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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!
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.
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Updating
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!
I missed the launch event at Redwood Shores due to sheer exhaustion after driving back from Twain Harte (the birth place of Rock Band and Guitar Hero!), but some videos have been posted. Missed out on the always excellent food and tchotchkes though…
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!
Estuary 2
I’ve removed PhotoUpLink and VideoUpLink from the web site download area temporarily. Quicktime, the Facebook API, and Cocoa API’s have all changed radically and are causing customers to experience failures which understandably lead me to refund their money. To avoid any more of these situations, I’ve shut down the links for now until I can resolve this issues. I’ll be sending out a press release when PhotoUpLink and VideoUpLink have been refreshed, the next versions have some exciting new features. Thank you for your continued support and patience.