Wednesday, August 18, 2004

I'm watching the Olympic Men's Gymnastics all-around competition on BBC. I won't tell you what happens, but it's super interesting to watch, so catch it today if you can. Damn, I wish I had those guys' physique. By the way, the BBC is doing a fantastic job in reporting the Olympics. Puts NBC to shame.   9:31:28 PM    ; comment [];  It's been a good week in our Cambridge lab. I got to spend time with Lyndsay Williams who works on our SenseCam project (recent article here), and see some of her latest advances (which unfortunately I can't talk about publicly). I also got to meet with Abi Sellen and Richard Harper who are growing a new HCI research group. MSR Cambridge has a fascinating mix of researchers from all over Europe (as well as a couple of Canadians and an American or two). I also got to spend some time working with our group here who build partnerships with academia. There are very exciting things going on in academia in Europe. I try to spend a week over here every summer. Curiously enough, I find it's an interesting dynamic to be in a time zone 8 hours ahead of the rest of my team. I come in to the office in the morning and there's a pile of email waiting for me. It takes about an hour to plow through it, and by then I have a list of things to work on. Between meetings here, I work on them and try to get answers back to people by mid-afternoon, so that around 4pm when people in Redmond start getting to work there is something waiting for them. I get an hour or two at the end of the day to talk in real-time with my team, and then I leave for the day and get out of their hair. And then the whole thing starts again. The hardest part is actually leaving, since there is usually a flurry of activity mid-morning there.  But overall it's a refreshing change of pace, and I would recommend others try it. 9:24:44 PM    ; comment [];  Last night I finished reading The Fourth Hand, by John Irving. Patrick Wallingford is a field reporter for an international news channel that has a reputation for covering disasters and the worst of human misery -- and milking it for all it's worth. On assignment in India covering a circus high-wire death, Patrick has an accident of his own as a lion bites his hand off, and ironically Patrick becomes "the news" on his own morbid channel. Out of the blue, a donor hand becomes available, and a doctor from Boston talks Wallingford into a transplant operation. Except that the deceased donor's wife attaches some conditions to the donation of the hand, and thus Patrick and the widow Clausen's lives become intertwined. This book confused me. I've read several of Irving's books, and enjoyed many of them. while they all cover lots of ground and feature many characters, I felt that I understood them better by the end. Not so in this one. Wallingford is the classic stereotype of the shallow, handsome, womanizing on-sceen personality, and parts of the book read like a sex comedy. But all four main characters stay enigmas to the end; Irving never quite gives us the insights that would explain their individual quirks. Perhaps I'm missing something. It certainly was an interesting read; if others found something in this book that I missed, I'd love to hear about it. Next up: The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe. It will be good airplane reading as I fly back to Seattle tomorrow. 8:55:15 PM    ; comment [];  Last week I finished Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, by Bill Richardson. This is the sequel to (go figure) Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast. The books are a charming set of short stories revolving around twin brothers who live on one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, and run a bed and breakfast out of their home. Their mother was a mechanic; their father was an itinerant book salesman who had a very brief liaison with their mother then went on his way -- and whose only ongoing contact with his sons was the books that he would mail them from time to time. Thusly having thier love of reading inspired at an early age, the brothers' bed and breakfast is a haven for book lovers looking for a vacation of quiet solitude. Both books are a mixture of stories about each of the brothers (Hector and Virgil), other folks from their small island community, and their guests. Intermixed are book recommendations and guests' favorite recipes.While the first book progressively intorduces us to the main characters through their stories, the second book actually has a storyline that runs through the individual tales and brings the whole book together. This is not a serious book. Nothing of consequence happens to any of the characters. That, in a way, is the point: Hector and Virgil have cultivated a life that is free from the stress andweighty matters that plague the rest of us. And yet, things do happen, and it's fun to watch it all play out. This is great escapist reading, and would be a great bathroom book. It doesn't pick you up and carry you away, but it is cheerful, fun, an easy read, and highly enjoyable. I highly recommend both books. 8:33:36 PM    ; comment [];  I'm in Cambridge. Now, if you immediately thought of that place next to the Charles River in greater Boston, well, you're clearly suffering from a U.S.-centric view of the world. I'm in the first Cambridge, the one that predates Boston by several hundred years, and actually features the river Cam and several bridges over it. (in fact, I've never been clear if there is a particular bridge over the Cam that is the official source of the city name) Cambridge is a fascinating area. I got a chance on Sunday to go up in a smll aircraft and fly over East Anglia -- all the way over to Oxford, up towards Peterborough, and of course around Cambridgeshire itself. Much of the area used to be marshlands. With help from the Dutch, it was drained and the land reclaimed for agriculture and settling. Very flat -- as true for much of England. Cambridge itself has a sort of self-styled high-tech corridor -- they call it "silicon fen." As is true around the world, tech industry centers almost always grow up around strong research universities, and Univerity of Cambridge definitely qualifies. The University here boasts the world's first Computer Science department, and was the home base of Alan Turing. Microsoft Research has a lab here (which is why I'm here now), hosting about 100 people. It has close connections with the computer science department -- in fact, their building is right across the parking lot from ours. It was amusing going from Dartmouth last Friday to Cambridge this week. Dartmouth is one of the oldest colleges in the U.S. having been founded in 1769. University of Cambridge was founded in the 1500's. Dartmouth is very fond of their old traditions, and defends them loudly and forcefully. Cambridge, like much of Europe, while having far older tradtiions, is much more matter-of-fact about them; you get a feeling that Europeans have a more intuitive understanding of "inertia" in both senses -- things in motion tend to remain in motion, and things at rest tend to remain at rest. The late Roger Needham, founding director of MSR Cambridge and a 30-year legend at University of Cambridge, once told me an interesting and illuminating story. One of the things you notice immediately here is that all of the University's lawns are perfectly green and perfectly manicured. Roger once asked the head groundskeeper how they keep the lawns so pristine, and he answered: "You fertilize, and water, and mow, and keep repeating that for 500 years." Much of interest going on in our Cambridge lab. I'll write more on that later today.   11:01:49 AM    ; comment [];  Politically incorrect laugh of the day. (keep in mind that I was raised Catholic) 10:39:43 AM    ; comment [];

© Copyright 2004 Kevin Schofield. Last update: 9/4/2004; 9:46:20 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.

Blogroll

Robert Scoble
Ross Mayfield
Dan Gillmor
Larry Lessig
Joi Ito
misbehaving.net
simplegeek
Ray Ozzie
Doc Searls
Boing Boing Blog
Paul Andrews
Chris Pirillo
Halley's Comment
Instapundit
Scripting News
Beyond the Beyond
Don Box
Mary Jo Foley
WebMink
Dean for America
kuro5hin
John Batelle
PDA and Tablet PC News
AlwaysOn Network
The Old New Thing
PR Opinions
Critical Section
Backup Brain
Seattle P-I Microsoft Blog

Books I Like

The Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon
The Tipping Point
The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design
The Design of Everyday Things
Contact
Earth
The Mythical Man-Month
Peopleware
Wicked French
Linked: The New Science of Networks
As the Future Catches You
Pattern Recognition
The Da Vinci Code
The Man who Stayed Behind
Angels and Demons
The Confusion
Quicksilver
Free Prize Inside


What I'm Reading Now

Bachelors Brothers Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book