Jack Krupansky, the principal of Base Technology, is involved in a number of ventures/adventures.
In reverse chronological order...
- Slaving away out here in Boulder, Colorado. Waiting for my bankruptcy case to be "discharged" (in December, I think.)
- September 9: I'm back in NYC, just waiting for all the 9-11 anniversary stuff to be over. President Bush will be speaking at the UN (just across the street from my apartment building) on September 12.
- Most of my daily comments appear in my daily stock market commentary, including commentary on the economy, Iraq, terrorism, and the geopolitical situation.
- September 11: The terrorist attacks. I'm here in DC. For my diary, click here.
- Getting ready for the upcoming hearing on the Microsoft antitrust case.
August 25: Back in DC.
Finally got a new PC, the Toshiba 1800-S253 I mentioned last month. Ordered via 1-800-TOSHIBA. Running Windows ME and Office XP. Got 256MB RAM. Much better than by four-year-old Toshiba 435-CDS. I got it two days before returning to NYC, so I had to lug TWO notebooks on the train.
August 1: Back in NYC for a few weeks.
Finally managed to put up EntEng.com, a site for Entrepreneurial Engineers, ENTCON, and lingering interest in Midnight Engineering magazine.
Still focused on my daily stock market column.
Starting to get my thinking on Software Agents more organized, see Agtivity.com.
I just saw in the news this morning that the new Zeppelin NT is finally flying. $275 for a tourist flight over Lake Constance. I wrote about seeing the Zeppelin under construction back in July 1997. They had it in an unused convention center building with all the windows papered over but some of the paper had fallen and the doors were open so I could see in. I was lucky to find someone at the tourist information center who actually knew where it was. Kind of exciting.
Will be heading back to DC August 26.
Plenty of hearings going on in Congress, including Greenspan and missle defense.
Still very focused on doing my daily stock market column (www.finaxyz.com/mplatest.htm).
Had an initial meeting with a company involved with Software Agents. The meeting went well, but too soon to have any clue where this might be headed. In any case, I continue to monitor developments in the "agents" field, waiting for the day when research has advanced to the stage where product development is practical. I continue to believe that agents will be where it's at in 10 to 20 years and we should see real progress within 5 years. My hope is that I can identify an "angle" to pursue within the next 2-3 years. Once we get HTML, Java, XML, and .Net behind us, maybe THEN we can make some real progress on the agent front. Once the average personal computer (handheld/pocketPC??) has a greater than 2GHz chip and 256MB RAM and we have broadband everywhere we can start to do some serious AI-style agent technology and people will be looking for apps for all that horsepower. The other angle is gigantic server and storage and networking capacity and a "need" to find something to do with it. Either way, agents will be there to suck up all available resources.
One of my current "struggles" is buying a new notebook computer. I ALMOST ordered a Toshiba 1800-S253 (850 MHz P3) for $1,449, but they just came out and are now on "back order". In fact, the cheapest notebook Toshiba has in stock (on 7/20) costs $1,699. So much for a "glut" of PCs or a lack of "demand". The PC venders may just not be making enough of the machines people want to buy. I'm also considering a Dell for about $1,600 that has a really cool SuperXGA+ 1,400 pixel wide screen that would be great for viewing PDF documents; but it is more money, it is a new technology, and Dell has sometimes had problems with screens. I lean towards Toshiba because that's what I have now and I also have a Toshiba "Free Card" (from the FDC class action lawsuit settlement) which will give me $100 off if I buy by late September. My bias is to buy cheap so I can plan on buying a new machine every year. I budget $1,500 per year for my computer plus another $300 for software upgrades. I am tempted to wait till Windows XP is out, but I'd lose the Toshiba $100 discount and I'm not thrilled by the prospect of being a guinea pig for version 1.0 of XP. I'd rather upgrade when the SECOND service pack is released for XP. I'd appreciate any recommendations or experiences.
Previous ventures...
Chronology of the "Paris Venture":
Jack has written a number of articles for Midnight Engineering magazine, some of which chronicle the Paris venture as well as other topics relating to being an entrepreneurial software developer and software technology in general.
I don't have any good photos on the web yet, but a couple can be found here.
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Updated: September 03, 2006 02:09:01 PM -0400
Copyright © 2002 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology