Author: Ryan Donovan

Windows 10 and the Surface: Winning Me Back

/ Ryan Donovan / Leave a comment

To celebrate the 30th birthday of Windows, I figured it was time to share my own thoughts on the operating system.

With the Threshold 2 build of Windows 10 (build 10586) and the third generation of Surface devices (Surface Pro 3, Surface 3 LTE), Microsoft is winning me back. For those that know me well – that may be a surprising statement. But it’s true and I have to give credit where due.

By mid-2006, I had switched all of my personal computing to Intel-based Macs instead of upgrading to Windows Vista. From 2008 onward, I used a Mac almost exclusively as my daily machine and used Windows in a VM or BootCamp only where necessary. Although Windows 7 was good, the hardware available simply wasn’t that great. At the same time I traded my trusty Treo running the original Windows Mobile for an iPhone 3G and never looked back.

Windows 8 and its attempt at redemption – 8.1 – was a disaster. Windows RT was a disaster. The first generation of Surfaces were great to look at and touch – but not that great to use in real-life.

Then, Microsoft woke-up and re-focused itself on its customers. Relentlessly. And its working.

The Surface Mini was killed. Given Windows RT, it rightfully probably never saw the light of day. Windows RT was rightfully killed – though it represented an interesting missed opportunity I may blog about as a different topic.

But, the Surface Pro 3 emerged and it is a genuinely great device. All the rough edges of the first- and second-generation devices were filed off. Now, finally, there was a decent Windows laptop (some software/driver quirks notwithstanding). The Surface 3 LTE gave those that are hardcore mobile users something that was very decent (also with some software/driver quirks). The Surface Pro 4 is nicely providing refinements where needed – and I can’t wait to get one when the model I want is available. And the Surface Book – although controversial – is a very interesting contender against the MacBooks.

Windows 10 is another story. It is actually very pleasant to use. All of the goodness of Windows XP and 7 is brought forward. The good ideas of Windows 8 and 8.1 remain. But its nicely wrapped into a single package. And it delivers an experience and applications that are quite pleasant when faced up against stiff competition from Apple. And, with Threshold 2, it mostly works as expected from a stability perspective.

How do I know its working? I had several devices to pull out on this long Washington DC->Seattle flight tonight; the Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10 on Threshold 2 won. As the Surface 3 or Pro 3 did in many meetings this week while traveling.

And, it’s not just me. I have traveled extensively for the last four years. Airports and airliners are a great litmus test of public opinion globally. Apple was clearly winning. But now I’m seeing Surface Pro 3s/Surface 3s pop up more and more. And most of the ones I see lately are Windows 10. This is a much needed regaining of ground with the high mobility professionals that has been absent for Microsoft for many years. And in an even bigger testament – the Surfaces have captured the interest of my mother, who has used nothing but Apple since 2006.

The recipe for this success is very simple. They are focusing relentlessly on their customers and on delivering a quality user experience. There’s no rocket science to this; its just just very hard work.

On the hardware front, I applaud Microsoft for the Surface. They have brought the much needed cachet back to Windows machines – something the OEM partners were definitely not doing. Although its taken far too long and several iterations, credit where its due for finally building a great desktop operating system and hardware combination.

(This post was written over Idaho on my Surface Pro 3 running Windows 10 Build 10586.)

An Almost 50-year Old Bentley and the RROC Fall Tour

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Driving 1,200 miles in a week in a British car that rolled off the production line ~49 years ago may seem like a crazy thing to do. But it’s not considering the car – a 1966 Bentley T1 – and the event, which was the Fall Tour of the Rolls-Royce Owner’s club – held throughout British Columbia in late September 2015.

Meet SBX2479, a 1966 Bentley T1 I purchased in spring of 2013 while rejoining the ranks of classic Rolls-Royce/Bentley owners after a hiatus of several years. I’ve been an enthusiast of these cars since the mid-1990s. After a disastrous flirtation with a 1967 Jaguar S-Type, I ended up with a 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II, which provided tens-of-thousands of miles of trouble-free enjoyment (after having rejected the first 16 examples I looked at, the first of which was coincidentally another 1967 Bentley T1.

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Representing less than 1% of Silver Shadows produced, a proper North American-specification Left Hand Drive (LHD) T1 is a very rare car. My own estimates suggest there may be only a dozen LHD original series 1965-67 examples around the continent. These early cars, although quirkier in some ways than later examples, feature the beautiful wood-trimmed interior and full engine power output that was missing on later emission gear equipped cars.

