The "Nine Guy" visits Silicon Valley

Well, today, my son and I had the day free (translation: my wife said "go do something with your son instead of staying on the computer reading blogs all day long").

So, off we went. First we dropped in on the Apple store that opened today at Oakridge Mall. Hung out with about 60 people in line. Got a free T-shirt. Nice store, looks like the inside of a G5.

We handed a nine guy to the new store manager. She seemed bemused by the thing. Then we thought, hmm, why not take the Nine Guy on a tour of Silicon Valley?

So, off we went. Taking pictures of the Nine Guy in front of Adobe. Nvidia. The Santa Clara train station (one of Silicon Valley's first computers is located there). Santa Clara University. The Hewlett Packard Garage (birthplace of Silicon Valley). Stanford University. University Coffee (my favorite Palo Alto hangout). And the Computer History Museum.

I posted the pictures on my moblog so you could see them.

But here's the rest of the story.

Our friend Chris Pirillo took the pictures and turned them into another funny video. Thanks Chris!

Hope your weekend is going as well.

Why did we post this? Well, on Friday we sent the Nine Guys out to those of you who sent us postcards. So, please take the Nine Guys to your favorite place and take pictures and post them or email them to us.

One last story, we were at Keeble">http://www.kspphoto.com/">Keeble and Shuchat today (famous Silicon Valley camera store) and in line there was Google's CEO Eric Schmidt. Of course we gave him a Nine Guy as well.

PS: I wrote a blog entry about the Interlocking Machine that ran Santa Clara's railyard for decades. It's one of Silicon Valley's first computers. Its algorithms are mechanical, rather than electrical. Quite a piece of machinery.

I just opened the .WMV file in Soundforge and pitched it down without preservinng the "duration" and it's just Chris talking very slowly.

You'd think he could just narate it normally and then pitch it up wihtout affecting the speed like all good audio editing software (Audition or Soundforge etc.)lets you do these days.

The way he does it now just makes him hard to understand. Maybe he's just going for an oldschool chipmunks effect.

I still love these videos.

How did you get the Nine Guy on the podium when Wozniak was speaking; did he agree to it?

Also... while in the bay area, have you ever visited Berkeley?

I just left him up there from a previous talk -- took a chance and it paid off. I have visited Berkeley many times (I lived in the Bay Area for more than 30 years). My wife graduated with honors from UC Berkeley.

Your son looks exactly like you. Mine does look a lot like me but he is too young to see if he'll also be into computers (so far so good ).

What did your wife think about your idea of a father&son day out? )

She thought it was funny! We had a fun day.

You guys are fun. I visit the microsoft office in Polaris but they won't let me in. I own all the products that Big MS made. Can you guys make the OS little bit Open Source like the linux. Soham Roy coder for High octane mod