Headworx

Personal achievements are usually noticed when some spectacular results happen. This is most evident in sports, but equally in other competitive disciplines. Like entrepreneurship (which can be considered a sport too ). But often what really matter are the mundane everyday tasks and small accomplishments. Surprisingly, over time, they accumulate to results, which are not that negligible. Doubling results over a year is not a small feat. But is increasing the numbers by 5% month over month even worth noticing? The simple math tells us both are equal. Yes, 100% over 12 months means just over 5% month over month. A twelfth degree root of 2 (100% growth) is 1.059 (5.9% M/M). 5.9% is absolutely nothing to write home about. But the thing is - it accumulates. I remember learning this accumulation mechanism during my first serious job. It was picking green peas in Somerset, England in mid nineteen eighties. We were paid by the quantity picked and I was making a bit over £10 a day. A friend of...

It is quite straightforward to dedicate the last two blogs of the year to summarize the 12 months which have just been passing. So today a short reflection on the business (Silvair) side and next week on my personal front. Both have been challenging, required a lot of commitment but ultimately delivered great rewards. Those who follow our quarterly reports can see how 2023 has been shaping up to be a yet another year during which our key business indicators have doubled. While it does not sound like landing a man on the moon, I really like the consistency and the fundamentals. Also I've been hearing recently the "business" environment in commercial lighting has not been that great (some major companies are reorganizing and laying off staff). So it is even more reassuring to continue our solid growth. And it is not just the numbers. Bluetooth SIG relaunched the Mesh focusing (via Bluetooth NLC) on the Networked Lighting Controls segment. That resonated really well. And eve...

Modern phones (not just iPhones) offer the indisputable advantages opened by computational photography. Ars Technica has recently had a good writeup on these . Low light performance is probably the one I enjoy the most, as the phone in my pocket can produce images rivalling the advanced techniques which require carrying heavy gear (tripods) and a lot of post-processing (selective stacking). With a press of a shutter button an iPhone can do all that automatically, in-place, hand-held. But for those willing to experiment a little bit more, there are many creative photo gadgets to accessorize the phone. Again the popularity of a fairly narrow set of models invites the accessory manufacturers to offer clever add-ons. Despite the fairly niche audience, the accessories offer their designers a great ROI, as they will still be selling in high numbers. Pictured here are two examples: the flat-folding credit-card-sized magnetic tripod from Peak Design and the case+lens combo from Moment .  ...

On Saturday, Dec 2, I was about to leave for the airport (KRK) which was the starting point on my KRK-FRA-SIN-SYD journey, when a message from Lufthansa arrived saying the KRK-FRA was canceled. I looked up the Internet and all became clear - the MUC airport closure due to heavy snow started the system avalanche effect. MUC serves close to one thousand flights a day, so even a fraction of those redirected to FRA would ripple across the whole network of connections. Well, despite the global warming, winter happens. But then I did not envision how the physical snow would ripple through the (supposedly modern) infrastructure of computers, apps, AI chat bots and bot-augmented call centers served by humans. In short: nothing worked and it was a super long chain reaction of failures. Chat bots were restarting, losing context and taking several minutes to respond to user interactions, Web servers were unavailable, crashing over exhausted resources and call center wait times could be counted in...

My switch to iOS had something to do with how the system handles pictures. In every application you can copy a picture to teh system clipboard and then paste it in any other application. That includes screen captures, which after simple trim or retouch can end up just in the clipboard, not messing up the photo library. To my knowledge this is not possible on Android (well, maybe it is after installing some clever apps, but on a plain Android no copy/pasting photos nor screenshots). But this time I wanted to discuss a bit more the iPhone (Pro) photo taking capabilities rather than how the system handles pictures. Of course I was expecting a big jump from my 6-years-old Blackberry to iPhone 15. After all phones' photographic capabilities have been the area of the most progress. Both on the physical/hardware size as well as the computational aspects. The improvements start from things almost unnoticed (unless you did not have them before), such as water/dust proof construction and sap...