Now, for the event itself. The Rolls-Royce Owners Club is a wonderful organization. Some of their national events are driving tours, which combine great company, interesting sightseeing, and some good exercise for one’s motorcars. This event, hosted by the BC Region, was no exception.

I drove up early to join the Fall Meet between the BC and Pacific Northwest regions of the club, which was held the day before the national tour. The meet consists of several contests of absurd driving skills coupled with other fun and games (such as faux sword fighting).

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Although the event was wrapped early due to persistent rain, the Northwest Region was this year’s victor, resulting in next year’s meet being hosted in Washington state versus British Columbia. Participants moving onto the national tour then spent the next day getting from Abbotsford to North Vancouver for check-in and the opening reception.

For the RROC Tour itself, each day started with a briefing and was followed by an alternating course of driving and sightseeing. Most (though not all) days also had an evening event.

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On the first day, the initial stop was the British Columbia Museum of Anthropology. Here we had a chance to get a local immersion in the history of the indigenous peoples of British Columbia and see many amazing First Nations and Chinese artifacts.

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For lunch, we stopped at the Salmon House in North Vancouver, which was opened especially for the RROC tour participants. The weather cooperated and we were treated to a magnificent panorama of the Vancouver area – along with some extremely delicious Northwest cuisine.

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After lunch, we headed up to the Capilano suspension bridge and requisite nature park. The bridge is definitely not for those afraid of heights – and several participants took a pass. After that, several of us headed to the optional waypoint of Cleveland Dam to see it prior to heading to a Chinese dinner nearby.

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The second day of touring started with a drive up to Whistler. En-route, the group stopped at the Britannia Mine, which at the peak of production was one of the world’s largest volume producers of copper. Once arriving in Whistler, everyone had a few hours to spend on their own until an evening dinner event.

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Day three began with a trip to Shannon Falls on the way to Fort Langley in Surrey, British Columbia.

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Once at Fort Langley, the group got to learn about the history of the first major Hudson Bay Company trading post in the British Columbia region as well as see re-creations of life from several hundred years ago.

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The evening wrapped with a lovely time at the Vancouver Club, after a quick shot across the water from North Vancouver to downtown Vancouver on the Seabus.

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Day 4 saw the group off to Vancouver Island. Our first stop was the Cowichan Cultural Center, just south of Nanimo, British Columbia. Here the group was treated to a guided tour of local tribal legends, a delicious salmon lunch, and an amazing performance of tribal dancing. They day concluded with some time to see Victoria and a reception at a club members home, featuring the guest appearance of John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce Phantom V.

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Day 5 began with a trip to the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. The featured exhibit was “Gold Rush – El Dorado in BC” which offered many unique insights into the history of gold mining within the province. The afternoon saw the group end up at Hatley House, which is probably best known for its appearances in the X-Men movies. Besides being a popular film venue, Hatley House is also the home of Royal Roads University. Prior to that, it served as a military training facility after being purchased by the government from the Hatley family. The day concluded with a lovely BBQ at another member’s home just outside of Victoria.

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Day 6 – the final day – saw the longest day of driving yet. We took a long, circular route spanning Cowichan Bay, Lake Cowichan, converted logging roads down to Port Renfrew, then up to Sooke, and finally back to Victoria. Day 6 also included a Trivia challenge, where tour participants were supposed to find highly obscure facts at the various destinations along the way. The tour concluded with a closing dinner at the club of the University of Victoria.

Cars on the tour ranged in age from a 1926 Bentley 3-liter (whose top was last seen in the 1950s) to 2010-era Bentley Continental GTCs, Azures, and Brooklands models. And just about everything in between was represented. Thanks to excellent logistics, mechanical support was available for the handful of issues that arose. People came from as far away as Pennsylvania, with several participants bringing their cars from as far away as Missouri and San Diego.

The social activities are fantastic; I know I made several new friends as well as reconnected with people i have not seen since the late 1990s when I was far more heavily engaged in enthusiast events. For those that have not done an event such as this, it’s absolutely worth it on all fronts – socially, driving, and sightseeing. And my hat is off to the RROC and our BC Region hosts in particular for absolutely flawless logistics and support. I can’t wait until the next event…

Misadventures in Home Networking (or creating house-wide 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz coverage)

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One of the perils of having a large square footage house built in the 1980s is that it is impossible to get WiFi coverage from a single access point. And there is no Ethernet wiring in the walls. This is the tale of how I actually got this problem reliably resolved such that there is decent WiFi coverage in the house and on the two outdoor patios.

Resolving the Cable Backbone (or lack thereof)

Short of pulling CAT6 through the walls, there represents two technologies to create a virtual cable backbone. Powerline Ethernet (which as its name implies uses the electrical wiring) and MoCa (which uses the coaxial cable for TVs). Both offer several hundred megabits of capacity.

MoCa seemed the ideal solution – except that I was unable to get it to work due to IP address conflicts with the neighbors (seriously!). Turns out (from a very helpful upper tier tech at Comcast) that I probably need a MoCa filter as the cable enters the house – and these did not exist in the mid-1980s.

Instead, I used PowerLine networking with hubs/access points in strategic locations going back to my office, where it is patched into a Gigabit Ethernet switch, which in turn is connected to my router. I plan to go back and revisit MoCa once I can source and try a filter.

WiFi Hardware

For the routers themselves, I went with the Asus RT-87 and am using the open source Merlin firmware. The main one is configured as a router, the second and third as access points. IPs are managed by redundant DHCP Servers running on Windows Server 2012 R2. DNS and WINS are both local, though DNS forwarding is going to Comcast’s DNS servers. The reason I went with this approach is, beyond having greater control, DNS is automatically updated so it makes it easy for other devices to find each other on the network. The other custom setting besides WPA2 AES encryption I enabled was dropping signals if less than -70 to force devices to switch access points while traversing the house.

The WiFi Channel Config

Getting the three access points to play nice with other is no mean feat. The reason is that if they are all configured identically, they will be overlapping with each other. So the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios each need to be configured to not broadcast over each other.

The 2.4 GHz Channel Configuration

2.4 GHz channels can be configured to use one of a handful of channels and 20 Hz, 20/40 Hz, or 40 Hz channel widths. 20 Hz channels should be selected unless one only has a single access point, in which case 20/40 Hz should be selected. 40 Hz likely won’t be compatible with many devices. If any 40 Hz channel width is selected, effectively the entire spectrum is then consumed. So, with three access points, the only channels that don’t overlap are:

  • Channel 11
  • Channel 6
  • Channel 1

– making the choice quite simple, with a cap of 3 semi-overlapping access points.

The 5 GHz Channel Configuration (and where it really gets complicated)

5 GHz channels are a bit more complex, as you can configure 20 Hz, 40 Hz, or 80 Hz channel widths along with respective fallback. Using 20 Hz channels makes little sense, as you’d be unable to leverage the higher bandwidth of the newer WiFi standards. The latest AC standard requires 80 Hz channels.

Using a 40 Hz channel width, you can get Channels 36, 44, 149, and 157 on most access points – none of which will overlap. This means you are limited to four access points. If you want to use 80 Hz channels, then you are limited to two access points – on Channels 36 and 149 only.

The other wrinkle is that the 1xx channels are not visible to devices several years old. But since everything here is new enough (2012+ or could use 2.4 GHz), I went with 40 Hz channel width and Channels 149, 157, and 44. At some point, I may explore enabling 80 Hz frames on Channel 149 for the main floor access point (and most used) and then using the other two at 36 and 44.

Parting Thoughts

This was far more complicated to get right than I ever envisaged. at this point, if I need more coverage, I’ll have to get repeaters given channel saturation. And there is not a lot written on how to set this up. Commercial grade WiFi solutions make this easier – such as a Cisco Meraki system – but those cost far more than anyone would reasonably be willing to invest in home WiFi. Eero looks very promising – but is not yet available. So hopefully this helps you if found in a similar situation.

Home WiFi Misadventures

/ Ryan Donovan / Leave a comment

The point of this post is to hopefully save any reader the aggravation I just went through over the last several hours coupled with the years of missed performance.

The Topology:

The main access point is an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11ac access point connected to a Comcast cable modem at 1GB/s. The access point is connected to a 600MB/s PowerLine network via Gigabit ports and a Gigabit switch for local hardwired clients. There are two Apple Airport Express 802.11n access points connected via the PowerLine network for the upper and lower floors of a three floor home, respectively. Everything was auto-configured using Apple defaults.

The Symptom:

I just purchased a Surface Pro 3. And discovered that its WiFi speed was 3MB/s. After resolving several Microsoft-related issues, I boosted performance to a whopping 15-20MB/s. Not settling for this, I spent several hours researching…

The Problems:

I discovered several issues upon troubleshooting everything:

  • The out-of-box defaults use a single SSID for both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band. It turns out that a number of Windows systems do not like this configuration and will end up on the 2.4 GHz band. Based on anecdotal testing, I may have had some Apple devices in this category as well. 
  • Out-of-box defaults left no control over channels. Clearly I had some channel overlap between the access points going, which explained why performance degraded when devices were active across more than one access point.

The Solution:

  • Configure a separate SSID for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ranges. Point any 5 GHz capable device to the 5 GHz SSID. 
  • Manually configure the channels for the 2.4 GHz ranges
    • Channels 1, 6, and 11 were used – as they do not overlap. Note: You can really only get 3 2.4 GHz access points in a given location before you start getting channel overlap as the spectrum used per channel overlaps with its neighbors (e.g. – Channel 1 overlaps with 2, 3, 4, and 5).
  • Manually configure the channels for the 5 GHz ranges
    • Channels 36, 40, and 44 were used; there are varying reports that these would slightly overlap but no issues were seen in routine testing

Now, 5 GHz devices routinely get 100MB/s+ from the Internet when on the main access point and 50-60 MB/s when on a remote access point going through the PowerLine network. 

Hope this helps!

Sitecore Commerce lives (in between many travels)

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I realize I’ve been far quieter with respect to blogging than I had intended. As I get ready to head off on another trip (because 101.5K miles flown this year isn’t enough), my long layover at Chicago O’Hare gave me a chance to reflect on just how fast the last few months have gone since Sitecore acquired Commerce Server last year. 

Sitecore Commerce is a comprehensive product portfolio aimed at providing a commerce solution for all enterprise needs. It is much broader in charter and scope than Commerce Server ever was, as what I had been working on constitutes just a component in the overall strategy. But, the sheer amount of work to get integrated and getting this to market has obviously required a considerable amount of time, focus, and cone of corporate silence. 

It’s been a phenomenal journey. And with the product and strategy now in-market, the proverbial cone of silence can be lifted. So expect to see a bit more on here. 

And, for a recap: 

Sitecore® Introduces Industry-First Enterprise .NET Experience Commerce Platform (Press Release)

Sitecore announced an early access program for Sitecore Commerce, powered by Commerce Server, the first enterprise-grade .NET customer experience management solution with fully integrated commerce functionality. The new offering enables marketers and merchandisers to deliver personalized and relevant digital shopping experiences from initial customer acquisition through online transaction using a single, connected platform.

  • Sitecore Commerce Unveiled: The First Enterprise-Grade eCommerce Integrated .NET CXM (CMS Critic)
  • Sitecore Marries .NET Customer Experience, E-Commerce (CMSWire)
  • Sitecore Fully Integrates e-Commerce into Experience Platform (Digital Tech Diary)
  • Sitecore Adds Commerce Solution to Its Experience Platform (DM News)
  • Sitecore Adds Editing and Asset Management Capabilities for E-Commerce Sites (The Hub)
  • Sitecore Premieres Sitecore Commerce (KM World)

For some additional information, check out Mark Floisand’s and my blog posts:

And with that…I have a plane to catch – onto corporate headquarters at Copenhagen for the next two weeks. 

For US Travelers, EMV Can’t Arrive Soon Enough

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Most of the rest of the world has had EMV for years. For example, I had it from the time I moved to Canada in Winter 2008. Just what on earth is EMV? It is the chip/PIN support on your MasterCard and Visa credit cards that allow you to make purchases via PIN versus swipe and signature.

Why is this important? Besides the obvious anti-fraud benefits, it is almost mandatory to make even basic purchases when traveling abroad. Consider my case. I’m working out of our Copenhagen office this week. I went to the local supermarket and went to buy things the TSA frowns upon like razor blades and shaving cream – and Kleenex, which apparently my hotel doesn’t believe in.

And I find myself unable to make a purchase using my Visa or my MasterCard. My MasterCard, which supposedly has a PIN, didn’t work either. Try my debit MasterCard with a PIN? Another fail. Try a different store. Same result. My story had a happy ending. Others might not be so lucky.

I try resetting my MasterCard’s PIN over the phone (which was successful) and go back – it still didn’t work. (And this is after two lengthy calls to my bank.) I call Visa – they were able to setup a PIN, but warned me all transactions may be treated as cash advance. Low and behold, I was finally able to make a purchase. Kudos to the United Club Visa Card and excellent customer service from Chase, who provides the card. They truly understand what world travel means.

But, this required a great deal of patience, persistence, and resourcefulness that the average traveler might not possess. If you’re traveling abroad, beware and vet this in advance. Otherwise, when you get a chip and PIN in the next year or so, rejoice.

 

Lots of Good Stuff from Build and Beyond

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So far, Microsoft has done a very good job of impressing me the last week. In fact, I have seen some of the best decision-making out of the company in years. Although a lot of this may be due to One Microsoft and other forces already in play, some credit also certainly goes to Satya Nadella in his new role as CEO.

In short, what I saw that I liked:

  • Office for iPad – The overnight success of this shows that Microsoft has been leaving money on the table, even with a 30% cut going to Apple. Given its a v1.0 and is this polished, I look forward to what the updates will bring. Hopefully they will update it frequently in the style of a true iOS application and not on a Microsoft ship cadence. It has earned overnight status in my daily-use list and is hopefully a harbinger of a lot more to come of delivering great experiences on other platforms.
  • Scott Guthrie – I worked for Scott directly for two years. I would count those as amongst the absolute top highlights of my career. He is a rare mix of technical excellence, but more importantly – customer focus. Including looking beyond the boundaries of the Redmond campus. He is absolutely the right choice to deliver technically innovative products that will do what people want. Congrats to him and kudos to Satya.
  • Universal Applications – This has long been one of Microsoft’s biggest opportunities. They finally delivered. And offered some decent migration strategies to boot. Microsoft built much of its success on developers, but that has gone by the wayside for a while. This felt like the start of them getting their groove back. The Xbox One support is a fantastic touch and key differentiator – and may end up seeing me get one even though I am a staunch anti-gamer in the wake of the discontinuation of Flight Simulator…
  • Cortana – This one exceeded expectations. Microsoft played to its strengths and brought in context from all of the other things they have the ability to touch, such as your inbox and calendar. And gave you the extensibility to teach it (also playing to one of their historical strengths not seen lately). They acted uncharacteristically cool by maintaining the codename from the Halo franchise, using the actor from the Halo games, and hiring screenwriters to make the dialogue entertaining. Now, can we get a desktop and tablet version please? Maybe, unlike Google Now, it won’t think I work at the local QFC (another story)…
  • Mea Culpa on Windows 8 Desktop – The renewed focus on the desktop was great to see. It’s what people fundamentally want. Tim Cook was right on this one; you have to have a device appropriate experience. Which Windows 8 failed to deliver. And coupled with the lack of applications on the tablet side, it turned into a disaster. Giving people the experience they want and a true universal platform gives it hope…we shall see.
  • Free Windows on < 9″ Devices – This was the unexpected one (along with offering O365 via the Apple App Store). Microsoft has long held onto its licensing policies with religious fervor. Seeing them be pragmatic with respect to where they are at in the market was a refreshing change, and one guaranteed to not have happened under the previous regime.

What was unimpressive (beyond Cortana) was Windows Phone 8.1, sans the very elegant dual-SIM support (very key for international travelers like me or those in emerging markets where multiple carriers are a reality). This was a me-too play that should have been there all the way along.

Overall, my expectations have been exceeded. Kudos to everyone in Redmond – and especially all of my friends and former colleagues. Congratulations on delivering some of the best in a very long time and finding some of the right grooves again.

Converting from Parallels to Hyper-V

/ Ryan Donovan / 1 Comment

You would think converting a virtual machine from one format to another would be simple. Especially when there are multiple blogs out there on how to do it. But, of course not – so time for another misadventure in computing post. I was asked by a colleague to get a copy of a demo virtual machine for some upcoming analyst activities. The problem: my colleague’s system is a Surface 2 Pro running Hyper-V on Windows 8.1. And the source system was a personal Retina MacBook Pro running Parallels 9. And the VM is running Windows Server 2012 R2.

The core issue was that the source image in Parallels was a virtual UEFI system with a GPT partition table. The destination image was a Gen 1 Hyper-V VM with a virtual BIOS, which necessitates a MBR partition table. (I was unable to get the Gen 2 Hyper-V VM that supports UEFI to work given the differences in hardware drivers.) 

The first problem is actually converting the disk file itself, as they are in very different formats. And the steps of using VMWare and VirtualBox utilities to do the conversion did not work – I ended up with a corrupt virtual hard disk (probably because of this GPT issue). 

