I do hope that Microsoft is paying attention. There was public rhetoric a year ago about the appeal of Netbooks. Well, the just-released numbers say the story clearly... Netbooks (or cheap laptops) do have an audience and it seems that the audience is growing. Acer has had a great quarter and Toshiba a good one, thanks to their Netbooks.

These news in combination with lightweight OSes like Google’s (hyped) Chrome OS and Intel’s Moblin should be good enough reasons for my company to rethink our approach to the Web. I am sure clever people up there have been doing it for few years now (at least I hope that’s the case :-)

Disclaimer... I have no insight into any parts of the strategy in this space. I am just commenting on news!

It’s great to finally see this out. My previous team has been responsible for the execution on this. It’s truly a great resource for those who want to get an insight to one of the greatest scientific minds of our era. And, in case you didn’t know, Tony Hey worked with him and is also one of the authors of the “Feynman Lectures on Computation”.

You’ll need Silverlight to watch the videos but it’s definitely worth it.

“Richard Feynman lectures: video series” (project Tuva)

I hit the road this weekend. It was fantastic! I needed to be on the road by myself, in order to concentrate on some Web book writing and also to gather my thoughts and feelings. I find that being on the road is very southing to the soul. I love it. The Coldplay concert was a great opportunity.

I left work a little bit early on Friday to do some work on the bike and get ready. It was the first time I was doing electrical work on any bike so I was happy that everything went smoothly. I installed the GPS, loaded my tent and backpack, set up the in-helmet headphones so I could listen to music, and I was ready to go.

No, I didn’t really need all that stuff for just a couple of days on the road. The “stolen” (and then found) side cases were mostly empty. I used the opportunity to familiarize myself with a loaded bike. I am going to do more weekend trips like this one as I am building up towards a possible long (2-3 weeks), “writing” road trip with my bike. We’ll see.

I decided to avoid highways as much as possible and follow scenic routes. I headed towards Leavenworth. In a week full of minor “incidents”, the beginning of my trip was no exception. If you’ve been following my twitter stream (or my Facebook updates), you might have noticed a sequence of “bad karma” events (the “stolen” side cases, the tendency of the bike to lie down on the road when I stopped, etc :-) I blamed them on my absentmindness of these days :-)

There were many miles of road works towards Leavenworth. They had HUGE signs with “motorcycles use extreme caution” because the pavement was grooved. This meant that the motorcycle was a bit wobbly. I slowed down in order to be safe (and for the safety of the other users of the road) but I immediately created a queue of cars. As WA state law requires, I had to do something about it so I used the shoulder, which was not grooved. As I moved to the shoulder, I was able to maintain constant speed, which meant that there was no longer a queue and the cars didn’t have to overtake me. I wasn’t overtaking cars from their right either since we were all going happily at the same pace.

Towards the end of the construction area, however, there was a police car parked on the shoulder. The officer pulled me over and gave me a ticket for $124. I tried to politely explain to him the reason I used the shoulder and how it was for safety reasons but he gave me the ticket nevertheless. We were both smiling and the entire conversation was pretty friendly but I think he was there to give tickets to all motorcyclists who were doing the same thing (there was another guy just before me).

I feel strongly that I was doing the right thing so I am going to take the advice of a lawyer to see whether I can fight this ticket, just for the principle of it :-)

I enjoyed the ride though. Crossing the Cascades is always such a wonderful experience.

I stopped at Leavenworth for dinner and then headed towards Wenatchee, where I spent the night and did some writing. The following morning, I headed south towards following the Columbia river. I had done this with my parents in May so I already knew it was going to be a beautiful ride.

I arrived at The Gorge early and set my tent. I returned to Quincy for some grocery shopping and writing at a bar. Surprisingly, I was very productive there despite the distractions from a set of bikers (they were fun), and a local who decided I was his very good friend. He was 54 and still called his parents “daddy” and “mama”, even though his “mama” had left the family back in 1959!!! He told me how they called people from Seattle “turkeys” because during hunting season they drive their 4x4 into ditches and then need to be pulled out :-) I returned to The Gorge and waited for the concert to start.

