[via Heiko via SonnyRadio]

The following are pictures of Tiger Woods practicing off the heli-deck of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, UAE. They were taken when Tiger was in Dubai for the Desert Classic, March 2, 2004. $1 million appearance fee, and he gets to hit shag balls from the tallest hotel in the world.

Yes, Tiger is paid $1 million each year just to play in the Dubai Desert Classic, regardless of how he plays. But hitting golf balls off the top of this “hotel” is really neat. Bet you’ve never seen golf balls hit like this, or a hotel like this.

For best effect, view pictures in the order shown below. The last picture really puts it in perspective. Extraordinary!!!

I received a “thank-you” gift for a while from a friend of mine, who had the very good idea to give me the DVD No Quarter – Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded.

This DVD is pure happiness, really a-m-a-z-i-n-g :-)

Originally released on CD in 1994 and then in a remastered version simultaneously with this DVD, the 115-minute program (including bonus footage) was recorded on a London soundstage, in the hills of Snowdonia, Wales, and outdoors in Marrakech, Morocco. It finds guitarist Page, vocalist Plant, and an array of other musicians performing some new material, but for the most part, the repertoire focuses on their Led Zep legacy–not a surprise, considering that what they did together in that group was better than anything they’ve done separately, including some pretty good Plant solo efforts and Page’s regrettable stint as a member of the Firm. Yet instead of simply parroting their Zeppelin period (and relying on tired warhorses like “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love”), they’ve given the music new life, adding exotic instruments like the bodhran (an Irish drum) and the hurdy-gurdy (played by cranking a rosined wheel against a set of strings) to less familiar fare like “The Battle of Evermore” and “Gallow’s Pole.” Add to that three brilliant new songs performed with a quartet of Moroccan players, a full complement of strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra (on “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and others), and a host of Egyptian percussion and strings on an epic version of “Kashmir” (also from the London session), and you’ve got a world music blend that is at times genuinely thrilling–especially for those with 5.1 Surround Sound capability.

Seth publlished 3 posts (1, 2 and 3) about job-finding / person-finding. I really like what he says and totally agree with his position.

Consider a few facts:
1. The traditional way to get a job is to send a boring resume in response to as many posted jobs as you can afford. Your resume will be scanned, culled and if it doesn’t stand out too much, a person might look at it.

Then you go for a job interview and try to be coglike in your malleability and desire to fit in. If random acts are working in your favor, you get the job.

2. Then, the big Fortune 1000 company that hired you complains that all their people act like cogs, don’t care enough, aren’t creative in solving problems and don’t push the status quo.

3. Then, the big Fortune 1000 company realizes that as long as they’ve got interchangeable cogs, they ought to just move jobs offshore, cause that’s cheaper.

Let’s start with one assumption that has changed in just a generation:

It turns out that 100% of all job growth is now coming from small (under 500 person) companies. In fact, the big companies are shedding jobs, not adding them.

That wasn’t true for our parents. It’s true for us.

Also true: more likely than not, the best jobs, the most interesting jobs and the most secure jobs happen in small organizations.

[via Dilbert – 1 & 2]

[via @rgumente]

Dragos pointed a great presentation (pdf) about customer development in product-oriented start-ups. Worth a reading!

I’ve installed a commenting tool as a complement of Blogger called blogKomm developped by Holger Kreis, since March 28 2004. At this time, Blogger didn’t integrate any commenting functionnality. This incredible lack was first filled in April 2004. I didn’t move to Blogger because the comments are hosted by Blogger and I don’t like that. I want to have my data under control and to be able to have a full access on the raw logs for the statistics. Without a dedicated hosting – as far as I known – it is impossible to know exactly how many visitors and pageviews you have on your blog because of the access on your RSS feed which are only visible in these raw logs. My blog and website are hosted by OVH, my web hosting provider.

I made the step this morning and I installed the version 2.1 (beta) of blogKomm. Holger integrated some very interesting functionalities and the protection possibilities against comment spam is really better than in the version 1.7 I used before. This is perhaps the only positive effect of spam: it forced me to take the time to install the new version ;-) Which was quite easy.

blogKomm features

blogkomm integrates the reader’s comments into your blog without any pop-ups. Besides this you have different features coming along with that, like

* different notification services
* preview feature
* user remember feature
* quick-Editing admin-tool
* recent comment-list
* multilingual interface
* a setup and configuration tool

If you are a bit lazy, or of you do not have enough time (problem to prioritize correctly? ;-), Seth Godin published a kind of “Best of – 2004” of his posts. As usual, a bunch of ideas and interesting inputs. I would like to know how Seth did the choice ;-)

The Best Seth Godin Posts of the Year (2004)

Easier than checking the archives! More efficient than wading through inane banter.

If you’re only going to read 2 of my posts a month (that’s 24 for those of you without a calculator) then this is where I’d have you start

You surely saw that, one of the biggest building in Madrid (106 m) completely burnt on last Sunday. For chance, nobody was injured! It remembers another story in NY with other consequences…

Again, a new version (1.18) of the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack released here. Still free and really great!

Mega Codec Pack includes everything needed to play online and offline computer media. This pack is from the makers of the K-lite codec pack. This version includes the Full K-lite codec pack as well as Quicktime and Realplayer codecs, and BS Player. This Pack includes codecs for the most popular compressions like Divx and Xvid as well as some of the less popular but still necesary codecs. This is your one stop codec resource.

Outch, the landing in the real world is quite difficult :-) After some completely beautiful days at St.Barth, I’m confronted with – well, you know – real stuff again…
– lot of email spams, but correctly and automatically managed (more than 1’400 spams within 14 days on one email account…)
– 138 comment spams on my blog, these guys really *suck*.

– I was here yesterday (about 30°C and 26°c in the sea)

– and I’m here today….something went wrong or what??

And finally, do you know Air France? I can tell you, this company sucks too. I will tell you more in the coming days about our incredibly bad customer experience in *all* the aspects of this company. And they are talking about Quality Insurance and Customer-Focus….