One of the YouTube awarded videos. Brilliant!

Just arrived at the 4th Microsoft Mashup Day (here's a video from one of the past events). It's really fun. This is my second one and I am planning to take the opportunity to do some work with the Windows Live SDK, perhaps develop a Windows Sidebar Gadget and do a mashup. Should be fun. Lots of geeks and creative people around.

I just wanted to let you know that there might be some troubles with my domain name in the next few days. I am trying to transfer from register.com to godaddy.com and renew my domain registration for another 9 years in the process. I am doing this because godaddy.com seems to support more features for online management but most importantly they are helping me register 'parastatidis.name' instead of 'savas.parastatidis.name'.

I've talked to many registars and most of them did not understand what I wanted to do. I am even talking with the .name registry authority who confirmed that I could acquire the second-level domain name provided I first released the third-level one. I am now trying to figure out whether I can avoid the 5 days of 'no service' that such a move may require.

I wouldn't have to go through such pain if the .name registry authority allowed second-level domain registration from the beginning (I've been a customer from the very early days).

Why am I doing all this? After a recent problem with Google mail that left me without email for more than 12 hours, I decided that I wanted to try something different so I am going to move all my email-related services to Windows Live Mail, through Windows Live Custom Domains (I also wanted to check that service out). This may also allow me to give an email to my brother without him requiring to register another third-level domain (although I don't think he cares a lot :-)

This has been an extremely busy week. It's been the first time since my PhD I actually stayed at the office overnight and continued working throughout the next day non-stop; and I did that twice in the week. We hosted scientists (for various events) so I also had to go out for dinner. Of course, I enjoyed every single moment and it's always a pleasure to interact with so many clever people who are at the top of their disciplines. I feel so honored to be in a position to interact with them.

Carole Goble is also around. I really enjoy talking to her and I am soooo looking forward to this year's Glastonbury (we hung out together there), if we can get tickets of course. She's giving a talk in an hour or so on metadata in the cloud. I have found myself talking about my ideas ideas around knowledge representation, the Web, lightweight middleware infrastructure (effectively the Web), social networking, etc. It's so refreshing to talk with like-minded people. I love it.

I made a presentation yesterday to a Microsoft group of people (sorry... can't really tell what it was about) and I had a demo. It was effectively the evolution of the Search Live Academic prototype I blogged about some time ago. This time it's built with WPF and has some more functionality (and ads). I am going to integrate it with Google Scholar (if it exports its data in XML) and perhaps other sources before checking out whether I can release it to the community.

I really messed up with my demo. I broke it just before my turn was up by trying to add a new feature :-( I fixed it after the talk was over but I was glad I had the opportunity to demonstrate the concept during the rest of the meeting. Note to self: DO NOT TOUCH THE CODE BEFORE A PRESENTATION.

On top of this busy week at work, I also had to deal with the panic of buying a home. I finally have the keys to my new condo and I am really excited. I am moving this weekend.

I also found some time to order my new laptop. Finally, I can move back to Thinkpads (T60p wide). I also got a free Samsung Q1P to play with for a couple of months (I am probably going to get the Q1P Ultra when that's released).

I hope I could say that I was going to relax this weekend but I have to move and settle in my new place.

John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.

Link to John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times

I went to the US Postal Services website to let them know of my upcoming change of address and I saw an R2D2 moving around. A quick search on the Web revealed that for the 30th anniversary of StarWars, R2D2 will become a letter box around the US. Hmmm.

I just read on the Web about the availability of this package from Microsoft. Cool. I knew a CTP was coming but didn't know when.

I've been trying to explain to scientific workflow people that Windows Workflow is a generic framework without any built-in semantics and that any type of dataflow/workflow could be implemented, if one invested in building the required semantics as activities. That's how I had enabled WCF-WF integration for an internal project. The nice CSD (Connected System Division) folks now have a package to support that integration (it's part of the latest Orcas CTP I believe). My prototype went a step further to enable the automatic extraction of a service's (implemented as a WF workflow) multi-message interaction contract (described in XAML). Based on that contract, the generation of a consuming WF workflow could be automated (capturing all the possible conversation states with the target service).

Anyway... back to WF. I have been toying with the idea of a Scufl (think scientific workflow) package on top of WF. This way, all those Taverna workflows could be executed on the WF platform... you know, nice debugging, nice visual designer and tooling support, etc. Carole promised to send me the semantic descriptions (captured in Scheme I believe :-) of the Scufl language. That'd be an interesting side project. I am seeing Carole next week so I'll talk to her again about this.

Woo hoo! I've been waiting to blog about this for some time. Steven Newhouse is joining Microsoft and the HPC team. The OMII has a blog post about it.

I've known Steven since I returned to Newcastle in 2003 and engaged with the Grid community. He's a great asset for Microsoft and I am really glad he accepted the invitation to join us.

