I’m thinking I should take up blogging, again. Some things seem too precious not to share.

Case in point: Yesterday, I saw a man in a coonskin cap. I wanted to laugh, but this guy wound up being the scariest-looking dude I’ve ever seen on the streets of Cambridge.

He was tough enough without the hat. For starters, he was real weathered-looking. Like a big mean sailor. Something about him conveyed (and quickly) that this gentleman had already “been there, done that” when it came to speedy resolution of conlicts. Pub fight, street fight, prison fight — check. Fists, beer bottles, butterfly knives — our man was clearly familiar with all the above.

And, as I have mentioned before, he was lumbering around Cambridge, England wearing a coonskin cap. Now, that’s a disconcerting choice of headgear on anyone, but here the effect was downright chilling.

I mean, where does one even procure such a thing? What haberdashery still stocks this item? The souvenier shop in Frontierland, for one, but that’s back in Anaheim, and I’m convinced this man had not been. He wasn’t the Magic Kingdom type, in so many words. Plus, his wasn’t a costume-shop racoon hat, it was gen-u-ine mammal. I think.

This was not a fashion statement. Nor an anachronistic affectation. This coonskip cap was, quite simply, one of Nature’s Little Warning Signs; a distinct cue for other members of the species (human and raccoon, in this case) to keep walking ahead, eyes fixed forward, never looking back.

Or laughing, either.

It’s stating the obvious, I know, but for the record, this blog is officially on hiatus.

We’re still in Cambridge, though student life seems eons away. (I’ve joined the commuting masses, instead, and am now part of the Google team in London.)

Life is good, though. For all three of us.

Bye!

A few incoming MBA students have asked for advice on moving to the UK. About year ago, I asked the very same question to Frank Leahy, who then wrote a helpful blog entry (two, actually) about Moving to England — What Do I Bring and Getting Stuff There.

Herewith a few more details that I can add — these being oddball points, mostly tailored to Cambridge MBA students:

Cell phones: For starters, they call ‘em “mobile phones” here, and yeah, you’ll need one if you hope to socialize much.

You need a GSM phone, however — if you’re a T-Mobile or Cingular customer in the States, you’re probably in luck. However, your phone is still likely to be ‘locked’ to that provider; you still need to unlock it to join another carrier. There’s an easy way to test this — if you’re a T-Mobile customer in the States, stroll into a Cingular phone store (or vice-versa), then ask whether their pre-paid-minutes plans will work on your current phone. Store reps should be able to swap out your SIM card and try one of theirs. If it works, your existing phone is already unlocked and ready for the UK.

Unlocking phones is a tricksy business. It’s not-really-allowed, but if you live in a big city, there’s probably some local shop that’ll do it for fifteen bucks. Try asking around at 3rd-party places (the storefronts advertising calling plans from multiple carriers) especially if they serve a lot of overseas-immigrant customers. A couple years ago, I owned a Sony T68i that I’d used while in Italy; I needed it unlocked so I could join Cingular pre-paid in California. The first shop I walked into (outside Monterey Park) was happy to unlock the phone — as a cash-only transaction.

You might also try your luck and wait until you arrive in Cambridge. There’s a stall in the market square advertising phone unlocks while-u-wait.

Of course, the whole point of bringing an unlocked phone to England is to join a ‘pay-as-you-go’ phone plan, and thereby avoid spending a single pence on new equipment. You can live quite cheaply on pay-as-you-go — you’re charged only for the calls you dial, not the ones you receive. And there’s never any end-of-the-month billing surprises. Azure and I probably averaged under 10 pounds a month with our pay-as-you-go mobiles, but we didn’t gab much.

I recently became a pay-monthly customer, though, since I wanted a brand-new camera phone. As in the U.S., you’ll get a very nice ‘free’ phone here if you sign up for a 12-month plan, usually £30 and up. Nice thing is, pay-monthly phones are generally provided unlocked (but be sure to ask) so you can use them after graduation, wherever you may live. One prerequisite may be having a UK bank account set up, however.

Sticklers for detail will note that I’ve missed two other options. First, you can buy cheap locked phones (£29-£99) tied to a provider’s pay-as-you-go plan; if you choose a cruder phone, and don’t talk much, you’ll still recoup the savings (vs. a monthly contract) before the year is up. Avoid the ‘3’ network if you head this route, though — any minutes you buy will expire every month. Dumb.

