame - we typically enjoy the Swiss slopes at this…
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Here we are again, at the end of another year. This time last year I posted a compilation of Autodesk's holiday greeting messages, and I thought I should do the same for 2024. This year's are very nice: I've been using the one with fairy lights for my Zoom backdrop for the last week or two, and it's been going down a (winter?) storm. Last year I reflected on my personal year ahead a little bit - and how our son would be studying in Baltimore for the academic year between 2024 and 2025. As it happens we're heading across…
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What seemed like a few short weeks after Autodesk University 2024 in San Diego, last week I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area for internal Autodesk Research meetings. On the Saturday I hopped on a flight from Zurich to San Francisco. The flight itself was comfortable enough - at least it was direct. I love arriving at SFO. It brings back all kinds of memories of when we lived in the Bay Area back in 2000-2003. The sun was setting as I took a Lyft into downtown SF. I stayed one night at Hotel G, which was on…
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Autodesk loves its dogs. You might say it's in the company's DNA. One of my favourite internal Slack channels is #fun-dogs-of-autodesk (the "fun" prefix just indicates it's not business-related). Susan Taylor posted a link to a CBS flashback video there yesterday, which speaks to our long history of welcoming furry friends into the workplace. There are lots of familiar faces in this video: Lynn Levy, Linda Saldana and Patti Harris (who very sadly passed away some years ago). I worked with them all in the 90s/00s in some capacity, so this was a real "blast from the past". …
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This is a topic I can't quite believe I haven't covered at any point during this blog's existence, as I'm such a huge fan of a) the Neuchâtel region and b) vintage computing. This year marks the 250th anniversary of the creation of the world's first programmable computer, which also happened to be the world's first programmable robot. This might be a bit confusing to some, especially those who associate this concept with Babbage, Turing, etc. The world's first "computer" was a mechanical automaton that translated a "program" into (mechanical) hand-written output. So no, it's not a general-purpose computing device,…
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Last Monday I left my son in Baltimore and headed back to Dulles for a short flight to Toronto to attend internal meetings with our research team. I didn't feel like fighting public transport for 3+ hours to get from Baltimore to Dulles, so took the easy (and much more relaxing) path of taking an Uber. I was there in less than 90 minutes - a not insignificant time saving. I really wish it was more convenient to take public transport here. The flight to Pearson was short - a little over an hour in the air - and as…