Looking forward to having him around.

This must be one of the smartest purchases I've made. My Salomon X-Frees have been getting really really old; I bought them 6 or 7 years ago. I have been demoing various skis throughout the season but last Saturday I tried a pair of K2s (the Apache Recon); they felt really good. After a quick investigation on the Internet, I found out that they were getting great reviews throughout the season. The problem? Most online stores had run out of stock.

I finally found the last pair at an online store for $750 with the Marker 14.0 bindings. I ordered it but the next day I got an email informing me that that they had received multiple orders and that mine was not the first one :-( So, I decided to visit one of the local ski stores just to check the prices.

At the first shop I visited I found a great deal. I got the same pair (K2 Apache Recon), with the slightly older model but still very good bindings (Marker Comp 1400 Piston Control), plus new Head RS80 boots. I checked on the Internet to find the normal prices for all these items:

• K2 Apache Recon with Marker Piston M1 14.0/12.0: MSRP $1250
• Head RS80 boots: MSRP ~$650

Now, I think that the bindings I got are around $200 more expensive than the ones that were bundled with the K2s at the online store. That makes a total price of >$2000. Well, thanks to the end-of-season sales/clearance, I got the entire package for $707! Perhaps I could have done even better but this is not bad at all.

I can't wait to try everything out this weekend :-)

A group of people I really like in Microsoft (they are a fun team) released their very interesting work as a preview. This type of work is very relevant to cross-organization collaboration, virtual organizations, Grids, etc.

"The Security Policy Assertion Language (SecPAL) provides a flexible and robust declarative authorization language developed for large-scale Grid Computing Environments. This installable MSI includes a preview release of the .NET implementation of SecPAL, developer document describing the SecPAL programming model and scenario based samples intended to support evaluation of SecPAL."

SecPAL preview.

I am having a blast these days even though it's been pretty busy (especially with the condo buying process in motion). Yesterday we had a full day of presentations from my group's various interantional collaborators. It was great to see all the fantastic things they are up to and chat to them in person. I've had lots of interesting discsusions and I met lots of clever and prominent people. One of the many great advantages of working for Tony Hey is that you get to meet and talk with the best scientists (in any field).

Today, TechFest 2007 started with an open day for non-Microsoft folks (by invitation). It's fascinating to see what MSR's researchers (750 of them apparently) are up to. The two keynotes gave me a lot to think about and I got very excited with the focus on science and social networking. I am going to be interacting with the researchers to make sure that their technology gets incorprorated with some prototypes I am preparing.

We also had a private meeting with my group's guests today. Tony invited Steve Balmer to talk about Microsoft's interest in scientific and technical computing. It was nice to see the company's CEO reaffirming our interest and investment in this area.

Now it's time to clear my mailbox and start doing some coding for a change :-) I am really looking forward to the next couple of days when I'll be browsing the TechFest booths (the next two days are only for MS employees).

This prototype implementation looks very cool. If the idea takes off, we may finally find ourselves doing some exercise while working :-)

For some time now, Microsoft's visitor center has been showcasing a similar concept for the Windows Live Local data. However, nothing close to the sofistication of the prototype shown on the video.

Our Technical Computing @ Microsoft (my team's web site) is live. Woo hoo! No feed for changes yet or blog aggregation but all is coming! This is just v1.0.

URLs that will direct you there: http://www.microsoft.com/science, http://www.microsoft.com/tc, http://www.microsoft.com/technicalcomputing.

A tear almost went down my face. I am so happy to see Patric's work finally out there. Patric says:

After almost 4 months of development I've uploaded the first release of Soya yesterday night =)
Please feel free to browse through the web site , download the latest release , check out the source repository , join the mailing list , report bugs , request new features , ...

http://soya.sourceforge.net

Soya is an SSDL engine implementation. It currently only supports the MEP SSDL Protocol Framework (the alternative to the WSDL 2.0 MEPs) but I hope the open source community will be interested in making one of the other protocols frameworks a reality. Imagine the possibilities... full support for capturing message-oriented conversations through a SOAP-focused, message-focused description language. No more verbs/methods/procedures/etc., no more leaks of programming abstractions through a service's boundaries.