Coldplay were amazing. I had seen them few years ago at Glastonbury and I think they still “have it” :-)

The following morning I had a very early start. I headed south, again following the Columbia river. I wanted to avoid I-90 again so I had planned a random route back home, going south and then heading west. The scenery was amazing.

I arrived at Yakima where I had a good breakfast and continued following my random route. I had no idea about the beauty I would find :-) The landscape was breathtaking. I was following SR410, through the Mt. Rainer national park. There are many campsites over there so I am definitely going to visit again soon! As I reached the top, I had to go through really thick fog (much thicker than the photo), which was “interesting” :-)

It was a wonderful weekend. It was great being on the road and concentrating on my thoughts, trying out the bike for a multi-day trip, and attending the Coldplay concert at The Gorge, one of the best concert venues around.

Here is the trip in numbers, courtesy of my GPS :-)

Distance travelled: close to 500m (I accidentally reset the counter just before I reached home)

I am looking into the augmented reality space using cell phones as a hobby these days. This is a cool vision video (via Engadget).

My Web-book co-authors gave an interview to Stefan Tilkov for InfoQ. Fun!

How can you not like that happy face of my best friend Jim? :-) (the one on the left) Ahhhh! I miss working with my pal. Every time I stay at his place and we talk geek, I remember the fun times of working together for our PhDs (and arguing all the time... with me being right of course :-)

BTW... there is no turning back now. The contract with O’Reilly has been signed from both sides and the first deliverable is due by the end of July (50% of the book)! Fingers are on fire! Our own reviewers are doing an amazing job at giving us feedback.

I have the habit of reporting my idiotic behavior from time-to-time, when I believe that I deserve to be publicly ridiculed. Remember when I put my foot in my mouth or when I missed my flight (and then did it again)? Well, I think this might top those.

I blame it on being absentminded these days for few reasons:

• Things at work are not rosy since I am not doing what I subscribed to do, so I am seriously considering about my next steps;
• On a personal level, I am working through picking up the pieces from my last romantic encounter, which was great :-) but with bad timing :-(

It’s better to live life to its fullest, embrace the moments, gain the experiences, and go through the ups and downs rather than going through a routine and boring existence, right? That’s my philosophy and I am fully embracing, which is the reason I still have a smile in my face :-)

So, here’s what happened this time.

If you follow my twitter stream, you’ll know that my bike was at the service yesterday. I went to pick it up late afternoon and returned home to find the second notice of a failed delivery attempt from FedEx. The things I ordered last week have started arriving one-by-one. It was a nice day so I decided to go for a ride and collect the first package from the FedEx distribution center. On the way, I also stopped at the UPS distribution center to ask whether the package scheduled for next day’s delivery was there (it was not). I picked up my package from FedEx and returned home. As I parked my bike at home, I noticed that the side cases were missing. I was sure that I had seen them when I parked at FedEx so I immediately assumed that they were stolen.

I got on my bike and returned to FedEx and UPS. I started talking to the security people there in an attempt to get access to their surveillance footage from their security cameras. I even called the police to report the incident. It was past the closing time so I wasn’t able to get to the bottom of what happened. The police called me at home later in the night and I gave a full report.

This morning, I started tracing my steps back. I talked with the head of the security at FedEx who reviewed the footage but, unfortunately, he couldn’t see me because of the narrow angle of the camera. He did remember me, though, because he was outside at the time since the FedEx NASCAR car was on display, so there were many people around. I thought that I should check whether the UPS camera has footage of my bike and the side cases, in order to confirm that I had the cases at the time. I also went to the gas station where I stopped before to confirm the same thing. They all promised to look at the footage and call me if they saw anything.

