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It has been exactly ten years since my last visit to Barcelona, and fortunately, the spontaneous trip came in a perfect timing for the worldcup weekend.

Despite all the political issues between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, the City of Barcelona had setup a large screen in Plaza Espana, and the atmosphere was amazing.

(I am not sure why the song “Born in the USA” was being played; as far as I remember the first White American was Spanish, not the other way around…)

We started prepping for the game at noon with a bottle of wine, then a late lunch with more wine, and what-do-you-know, they were selling alcohol at the Plaza. Driving back home at 2:30am on the scooter was, how should I put it, a bit irresponsible.

It’s been hot in Barcelona in the last few days, and not only because of the Mondial. Nonetheless, between the endless glasses of white wine, I managed to take some nice photos. Here are a few of the steady ones.

I coincidentally found out that the beautiful documentary “The Beckoning Silence” is freely available on YouTube. An amazing and touching story of a fatal attempt of ascending Eiger’s north-face in 1936.

Highly Recommended.

Alec Brownstein was looking for a job, so he created a cool campaign: When top advertising creative directors Googled themselves, they got a message from him asking for a job. Total cost of campaign: $6.

Lesson Learned: Think out of the box and get noticed.

A quick update (although this news is over a month old): I recently joined Bessemer Venture Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. It’s an extremely exciting place to be in while searching for my next project, as I have the opportunity of working with some of the smartest people in the business.  I’ll be spending my time between NY and Israel, and, as always, will continue meeting entrepreneurs with innovative ideas, interesting technologies and fresh distribution models. If you have an exciting project you want to share with us (BVP) or with me personally – just shoot me an email.

As a side project, I am looking to build a team that will compete with the looks of Microsoft in its early days.

With Apple’s stock sky rocketing to its all-time high and Apple about to surpass Microsoft in valuation, it’s pretty interesting to compare its 5-year stock performance to its traditional arch-nemesis (well, at least until Apple decided that everyone is their nemesis). While Microsoft is up 16% since 2005, compared to -3.5% for the S&P, Apple shares soared a whopping 626%.

How many people remember that in 1997 Microsoft invested $150M in Apple and saved it from going bankrupt? Apple’s CFO Fred Anderson was quoted then saying: ”This deal strengthens Apple’s viability. It’s a new era in terms of Apple and Microsoft working together“. Yeah right! They have been working together perfectly since; best friends just like me and the platoon sergeant in my basic training.

Lessons learned: Don’t try to avoid a threat of antitrust charges by helping your ailing, yet talented, competitor stay out of trouble.

Still, I would have rather invested $100,000 in Microsoft 25 years ago (I must acknowledge though it would have been a tough investment decision for an 8 years old). If I would have done so, this blog would have been written using a golden font.

(disclaimer: It’s a casual blog post for entertainment purposes; dividends and other factors were not taken into account)

Whatever the glitch was, it’s always exciting to see a $175B company lose ~$50B in valuation in a few minutes. Kind of puts your day-to-day software bugs in the right perspective.

It reminded me of another famous software bug from 1996: the Ariane 5 launch. You can read about it here, yet the end result looked like that:

Day 1: Warm Up

There is nothing like an easy start. At 10am, the ski lifts at Cerro Cathedral open for summer visitors, and we quickly escalated to 1,700m for the beginning of the hike. I was going to miss that cable car over the next few days.

We were a group of five, three guys and two girls. Aviran and Oz completed their army service in elite infantry units not so long ago, and Naama and Moria were hiking guides in Israel. I hiked with the girls in the south-most tip of Argentina, Ushuaya, and they were strong, very strong. On top of that, they were religious, and it felt as if the gods of good weather were present anywhere they went. Always stick with the good weather. It’s the difference between a hellish ride (my Torres del Paine trek, with 150km/hour winds, constant rain, broken tent, sleepless nights and full days of walking soaked wet) and a heart-lifting experience.

I was of course the oldest one in the group. Seems as if at the age of 32 (or more accurately, a week before turning 33), I was doomed to be the oldest of the clan anywhere I travel in South America, and referred to as ‘grandpa’ by my fellow travelers. Oh well, at least I’m fit.

The hike started with an hour’s traverse across boulders and unstable rocks, with promising views of the mountain range around us and the green valley below, and then starts a very steep descent towards the valley. Every step down the 300m drop was a painful reminder that my knees hadn’t yet recovered from previous weeks’ treks. Luckily, I had my hiking poles to rely on. Argentina was the first place I used hiking poles. I always thought they were for old people (read: older people) or for Germans hiking in the Italian Dolomites. Well, there I was, with my hiking poles, facing the reality of grown-ups. Seriously though, the poles are immensely helpful in taking the stress off your knees, and improving your balance when carrying heavy loads up an down steep slopes. Highly recommended.

After the descent, we had an easy hour of walking in the valley, without realizing it’s the last time we are going to walk on a flat terrain. Soon we started a steep climb towards Bercha Negra. The sun was high in the sky, and we were soaked with sweat when arriving at the pass. Wow. What a view! As the passes bridge between adjacent valleys, reaching them is always rewarded with stupendous views and an excellent place to catch one’s breath, boil water and enjoy much deserved tea and cookies. There is nothing like a granola bar after a long climb!

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This is a project I was keen on completing for many years.

In my childhood days in California (late seventies and early eighties), my dad would document us with his 8mm camera. These films were categorized by my Historian mom and kept in a safe closet for years, yet we only watched them once, about 15 years ago. The technicalities of installing the projector, and manually going through every roll were just too cumbersome.

So, finally, I decided to spend the small fortune needed ($1,000+) to convert 3 hours worth of childhood treasures to a digital format.

Debenham Media Group did a great job converting the films to full HD format.

Work is not done yet. I need to edit now 3 hours worth of footageto a 10-15 minute clip and add nice soundtrack. That project will probably wait until I come back from my travels.