The other option is to buy an unlocked tri-band or quad-band GSM phone, new or used, back in the US. (There’s little point to buying a phone over here; the prices generally match the cost of buying a 12-month contract with the phone included.) Some phone makers, like Handspring, sell unlocked phones directly to customers. Some stores may, too.

Unlocked phones are also for sale on eBay, though there’s also a lot of fraud in that space — be especially wary of overseas sellers with low feedback numbers. Sellers whose only picture of their phone is lifted from the Nokia website are also a bad sign…

Business Suit: Maybe most MBA’s own one of these, already; I was lucky enough not to. You’ll need a suit for client-based group projects, formal halls, the class picture, etc. I brought an inexpensive no-name grey suit from a discounter, which was a good call. That suit spent a lot of time getting wet in the rain, picking up road dirt from cycling, and getting spilled on at formal halls and college bars. Save the nice suit for after graduation.

Tuxedos: These are called ‘dinner suits’, hereabouts. Absurd, I know, but getting educated in Cambridge means you’re likely to need/want one. There’s a black-tie Christmas party at the Judge, and the more traditional colleges like Magdalene throw a number of black-tie-preferred events (holiday banquets, etc.) as well. (Demanding people to wear a tux is, like, no big deal here.) Toss in a May Ball or two, and you’ll belatedly realize that buying is better than renting at £35-£50 a pop. Like most everything else, buying a tux at home is much cheaper than buying in the UK.

Vaccinations: You’ll soon get a note from Cambridge telling you to get a mumps vaccination. The disease may sound as medieval as most of the buildings around here (and is unheard of in the US), but it’s a virus that’s very much alive and kicking in English universities.You don’t want to get this one, especially if you’re male.

You’ll need to register with the NHS on arrival, and can sort out with them how to get your ‘jabs’, but it’s probably a lot less of a hassle to get this done Stateside.

Bicycle and accessories: This is a cycling town. Thanks to the barricades and ‘short-cuts’ placed throughout the whole of Cambridge, two wheels are generally faster than four, and bikes are how everybody gets around, rain or shine. A cheap used bike costs £40 or less, but add-ons like decent halogen lights, helmets, etc. easily add up to that same amount. If you already have this stuff at home, toss it in your suitcase.

Council Tax, etc: The fine print on your rental contact (should you choose to live in private accomodation instead of college housing) is likely to mention Council Tax. This will come in at about 10% of your yearly rent — a nasty surprise, if you weren’t expecting it. Good thing is, you can probably avoid this charge altogether if your entry clearance visa says ‘no recourse to public funds’. You won’t be able to go on the dole, but your tax burden is made much easier.

If there’s a TV in your house, though, you’ll also be liable for a yearly TV license, which runs about £100 / $200. Again, this is unlikely to be included in your rent, so remember to ask — I hear they are remarkably efficient about following up with non-payers.

And that’s it. Well, except for an umbrella and rain jacket. Which are… useful.

LEDs replacing cigarette lighters? That’s what wound up spinning through my brain as I watched the Kaiser Chiefs play at the Queens’ College May Ball.

Not as firestarters, mind. I’m talkin’ cigarette lighters as rock-ballad accoutrements, i.e. glowing objects to be held aloft whenever the band plays a song you like. Because that’s what happened last night, thanks to the whole cameraphone / digital camera scene. Stuck towards the back, I could spot each and every viewfinder that popped up above the crowd — they looked like little glowing blue things, jumping and hopping to the music — until, poof, they’d go down for a few minutes and other consumer electronics would take their place.

You gotta wonder what that looks like from the rockstar’s perspective. They don’t see the screens. Instead, it’s half the crowd stomping and going wild, the other half apparently content to stand still and show you their phones….

Anyhow. Haven’t had time to read that book about the Wisdom of Crowds, but I’ve heard the gist of it, and so last night I made sure to hoist my own Sony K750i in the air, and waved it like I just didn’t care. Coincidentally, I bought the thing only yesterday, primarily because it’s the first 2-megapixel camera phone on the market. The pictures it takes of a Cambridge May Ball look something like this:

No, not great, but then, lighting was low and there wasn’t time to RTFM. But there’s something I love about the constraints, here. I know that visually, it’s like you’re shooting with Kodak Disc film and a pinhole camera. Yet both the form factor and media format are so impulse-friendly that without a cameraphone I doubt these pictures would have been taken. And they capture plenty of the moment, at least for me.

