Nota Bene

Greetings all!

Punta Arenas – Sandy Point in English – is right at the very bottom end of Chile. It’s on a bank of the Strait of Magellan, across from the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. In other words, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. Unless, one day, you might fancy flying down to Antarctica… then it’d be where you’d want to be in the middle of, as flights down there leave from here. Actually, you’d need to be a little to the south of Punta Arenas, not in the middle of it, but that wouldn’t have given me the pseudo-witty play on words.

Read on: This was not my first time in Punta Arenas…

Olá folks!

As you’ll have gathered from the title, I’m writing this in the capital of Brazil – the South American upcoming powerhouse with a burgeoning economy. It’s a city of 2.6 million, but there’s no traffic congestion here. You find this with some capitals of large countries, just not often. But here’s a +1 of such capitals visited for me – Brasília, the capital of the republic of soccer, Cachaça, Samba and carnivals…

You didn’t believe me?

Read on: an alternative way of getting to Brazil…

Hi folks!

Some time in early February every year we put on three of our most important events – all in one place, one after the other, back to back:

• A conference for IT analysts;
• Our North American Partner Conference;
• The Security Analyst Summit (SAS) – the annual pow-wow bringing together top security experts from around the globe.

This year the triathlon lasted a week and a half. Non-stop presentations, discussions, negotiations and other meetings. The all-in-one-place idea is to avoid excessive globetrotting by the hundreds who attend. So it’s like three vultures (see below) with one stone. That’s all very well, but such an Ironman multi-conference… well, it’s pretty intense keeping it up that long. Mercifully, three perennial lifesavers here make up for that: beautiful turquoise sea, clear blue sky, and perfect beaches. Phew.

Read on: Paradisiacal funky stuff…

Hi folks!

Strolling about London’s West End several weeks ago, on the recommendation of an art collector friend of mine we dropped by New Bond Street, the spot where the capital’s zillion year-old auction houses are situated. The timing was just right I think, as a few days earlier we’d been at the Tate Modern, and I was all child-in-a-sweet-shop and in the mood for getting hold of a small Rothko or some other such crazy modern art masterpiece for the office. Which is surprising, especially to me, as it’s not like I usually splash out – on anything – as normally doing so is just to show off.

And then I saw it – the bright, shiny, emerald colored… elephant! With a golden angel on its back blowing a horn! It was big, it was elegant, it was cast out of bronze. It heralds hope for the future – “a future promising great fortune”! It’s also the kind of piece that’s truly very aesthetically satisfying to look at – unlike some of the completely mad modern kunst exhibits over in the Tate. I fell in love with it immediately.

Still, what made this piece in particular stand out for me most of all was its color – British racing green KL green! We’ve used green and only green for just about everything KL for years – product boxes, our logo, fonts, mascots… even furniture and fittings in our offices around the world. Yet another factor I’m sure was attracting me to namely this modern artwork was that it was created by a surrealist I’ve always really admired. He’s just so unique with an unmistakable style all of his own. And down the years I’ve been checking out and rechecking many of his works all over the globe – particularly in the museums dedicated to him in Catalonia and Florida. You guessed who yet?

So, to summarize, the equation of my thoughts about this funky green elephant the first time I saw it several weeks ago went something like this:

KL Green + aesthetic delight + genius artist I’m a true fan of + a future so bright we’ve gotta blow a horn = must have!

Read on: Fast forward to a few days ago…

How can you locate and destroy ALL the maliciousness hiding in the sleeping jungles of your computer?

In particular, the extra nasty maliciousness that’s never ever been seen before, which also happens to have a mega-high malevolent-IQ (and is often state sponsored)?

Easy. The answer’s simple: you can’t.

Well, you can at least have a good go at it; but to find the proverbial black malware cat in a pitch black room you need a handful of top-notch pros to do the task manually: expensive. But to do it automatically with a boxed antivirus product – that’s a whole different matter altogether: you normally just get as far as getting on to the scent of super sophisticated infections, but that’s about it. That is, at least, using the old-school AV approach that uses classic antivirus signatures and file scanners.

So what’s the solution?

Again, simple: put some mega brains to hard work – to automate sophisticated-infection seek-and-destroy functions in an AV product.

Read on: So how we do that?…

What-ho, peeps!

How many times I’ve been to London I lost track of long ago. How many miles I’ve walked in parks, along river banks and down side streets I couldn’t even give a ball-park figure for. But a stroll along London’s Industrial Revolution-era canals – no, that was a first.

Locks, water stock and two trees

I really recommend checking out this somewhat lesser well-known side to the UK’s capital. It’s a network of mini-canals, which connected London with the rest of the country so Industrial Revolution-era raw materials and goods could be ferried about.

Read on: thousands of miles of canals …

As per tradition, the festive season for KL kicked off with our Christmas/New Year shindig – this year on the already decidedly tipsy December 20.

The following week another tradition was duly observed – the annual tour of every room in the office by Santa (me) and his little helpers, which this year also took in some of our neighbors‘ offices, to personally wish everyone personally a merry Christmas and a happy upcoming New Year.

+ two snow queens + one snow queen Read on: 2013 – hardly unlucky for us… 2014 – up all year to get lucky.

Hi folks!

Well here I am, back in a frosty London – one of my fave capitals.

One of the first things I saw here was a Christmas tree bobbing down the river Thames! I think it was a sign… a reminder that the festive period is o v e r, period! Enough already! Back to work!

Read on: Time to move on. Just like a Christmas tree on the Thames.

Two mega-cars from Scuderia (a Challenge and a GT3) + a completely empty Aragon race track in Alcaniz, Spain + a fog thicker than school-dinner semolina = tragedy.

You drive in an exquisite bit of motorsport kit, but the pedal stays a good way off the metal. Visibility is down to silly meters, and you’re trying to get some decent speed up. Rather, you’d want to. But you’re not as silly as those meters… So, like I say… a tragedy.

Read on: visibility superciliously silly…

Ciao all!

Herewith, the two next – Italian – installments from my recent Trans-Europe Express-2013.

Installment No. 1: Location, location, location.

We dropped in on one of our partners in Rome, whose office is handily situated in a building right in the city center. The panoramic view from up top was just incredible – as you can probably guess. Got me thinking how on earth the guy ever gets any work done. Hmmm, I guess you can’t just keep staring at the view for days… but I found out you can for hours! My conclusion: if the rooftop terraces here weren’t covered with those pesky Roman pigeons I’d give the place a perfect 10.

AC and a Xerox

Read on: Felipe Massa gets an engine…