Our trip to Burma took 23 hours. The first 19 were made less than perfect due to three children who proved beyond a doubt that it is indeed possible to scream non-stop for almost an entire day. Despite the best efforts of a dozen extremely kind Singapore Girls, there was no stopping the screams. By the end of the flight, I really did understand why lions eat their young. Still, Kelly managed to keep her spirits up despite the lack of sleep.

The last leg of the trip – from Singapore to Yangon – was the best part. The much smaller aircraft had bigger seats, and the one screaming child was mostly out of earshot. We were greeted in Yangon by a fabulous welcoming committee bearing gifts and flowers. William and guide Tun are going over the top to make us comfortable during our visit.

Our hotel is just beautiful. The welcome letter describe it as “Located in a quiet, leafy area of the city’s embassy quarter, The Governor’s Residence is unique in Yangon. Built in the 1920’s, the official residence of the governor of Kaya State, this superb teak mansion has today been carefully restored as a hotel that captures the charm and elegance of a more leisurely era.” We’re feeling more and more leisurely by the minute.

Today we’ll be exploring the city of Yangon. We’ll check out the city’s famous markets and visit a temple before lunch with our guides. (We’re having Burmese.) Then it’s back to the hotel for a little poolside leisure time before attending a festival at the Schwedagon Pagoda at sunset. Sounds like a fabulus photo-filled day!

We were surprised to learn that this hotel and most others now offer free access to the Internet – I’m actually on a wireless connection in our room now! This should make it easy to post often, and right now, at least – that’s the plan. Talk with you soon!

More pictures from this inspirational event here.

The official launch date is Monday, but lucky readers of thedude.com can take a look at the new site deign now. It’s a huge improvement over the old site, both aesthetically and performance-wise. I’m very proud to have been a part of this effort. Yay!

iTunes is one of the main reasons I have not switched to a Mac. I really do not like it. All I want is a simple music player, and iTunes definitely does not fit into that category. And iTunes has some of the worst UI design flaws ever. (Don’t even get me started.)

Well, the whiz-kids at Apple have finally forced me to soften my position on iTunes with the addition of their latest killer feature – Genius. This gem categorizes all of the music in your iTunes library, allowing you to create a custom playlist with a couple mouse clicks. Simply chose a tune to seed the playlist, and Genius does the rest – instantly creating a playlist of similar music. These lists can be saved, so that means that they can be fine-tuned and combined with other playlists. I’ve been using Genius for days now, and really like the way it works. It finds tunes in my collection I might not ever have listened to and creates playlists that rival my best efforts. VERY cool!

This is probably a good time to mention Pandora – another nice piece of software that does something similar, but from a vast on-line music collection. If you don’t have or don’t want iTunes, I recommend you check out Pandora.

I don’t think so. I can think of a whole bunch of people who would totally love Item Number One on this year’s wish list.

This is always such a difficult event to shoot. The F-18’s are moving at speeds up to 650 miles per hour, and perform their most breathtaking maneuvers more than a mile away. I have to use my longest lens with the camera set to ISO 1000 so that I can use a shutter speed of 1/2500 of a second. Lots of compromises.

I took more than 500 shots. Even so, I think I achieved better results last year. Oh well, I guess I need to keep practicing. More shots here.

Welcome! You certainly picked a gorgeous day to fly in to Oakland.

My Achiever wife and a couple neighbors got up very early this morning to participate in the KFOG Bridge-to-Bridge Run (OK – walk). I don’t know how they do it. I wish I had a fraction of that energy! While Jack and I were just too busy to squeeze in a 7K walk, we did get to pose with them in front of this giant inflatable floss dispenser!

Thanks, Steve, for taking this fun shot!

After focus groups revealed that my company’s current corporate image reminded them of a “dull forty-something white male”, they decided it was time to make a change. So, Affymetrix hired a design team to help freshen our brand.

I think the new branding looks great! This is the video used to kick off the effort. In my opinion, it’s too long, and feels too much like a PowerPoint presentation, but it does convey key design elements of the “New Affymetrix”. Nicely done!