Speaking of which: May Balls, wow. That’s quite a bit of extravagance for a collegiate get-together; it was like an All-American high-school prom mated with the Opening Ceremonies at the Olympics. Yes, the Kaiser Chiefs were the big act, but like a circus, there were other acts in other tents, which ranged from jazz to classical to hip-hop and hippie. Throw in a shiatsu room, a Moon Bounce, a velcro wall, tea tasting, hookahs, Bellinis, burritos, swing boats, fireworks, and a free-alcohol-free-food-free-everything policy that would make even a Las Vegas casino nervous, and you start to get the picture. Definitely the wildest black-tie event I’ve ever been to.

(The Magdalene May Ball is white-tie. I won’t even guess at what goes on, there.)

I wandered home at dawn, which isn’t as late/early as it sounds. The sun goes down at 10:30, now, and is up again within six hours. That, I just love.

Update: Since a fair number of people arrive here looking for more info on the Sony K750i, I’ve added some higher-resolution snaps taken under bright light, which is where the built-in camera really shines.

I’ve knocked the sizes from the native 1600x1200 to 800x600 in Photoshop in most samples, as I think that’s a more realistic example of what you’d mail to friends or post on the web. I’ve noticed that the pictures also tend to look much better that way — there’s a type of pixel noise in the full-size pictures that becomes a lot less noticeable at email-friendly sizes. I also include a ‘tweaked’ version of the picture that’s received minor Photoshop manipulation (i.e., Unsharp Mask, Levels, etc.) to punch things up a bit.

Cath Kidson Bags example: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)

Antique Iron: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)

I tend to update this page on Saturday mornings. Maybe that’s because it’s the one day I stay seated through my morning cup of coffee, tethered by the teensy hangover which will come knocking anytime I hold up my wine glass for even a single refill.

So be it. Friday nights are good, here.

Last night I was happily back at Magdalene, even though the season of Formal Halls is over. This was a pizza-and-chips affair, instead, with the other Magdalenes who are in the Judge. It’s a small group — there’s four of us MBAs in college this year, a couple of MPhils, and our strategy prof, herself a Fellow at Magdalene.

Nice thing was, the college Master showed up, too. As you might expect from somebody who’s also the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, he’s a very cultured gentleman. (Such that, if genteel cocktail-party talk were an Olympic event, he’d probably lead the field for Britain.) He’s also enormously good-natured, and a super-approachable guy; that’s something I learned after he took a dozen of us MBAs into the Fitz, and gave us a quick lecture on how finance, marketing, and management issues affect the Arts today.

Anyhow. Cambridge is suddenly bursting with festivities, and it’s belatedly sinking in that The End, as I’ve always been warned, is nigh. I feel like I’ve been running this whole academic year, praying I can make it into the home stretch, and just now realized that it’s all already behind me.

It’s fitting, then, that our night sky has been rocked by professional fireworks days in a row — the May Balls are happening (in June, as always) and will be for the whole of next week. (I’m at Queen’s from Monday night to Tuesday morning, meself.) Simultaneously, there’s the May Bumps, a week-long rowing competition which is arguably the heart of Cambridge sport. That’ll be a blog entry unto itself; suffice to say that some students are walking around wreathed with willow branches, most the rest have Pimm’s in hand.

Oh, and the sun is out, gloriously. 84 degrees, no joke.

There’s a correlation between sunny weather and Pimm’s consumption, in these parts. Correlation, yes, and causality, too.

Of course, I’d never heard of Pimm’s before landing in Cambridge. I’d likewise presumed that the locals hadn’t experienced sunny weather — I mean, how else does one explain the Brit tendency to don T-shirts and miniskirts when it’s still freezing out?

Turns out the sun does sometimes shine in the British Isles (every second Saturday in June, 11am to 3pm, weather permitting) and last weekend, Azure, Alanna, and I found ourselves reaching for some sunscreen. And then reaching for the Pimm’s.

Pimm’s, you see, is a gin-based liquer, mixed with lemonade and mint and cucumber and fruit slices. It’s a quintessentially English cocktail, supposedly the standard method of hydration at cricket matches and polo fields, and I shall readily admit:  it’s terribly good stuff.

More elegant than a mint julep, and less labor-intensive than a proper Mojito, Pimm’s No. 1 immediately ranks as one of the best summertime refreshments I’ve had the pleasure to drink. (Especially when the only alternative is warm beer.)

