Month: April 2019

Very true – from Steve Jobs. “When you’re a janitor, reasons matter. At some point between being a janitor and a CEO, reasons stop mattering.” If only politicians could understand this..

Steve Jobs told employees a short story when they were promoted to vice president at Apple. Jobs would tell the VP that if the garbage in his office was not being emptied, Jobs would naturally demand an explanation from the janitor. “Well, the lock on the door was changed,’ the janitor could reasonably respond. “And I couldn’t get a key.”

The janitor’s response is reasonable. It’s an understandable excuse. The janitor can’t do his job without a key. As a janitor, he’s allowed to have excuses.

“When you’re the janitor, reasons matter,” Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.”

“In other words,’ (Jobs continued,) “when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn’t matter what you say.”

(from John Rossman’s “Think Like Amazon”)

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/steve-jobs-said-1-thing-separates-great-leaders-from-all-rest-and-makes-all-difference-for-success.htmlHere’s

Such a pity about the cathedral. It felt like 9/11 yesterday. I came across a review of Assassin’s Creed Unity on Meduza, where you can run around a living cathedral in the past. People, life around. Just freaking amazing, check out the videos.

https://meduza.io/feature/2019/04/16/razrabotchiki-dva-goda-vossozdavali-notr-dam-dlya-igry-assassin-s-creed-unity-ona-mozhet-prigoditsya-pri-rekonstruktsii-sgorevshego-sobora

That very first performance of House Of Flying Fingers by Volodos-Mozart, by the nineteen-year-old Wang Yujia back in 2007. It was on this “clip” that she shot into “stardom”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rdsLA8adcU

She’s cool 🙂 And here’s the same piece performed 10 years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VUigs54MK4

It’s interesting to listen to both versions one after the other.

P.S. And here’s a performance by Volodos himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qG9PZNJI_k

Published a new longread – about SAP Commerce SmartEdit. It’s a new (relatively speaking) CMS within the SAP ecommerce platform.

Previously, SmartEdit was avoided due to its rawness and the presence of more stable alternatives. Now there are no alternatives, and both stability and functionality have significantly improved with the latest releases.

However, there are very few experts in the market who can understand, figure out, and if necessary, customize it. In the article, I describe the key things about the architecture and product expansion.

https://hybrismart.com/2019/04/14/smartedit-a-deep-dive-into-technical-aspects-of-the-new-cms-personalizationcapabilities/

What a mess. The television seems to have completely gone downhill.

Yesterday in DC, I attended a large auto show. They showcased all the cars that are sold in the USA. For some reason, there were no Teslas. However, there was an electric Jaguar, and you could take a ride in it with modes that were slightly close to extreme. Instead, I drove a Jeep, and now I want a real big SUV (by next week I will probably change my mind, and that’s exactly when they will start calling. There’s no real market for a true frame-based SUV around here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5I9XojLrvM

Three news updates for Cosmonautics Day:

1. The most important part of the industry revival project – building a new office for 25 billion.

https://meduza.io/news/2019/04/12/sozdanie-natsionalnogo-kosmicheskogo-tsentra-v-moskve-oboydetsya-v-25-milliardov-rubley-ego-predlozhili-postroit-v-forme-rakety

2. Successful launch of Falcon Heavy by SpaceX. The first booster stage and two rocket boosters were successfully landed, including on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

https://meduza.io/video/2019/04/12/spacex-vpervye-vernula-na-zemlyu-oba-uskoritelya-i-pervuyu-stupen-falcon-heavy-vot-kak-eto-bylo

https://meduza.io/news/2019/04/12/spacex-provela-pervyy-kommercheskiy-zapusk-rakety-falcon-heavy-na-orbitu-vyveden-saudovskiy-sputnik-svyazi

3. Image of a black hole’s shadow captured. Made possible by collaboration of scientists and telescopes.

It seems that over there, it’s indeed just like here

My public webinar (in Russian) about architecture and customization of SmartEdit in SAP Commerce Cloud. SmartEdit is a headless CMS solution from SAP, paired with Hybris (SAP Commerce Cloud). SAP has been laboriously working on it for two years, and finally, it seems they’ve brought it to an acceptable level. The webinar is quite geeky, especially the second part. Angular 1.6, API, all that stuff.

Three days ago, Jacques Lucier, a jazz composer known for his improvisations on themes by Bach, Vivaldi, Ravel, and Debussy, passed away. Here are a couple of links to listen to –

1. https://youtu.be/lFpHEDHgtME#t=32m25s (Vivaldi. The Four Seasons. Summer)

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xng_QbhHGY (Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor)