Welcome to the StreamScape Blogosphere, or BlogScape as we would like to call it. Readers are sure to be excited about yet another technology blog (yawn). And it is a fair assessment that those in love with the sound of our own voice (or key strokes) are likely to appreciate these posts more then others. As the subject of this self-ridicule, I can promise that we will keep this blog live and entertaining, balanced with technical information and opinions of the contributors. No need to take our selves too seriously. "I find that just surviving is a noble cause".

Although a technology veteran of nearly 25 years, I would not consider my self an expert in any given domain.  With technology in a constant state of flux, we are always in the process of learning new things while forgetting certain old ones. Rather it is more appropriate to put one self into a category of the Technically Curious, and on occasion into that other category of the Curiously Technical individual. The difference being that the former would cause an audience to comment "It's good that you know that" while the latter often results in the classic inquiry "Why do you know that?".  Our definition of an Expert: someone who has decided it's time to stop learning.

Why the Bowler Hats?

In addition to having an 'eclectic' sense of humor, our team is comprised of a broad range of individuals with an appreciation for science, the arts, science fiction and South Park.  So if you paid for a drama, please stay for the comedy as well.   The bowler hat wearing mascot has been used by a variety of software vendors in the past. Although admittedly many marketing departments do not understand the significance of this iconic symbol, other then the classic 'every man' moniker assigned to it by artsy types in search of Merlot and Brie.

The image is a tribute to the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, whose works challenged observer's preconditioned perceptions of reality. Although much has been said about Magritte's ability to capture relativity and human perception in art, a lesser known fact is that some of his works, specifically Golcondè and Time Transfixed have been used by scientists to conceptually depict Einstein's theory of relativity.

More specifically, it is the concept of a View Relative to the Observer that has captured the imagination of budding physicists.  And it is rumored that no less a man than Richard Feynman and even Einstein him self have both used imagery and props from the paintings to illustrate their theories.

Recently the convergence of Einstein and Magritte has led to a new synthesis in thinking that has practical applications to data processing, information distribution and collaborative system design. One result of such synergies is an important observation that knowledge and actions lead to ever larger fragmentation in societies and computing systems alike.

While some of this may be on the esoteric fringe for us, the imagery is a constant reminder of proper distributed system design and general collaborative computing principles. Certainly management of large, distributed systems must honor multiple user perspectives, providing a system view relative to the observer, with the ability to take snap-shots of data transfixed in time as it flows thru a system.  And with this comes the realization that complexity of modern data processing systems is overlapping that of statistics, probability, particle physics and other sciences. In short, it's a complex world out there and many view points have to be considered. Important people need fancy hats; and one man's bug is another man's feature.