Seriously, though, I believe the weather has turned (mostly), and it’s been a blast. We’ve been cycling/punting/strolling to the outskirts of town, almost daily, then coming home in the evenings to watch the frogs in our neighbor’s garden, or spy on the hedgehog in our own.

Plus, there’s been a swirl of events — this week, the Queen visited the Fitzwilliam Museum, across the street from the Judge, which interrupted a class or two. The same night, Azure and I attended formal hall at Pembroke with two other MBAs; it was in the middle of exams, so it turned out that we four were the only diners, apart from High Table.

That particular dinner will stand as one of the most memorable events from my time at Cambridge: the three long tables of Pembroke’s hall all barren, except for one, with a single candlestick and four plates at the end. All the routine, of course, stayed unbroken; there was still a ringing gong and grace in Latin, the standing, and bowing… whether for four or four hundred, certain things never change, here.

Oh, and yeah, it was ‘Mexican Theme Night’, so then they served us fajitas. Hah!

And school? (School?) Ah, school is still in session, but barely — my classroom time is all but finished, concluding with a case study on Ben & Jerrys’ strategic alliances in Japan. My attention has already turned to the individual project over summer; more on that, later. (There are projects, and then there are, well, other big things…)

We had a slew of great speakers in the last few weeks — Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, got my vote for being the best of ‘em. He managed to mention RSS, the ‘blogosphere’, and Gawker in a single sentence, which scored big points in my book. Honorable mention goes to Lois Jacobs, president of Jack Morton, which has got to be the highest-profile company whose name I’d never heard — they quietly produce ‘experiental marketing events’. Sounds cute and fuzzy until you find out they’re the crew which produced the opening ceremony at Athens 2004, the Hong Kong handover in ‘97, and a buncha other ceremonial stuff you’d never think was ‘outsourced’. Suffice to say, Ms. Jacobs’ Powerpoint presentation was slick; by the end, I was bracing myself for a pyrotechnically-enhanced finale.

Or maybe that’s a feature in the next version of MS Office…

So Azure and I saw Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last week. ‘Twasn’t perfect, but at least I can review it in a fitting fashion, like so:

“Mostly Harmless.”*

…and glean some satisfaction in that. And, I suppose, there’s some reassurance in knowing that this film adaptation won’t be regarded as the definitive Hitchhiker’s. Because in my book, that honor is reserved for the Infocom game. What else?

I’m not sure if it’s a ‘skill’, a ‘knack’, or maybe an ‘art’ (by this point), but I can say that my procrastination abilities have become quite well-honed at B-school.

Case in point: we just wrapped up our MCP project. The MCP is a full-time effort (and then some); there’s no classes in April because of it. While every group scrambled to finish on time, my group’s project was especially back-loaded; lots of analysis couldn’t even get started until last week.

Goes to figure, then, that I’d decide last week was also the perfect time to ‘tag’ my entire iPhoto library with comments and keywords. Doing so is the digital equivalent of rummaging through a shoebox full of old photos and writing helpful notes on the back of each picture, explaining who’s who, etc. It’s exactly the sort of ridiculous undertaking that nobody ever bothers with — unless, of course, there’s other, more important work that needs doing.

But it brings me around to this: one thing you hear, working in the web industry, is that “Metadata Is Expensive”. In other words, “scribbling notes on old photos is time-consuming monkey-work”. And I can say, from recent experience, that that’s true, regardless of whether the photographs are digital or physical. (Metadata, incidentally, is defined as ‘data about data’; on the web, metadata helps classify, describe, or organize web pages.)

You hear this ‘metadata is expensive’ maxim especially in regards to search. Google, for example, gives a cold shoulder to metadata — AFAIK it reads only the regular, visible words on a web page, and ignores any behind-the-scenes attempts to categorize a website. There’s a bunch of valid reasons for this, namely:

    [A] Google patented software techniques which make their current setup pretty awesome     [B] Early web history showed people will cheat and write deceptive metadata to lure an audience.
    [C] The notion that ‘metadata is expensive’ to create. It just isn’t worth the time.

Obviously, there’s a bit of a vicious cycle with that final point: I can now imagine plenty of people crafting nice, careful metadata code for their websites, if they thought Google might actually use it.