So to do this, I found the awesome Disk2VHD utility from SysInternals (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx). With this utility, I ran it and chose not to grab anything except the C:\ partition and voila – I created a new VHD that I was able to load up on my Hyper-V server and at least not have corruption.

Then, the fun of trying to get it to boot began. The normal way to fix a modern Windows system that will not boot is:

  • Boot from Windows installation image
  • Go to Command Prompt
  • Enter the following commands:
    • “bootrec /fixmbr”
    • “bootrec /fixboot”
    • “bootrec /scanos”
    • “bootrec /rebuildbcd” – except this critical last step fails because the partition table is not MBR.

So, you have to convert the partition table to MBR. And that’s where life gets interesting. After trial and error, I found the following to be the best way to do this without losing data:

  • Download the latest Live x86_x64 Fedora image from http://www.fedoraproject.org/. Yes, you really need a live Linux image because of a really handy utility called gdisk.
  • Boot the VM with the Fedora Live image and login to the desktop.
  • Run the Terminal utility.
  • Then, run the following commands:
    • “su -” – get into administrator mode
    • “yum -y install gdisk” – actually install the gdisk utility
    • “gdisk /dev/sda” – start running gdisk against the virtual hard drive
    • “r” – to enter gdisk recovery/transformation mode
    • “g” – to convert from GPT to MBR
    • “p” to preview the converted MBR partition table
    • “w” – to write changes to disk.
  • At this point, the VM can be rebooted with Windows installation media to get to a Command Prompt to fix the rest of the problems. Once there:
    • “diskpart” – enters the Windows disk partition utility
    • “select disk 0” – selects the boot drive
    • “list partition” – should show the disk partitions present. The largest one is the actual one that you want to boot. It is probably going to be the third or forth partition on the disk. In my case it was the fourth.
    • “select partition 4” – select the partition we want to boot.
    • “active” – to mark the partition as active in MBR.
    • “exit” – to exit diskpart
  • The next step is to find the actual disk itself – it is probably going to be D:\ (at least it was on my system) because of the reserved GPT partitions in advance of the actual usable partition. Once you determine the drive letter, you can proceed as follows:
    • “bootsect d: /nt52 /force /mbr” – makes D: bootable.
    • “bootrec /fixboot” – fixes core startup environment
    • “bootrec /fixmbr” – fixes core startup environment
    • “bootrec /scanos” – find the OS; note it will probably be D:\Windows in my example (and this is OK)
    • “bootrec /rebuildbcd” – update the BCD environment; note it will be D:\Windows in my example (and this is OK)
  • At this point the system can be rebooted without any installation media – and it should just boot up with everything in C:\Windows\ as it should be. Once booted:
    • Uninstall Parallels Tools
    • Install Hyper-V Integration Services (if required – not applicable on this system since Windows Server 2012 R2 has them built-in)
    • Reactivate Windows

And voila! I hope this helps.

 

 

 

Still a Jaguar Fan

/ Ryan Donovan / Leave a comment

I got my start in exotic cars with a Jaguar. A 1992 Vanden Plas, to be specific. I loved them for the formative years of my driving experience.

But, for many years, I thought they lost their way. I couldn’t see much worth owning beyond a late 1990s performance-oriented XJ – which I bought with a 1995 XJ12 in early 1997. There were frankly better alternatives, starting with the Aston Martin DB7 (which was born from the still-born original F-type) from the 1990s). And nothing post 1995-XJ12/XJR from the British saloon market until Bentley found its way with the Arnage Red Label.

But, this is a marque that shares the same birthday as I; I have a soft spot. The XF started to find the spirit of the Mark II. It is a very good car.

The new F-type coupe – in my opinion – has brought them back to the supercar status they once owned (but now are regaining credibility). The combination of the F-type coupe and the XF Supercharged / XFR / XFR-S  have brought me back – from having not wanted anything since the 1995/1996 XJ12s.

I look forward to the future – and continue hope it regains the specialness of the Mark II’s and E-Type’s of old. They seem to be well on their way. May they be Britain’s automotive headlines once again in 2014…

Time for 2014

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My New Year’s resolutions (in no particular order):

  • Have fun building awesome products that delight customers and move markets (I’m not going to miss M&A mode – that’s for sure…)
  • More time for hobbies (which have been sadly neglected) – including photography, cars, and writing
  • More quality time with family and friends (also neglected as of late)

That is all. I’ve decided for this one to keep it simple and stick to Steve Jobs’ golden rule of 3s.