Get your autographed copies while they're hot at the bookstore at Stanford in Palo Alto, CA. Stanford has tons of books on presentations/communications (notice Nancy's and Jerry's, etc. Staff said PZ was a hot seller for them -- good to hear).

The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board recently told stores and restaurants to quit serving Cycles Gladiator wine because of the label. Board attorney Bob Martin said the stylized, art-nouveau rendition of a nude female with a flying bicycle violated Alabama rules against displaying "a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner." Yahoo story.
 
The image the wine maker uses is from an advertising poster for bicycles in Paris around 1895. Hard to believe that over 110 years later that anyone would have "moral" issues with this image. Just goes to show you the power of the visual. You can buy a copy of the original poster here.

Mark, a fantastic designer and photographer (among other cool things), pauses for a chat at his desk inside the Duarte Design studious in Mountain View, California. Great guy. The folks at Duarte work very hard, but the atmosphere is fantastic. You should take one of the seminars offered at Duarte and experience the place for yourself. And you can not beat the weather in Silicon Valley.

PowerPoint fat cat (and all around good guy) Ric Bretschneider from Microsoft says something that makes Nancy Duarte crack up laughing in Silicon Valley meeting yesterday.
 
Ric's blog:
http://talk.presentationsroundtable.com/

 Today I'm at Duarte Design in Silicon Valley. Here's a short video on the presentation landscape from the Slideology blog. As she says: Don’t Get Discouraged, Fight for What’s Right!

Took this snap of a building down the street from where I was working today. Good cafe down the street from this building as well. Can you guess what town it's in?

Here are a few pics from Crescent Beach and the trail down to the beach (and a few from Ecola Park at the end). In Medford now -- Berkeley and San Jose meetings tomorrow. About 42 degrees in the Valley here today -- whoa. But the beach was perfectly warm.

It's 42 degrees in Portland today (about 1.5 hours from this beach). The temp on this beach is a perfect 25 or so. The hike down to Crescent Beach is a bit tough but just about anyone can do it if you go slowly (fortunately, few people bother to go down on this beach, assuming they can even find the trail at Ecola). I've been to many parts of the world, but when the weather is good, it does not get any better than this place right here. Incredible spot.

Seriously, I was working here for a couple of hours. Very inspiring place to work (didn't actually use the Mac much except for a few notes). This is Ecola Park (Cannon Beach below). Temp about 27 or so.