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Braid Paisley, in a reflective mood.

With apologies to Kim Wilde, its quite a commute but I am really enjoying it. I’ve spent most of the last 15 years driving all over the Bay Area anyway. Grabbed these shots while parked in one of the shoulder areas, was pretty dramatic!

(Bonus Kim Wilde track!)

This is where I find myself working for the next few months. It is a truly amazing place to work, what a Renaissance like center of learning and innovation it is.

Here is a robot’s eye view of my office location:

More information about their participation in the Willow Garage ROS program is here. And it uses Kinect, with Linux based drivers and a reference platform for all!

Another bonus for me is of course Bosch’s participation in the racing world, including being recently selected (along with McLaren!) for NASCAR’s switch from carburetor to fuel injection.

Another Australian victory, and this time I was there to see it! The first repeat winner since the series started running at Infineon Raceway in 2005. This is the second time I’ve seen this race at Sonoma. All the crashing, fights and action occurred in New Hampshire last weekend but this was a great day.

A great year to be an Australian racing fan. Mark Webber is holding second place right now in the Formula One standings, and Marcos Ambrose, so often the bridesmaid, finally wins one in NASCAR’s top rung of competition. Bonus, incredible racing every lap, wild wrecks, and a fist fight reminiscent of the pre-2000 days of NASCAR before the big networks starting broadcasting it!

Had some quality Xbox / Kinect time with my 5 year old over the 4th July weekend. It’s a little frustrating with the difference in height but the two player recognition is definitely improving; he still struggles with the holding still part while it identifies both of us though! I read briefly the official Microsoft Kinect SDK docs, that’s still a long way off for me, focusing on getting to the Android Market for now!

Cars 2 for Xbox has just been a delight and a visual feast. Still sticking to mainly racing games, they are easy to understand and brilliantly educational when it comes to math and physics! Most of them are split screen two player which is key for our household. Also, finally had a chance to catch up on races before the Tivo deleted them – the debut Kentucky NASCAR race was much better than the predictable Daytona run, and Silverstone delivered again for Formula One this weekend. I couldn’t get to Sonoma this year for the NASCAR race but it was great to watch that one finally too. The last time I was there Juan Pablo Montaya won (the weekend after that incredible Montreal F1 race), but that was five years ago!

The third party Android development I’ve been doing is winding down, so I’ll be able to get back to the apps soon. I’m really glad I’ve spent some time outside the Apple reality distortion field. Learning Eclipse, Google’s “java”, and the Android APIs has been a breath of fresh air and a good mental workout! The freedom and control over everything you get on Android is definitely invigorating, and the available hardware is so much more advanced, with true multitasking and what Apple lauds as the Notification Center in already in place for years. I’ll have more to say on that as my iPhone/Mac portfolio is refreshed and ported to Android.

Mercury set to hit 89 here in Oakland today, records breaking all over the place!

I spent Friday at an Oracle technology briefing at their campus in Redwood Shores. These events are a great way to keep up with the roadmap. Oracle rarely blunders with their acquisitions, and the acquisition of Sun has lent to a slew of new synergies with actual meaning for the rest of us. Java is a forest of versions and acronyms, and Friday was an opportunity to have it all explained somewhat.

You heard it here first, I predict the Java App Store will re-emerge, with Oracle hosting, and billions of devices will connect to it. One outcome of the Google lawsuit is that it will end up on all Android phones; speculation is the suit won’t make it to the Supreme Court. The food as always was excellent, full breakfast, great lunch and afternoon tea. As many times as I go, I never grow weary reporting or photographing that part of it. This wasn’t as sumptuous as some of the C-level press events at the Sofitel in Palo Alto, but still, Oracle really knows how to treat its developers and customers. The grilled tri-tip alone was worth the trip!

Got a different view of the PhotoUpLink title page antenna, and the video turned out OK! The Droid X owners I’ve asked about the camera have panned it. I’m just amazed that a phone has an 8 megapixel camera, shoots HD, and has a flash!

I’ve started to add location and immediacy as photo quality determinants. Framing, lighting, resolution etc are all great but the fact that I can snap a photo here and NOW and send it to my wife or a pal, with a timestamp and a GPS tag is what matters to me the most these days. The rest of the set is from cruising around the Near East Bay with a friend late last night listening to “Friday” – the phone speakers really magnified and enhanced the auto-tuned vocals to poetic heights.