Well, instead of waiting I traced my “steps” back to the first stop for that day... the BMW service. I went there this morning, after all the other visits, and surprise... surprise... the side cases were there. They had forgotten to put them back on and I had completely failed to notice. It’s one of those things. You are used to seeing something daily and you convince yourself that it’s there even it’s not. That in combination with my absentmindness :-) (see above).

I am now going to call the police to apologize and offer my time in exchange for their time that I wasted.

I also lost an entire evening of writing. I haven’t been able to concentrate lately so I am going to try to reassemble myself today and focus on writing. First deadline is in the horizon.

Google Chrome OS: The Web as the platform. Now, that’s interesting!!! Microsoft has been very slow in embracing the Web. It’d be interesting to see if there is any reaction to this.

This is an event I used to really enjoy. Many smart people from various fields of science getting together. Highly recommended. Here’s the announcement and call for papers for the 2009 one.

The 2009 eScience Workshop will be held at the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA,  October 15-17, 2009.  The call for papers closes on July 31, 2009.

Call for Papers

We invite contributions from all areas of eScience and e-Research including:

• Computational support for scientific research in life sciences, biomedical computing, environment, energy, and other scientific grand challenges
• Knowledge discovery and merging datasets
• Large-scale scientific data analysis, mining, and visualization
• High-performance computing applied to solving problems in a variety of scientific disciplines
• Dissemination of scientific literature/results and the discovery, curation, and sharing of data
• Scientific sensors, data-gathering tools and technologies
• Collaboration/workflow tools and technologies
• Data-intensive science
• Emerging multidisciplinary fields such as Digital Heritage and eEconomy
• Research implications of computational thinking
• How strategies for semantics and ontology formulation enable scientific discovery

eScience Workshop 2009

The eScience Workshop, to be held October 15-17, 2009, will provide a unique opportunity to share experiences, learn new techniques, and influence the domain of scientific computing. Scientists and researchers will explore the evolution, challenges and potential of computing in scientific research, including how the latest tools, Web services and database technologies are being applied to scientific computing.

Workshop Theme
Facilitating Scientific Discovery through Data-Intensive Computing

Hosting and Location
Co-hosted by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University, this workshop will take place in the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

eScience Workshop 2009 - Microsoft Research

I woke up early and decided to go for a road trip with my bike. I decided to head towards the Bainbridge island. My friends Sophie and David also had a similar idea but 2 hours later than me :-) So, while they were driving towards Port Townsend (north of the island and part of the Olympic peninsula), I was exploring the side roads and small towns on the way. Port Townsend a beautiful little town. We met and had lunch there.

I took the ferry to Whidbey island for some more riding while David and Sophie stayed behind to meet other friends at Bainbridge. Upon my return back to Seattle, in the evening, I started visiting BBQ parties to which I was invited before ending up at Alki beach with friends. It was great seeing all the fireworks around the Puget Sound. The weather was soooo good.

In the photos: Meredith, Sirina, Karen, and Cris.

Today was one of those days... I’ve been planning to make these purchases for a while and I just took the time to do them at the same time.

My 2-years old Windows Mobile phone was showing its age. Since Microsoft hasn’t released anything compelling yet in the user experience front (I am hearing that something good is coming but it’s not around the corner yet), I finally made the decision to move to an iPhone. I got the iPhone 3GS and I love it so far. Do send me suggestions of “must have” applications. I’ve only installed the Facebook and TweetDeck apps so far.

Of course, given the level of my geekyness, I have to experiment with the new environment... which learning the internals and getting around to writing an application or two for the iPhone. I have something concrete in mind, so we’ll see how it turns out. Given that my current priority is finishing the book, it’ll probably take some time. So, in addition to an iPhone I just submitted an order online for a MacBook Pro 15.4’’. I am pretty excited about it.

I also needed some “essentials” for my riding experience, so I ordered the Garmin Zumo 660 and the multiset version (anyone wanna go for a ride and talk?) of the CARDO Scala Rider Q2.

Suffice to say, that I probably need to stop eating for few months :-)