What a week! (and new toys)

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.