Patric built Soya around WCF and he has done a great job at providing an attribute-driven, message-oriented programming model.* Have a look at the "Getting Started" guide to get an idea. Here's a list of Soya features from sourceFORGE:

• Based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
• Straightforward C# attribute-oriented programming model:
• less code and hence less scope for error introduction
• more easily maintainable due to single source location
• seamless integration with WCF’s programming model and provision of familiar idioms to existing C# programmers
• Programming abstractions that foster SSDL's underlying message-oriented model
• Deployment-time generation and validation of SSDL contracts from C# attribute meta-data
• Run-time validation of SOAP messages according to SSDL contract (XML schema, message structure, message position in conversation)
• Message correlation and conversation state maintenance purely based on WS-Addressing standard headers (i.e. MessageId, RelatesTo)
• Intelligent message dispatching to service methods based on conversation state
• Public API for sending messages makes Soya suitable to be used by both clients and servers
• HTTP GET meta-data retrieval using ?ssdl convention
• Implementation of the MEP protocol framework (programming model and runtime)
• Extensible architecture that allows further protocol frameworks to be plugged in

Well done to Patric. He has done an excellent job and he has kept the small momentum around SSDL going.

Update:  I forgot to mention the potential relationship between a description language like SSDL, Soya, and workflow technologies like Windows Workflow, as we discussed in our chapter in the recently released book on "Workflows for e-Science: Scientific Workflows for Grids".

* I wish the book chapter Jim and I wrote on message-oriented programming abstractions for an upcoming SOA book in 2004 was published at the time we were told it would. We now hear that it will appear this year in 2008 but I think it's too late as it's going to be stating the obvious; not to mention the fact that the world has moved on beyond the SOA hype.

I am going to move the administration of my domain to Windows Live Domains. I hope the process is seamless but if this site disappears for a while, you'll know something went wrong.

What prompted this? Well, yesterday Google mail (all my personal email is routed via this service) had a problem affecting a number of users for around 10 hours. I couldn't access my account and even when the service was restored, I received messages with around 15-20 hours delay. Moreover, I've been thinking about the transition for some time for two reasons: be a good citizen for my company and use a mail service that manages my email traffic without introducing intermediate account information (if you have received email from my personal account, you may have noticed that it came from my Google account "on behalf of" my personal account).

Time for a change. Be warned about potential problems.

Update: Transition postponed. Lots of complications. Will have to take it one step at a time. First things first... change domain name registrars for savas.parastatidis.name. Will warn you all about future changes.

It's been a while since I started considering the purchase of my own place here in Seattle. In February, I started the process and at the beginning of this week I made an offer for a great condo in West Queen Anne. It was only the second time I went out for viewings with my realtor and I really liked it. I originally offered $1k above the asking price but it became apparent to us that my offer was only the second best. Even after increasing it by $10k (I think it's worth it), I was still $4k down from the best offer. However, the seller decided to go with me if I agreed to go through the process fast, which I did. As a result, I am going through a week of panic. It's just crazy crazy crazy. The only reason I have time to blog is because I can't sleep from being hyper and I can't concentrate on work due to tireness :-(

Deciding on the mortgage lender and which type of mortgage is proving quite an adventure. Also, I am trying to research the financing/investing space as best as I can and I am paying the penalty of neglecting to educate myself on such issues all these years. Is an interest-only better than a principal+interest? If I get an interest-only, will I be investing the savings from my montly payment and will it be better? What about the downpayment? How high should it be to balance the lost funds for investements against the lower rate and montly payments.

There are many many more questions I need to answer, plus all the paperwork associated with purchasing a home.

Still, I am very very excited. The place looks great.

Well done to Microsoft. The "i'm" is a great initiative.

Using Windows Live Messenger, every time I start a conversation with "i'm" a donation is made to my organization of choice (from a short list). I've chosen to support Unicef and will also support StopGlobalWarming.org every other day.

So, expect lots of "I'm" conversations :-)*

Happy "I'm"ing :-)

* BTW... if I am not already in your contacts list, here's my Windows Live ID: sparastatidis@hotmail.com  (please don't use it for email, my email address is savas@parastatidis.name ). I will transition to a @live.com ID once that becomes available.

I have been trying for ages to get together with Steve Maine for lunch. Since I changed groups, it's almost impossible and since I left building 42, I don't see him in the corridor for a short chat. Both our schedules are just crazy. His comment today, after we had identified a spot in our calendars for lunch a whole month away, he commented that "Man, you know things are bad when you have to schedule a month out". Indeed, so very true!!! :-(

This reminded me something that Geoffrey Fox mentioned the other day. We invited him here in Microsoft to give a series of four lectures on the history of Parallel Computing. It was a lot of fun. I even got to go out for dinner with him, Tony Hey, and Burton Smith last night. Listening to all of them talk about the history of parallel/scientific computing and their role in it is a great experience. So many stories, so much experience!

Anyway, Geoffrey used nature and organizations like Microsoft as examples of inherently parallel systems, which is very true if you think about it. Different parts of an organization work in parallel to achieve a common goal. What Geoffrey doesn't know, however, is the amount of synchronization overheads we have to incur within our organization. I thought that if people in Microsoft are seen as the parallel threads in a system, then the daily meetings in our calendars have to be the barriers; and there are lots of them. We need to find a way to reduce our synchronization points within Microsoft. :-)