The main reason I’m increasingly confident in the above statement comes from my own recent behavior vis-a-vis iPhoto: apart from the procrastination element, I did have some good reason to slather metadata across my entire iPhoto library. The soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Tiger will supposedly allow me to search against it. Given how I value those pictures greatly, it struck me as being worth the effort to organize my photos. However ‘expensive’ it was. (Just a few hours’ work, really.)

But Google isn’t going to start acknowledging metadata, I think, largely because of reason [A], above. They’re on top of the search-engine world right now, and won’t benefit from rocking the boat. As for [B], I think the web today is capable of solutions that weren’t on the radar in the ‘90’s. And regards [C], well, like I said: ‘expensive’ is relative. People will gladly bear the cost of metadata on things that they personally value, and that extends off the desktop onto the web. See Flickr.com.

So. I’m increasingly of the opinion that if Google doesn’t do metadata, somebody else will. In fact, it seems like one of the obvious avenues for second-tier players like Yahoo, MSN, and Jeeves to gain some competitive advantage in the search space.

And I want to see what that strategy looks like, if it happens. Especially if it provides me new opportunities to put off doing real work.

Seems England can’t completely shake off winter, much as I can’t free myself from this particularly nasty cold. It’s brutal, really. Cambridge was grey and drizzly all of last week; meanwhile, I was shuffling across the cobbled streets doubled-over and coughing, like some Dickensian pauper doomed with the consumption.

Well, not quite that bad.

In fairness, there have been intermittent bursts of Spring, about. (And I, in truth, am largely on the mend.) The oft-truant sun swung our way a few weeks ago — staying long enough to push up yellow daffodils and scatter cherry-blossoms all across Cambridge. Our garden hedgehog also returned right about then, and has since proceeded to enjoy his evening ruckus in our shrubs. And now there’s another woodland creature hanging about our place: an impressively plump Toad who crawls into our conservatory, since it’s warm there. After relocating him back to the garden, we’ll spot him from time to time; he sits under the fern, mostly.

That’s mostly it. School’s out — April is the month of our ‘Major Consulting Project’. Half the MBA class flew the coop to places like Singapore, Norway, and Venezuela to work for various multinationals. My team of four hasn’t left town, not much, but our full-time gig is with Apple, which suits me fine.

Now, if somebody would kindly pass the mentholated cough drops…

Unintended consequence of the Cambridge MBA: Bond movies aren’t the same, anymore.

Actually, 007 hasn’t mixed the martinis quite right for some time now. The whole franchise slipped past ‘tired’ to ‘exhausted’ with The World Is Not Enough. But this is beside the point.

No, what happened is this: I hung out with Britian’s previous ‘M’ (James Bond’s boss, remember?) for the better part of an hour, chatting about his old job and present-day geopolitics. The requisite dash of intrigue was provided early on, when our MBA class was told to show up for a guest lecture — but wasn’t told who’d be speaking, for ‘security reasons’.

The former ‘M’ has a name, of course: Sir Richard Dearlove. (And, in reality, apparently the title was ‘C’, not ‘M’.) Sir Richard spoke about leadership and organizational management — from the perspective of somebody who’s managed and led a very unique organization. That said, the core topics he discussed — training, development, managing culture — are pretty standard fare in B-schools; I suppose the trick lies in adjusting those ideas to fit your own corporation, or Secret Intelligence Service, what have you.

Anyhow, the regular guest-speaker rigamarole followed the lecture: mingling, chatting, and a few glasses of hey-not-bad-given-that-it’s-free wine on the 2nd floor of the Judge. And that’s where I wound up having a real conversation with Sir Richard and four or five others; much of it centered on the Middle East. To craft an SAT analogy out of the whole experience, I suppose it was like talking about meditation with the Dalai Lama — the key relationship being that the other guy is operating with some insight that’s very much unavailable to you. Or so you’d imagine.

Of course, if you read the Judge Institute’s press release, it’s also clear that this went down in early February. So I’m getting seriously behind on the blogging…

Oh, and speaking of managing organizational behavior: ever wonder why those useless buttons are on the sleeves of men’s suits? You know, the ones sewn by the cuff, without a buttonhole, even?

This actually cropped up in Strategy, of all classes. Turns out the sartorial invention is credited to Napoleon, who’d observed his lieutenants nastily wipe their snotty noses with their jacket sleeves. Disliking this vulgar habit, Napoleon immediately mandated that sharp copper buttons be sewn along the sleeves of his uniforms — serving as a visible (and tactile) reminder not to rub your jacket across your face.

Must’ve worked.